July 15 – Forgot to mention some details. When we went to Nontaburi on Monday, we brought the last 5 suitcases of toys to Pastor Ohm's church for which they were so grateful. These toys collected in the FEC churches has and will really bless many children here in the hospitals and in the slum area. Yesterday, Eugene was well, Jeremy and Dorcas were able to walk well enough to go the food courts to eat, but Marshall and Czrilla had some stomach problems. Today, Marshall is fine and Czrilla is better but Meiring has some stomach problems. We think it is due to something we ate and are OK after it is all eliminated.
We met at 9 to leave on the bus provided by Bangkok Christian College and got ready to sing at the chapel service for fifth graders. Among others, we were met by Own's mother, P. Jin, who is the chaplain at the school. There were about 500 students there and we were told only about 10% of the students are believers. Since we only have 55 minutes for the entire program, we shorted our singing and just did the Give Your Heart to Jesus skit that Eric and Joni do so well. Own, who we now feel fully part of Vision, shared in Thai (to also save the time to do translation). We are not sure all that he said but part of it was to explain the heart skit and challenge the kids that it might not be a girl, but video games or studies could steal their heart from God. Pastor Ben then gave a compelling message about the pure in heart seeing God and telling the students how to get their hearts pure. About 30-40 students stood to indicate their desire to accept Christ. Then the translator mistakenly asked all the students to stand so we are not sure how many more wanted to stand, but most of the students followed Ben in the sinner's prayer. The principle then gave us a monetary gift and a fruit basket while we gave them several Vision CD's. We then went to eat a delicious lunch provided by the school and met some more of the teachers, including their choir director, who it turns out is also the conductor at the Chinese church we visited the first Sunday (Yod and Vida's parents' church). After lunch, we had to hurry to sing an identical program for the chapel service for sixth graders which started at 12 noon. This time, when Ben gave the invitation, a few stood quickly but soon, more stood up to receive Christ so eventually it seemed 80% of the students (maybe 400+) stood to receive the Lord. There were only a handful who did not stand so we praise God for the wonderful response of these students and pray that the good work God began, he will complete. We were then shown a short video of the history of the school, how it was started by Presbyterian missionaries over 150 years ago and how they emphasize morality and integrity for the students. Tiff met a young teacher named Emily who came from Colorado to come teach here for two years and amazed Tiff with her passion for children after she heard God's calling at the age of 12. We then took cabs back to the Guest House to rest for a while. Nine of us met at 3 PM, mostly the younger members in the group, and were led by Own and Gop to evangelize at a Catholic school near the guest house. They returned at 4:00 rejoicing that they were able to sing at the mall instead of the school since they were told we cannot stand in front of the school and block traffic. Many of the students passed in front of the mall after school and we passed out all the tracts we had. Even though we sang in front of a shrine next to the mall, we did not even know it was there after a while. Gop said as we walked and sang, it reminded him of the Israelites walking around the wall of Jericho to break strongholds. Alice said it was good we were informal and non-intimidating in passing out the tracts and we should do more in LA. It was good that our group went without any of the older leaders. Eugene said when we passed out the tracts, some of the people read them and seemed genuinely interested. We then had our group devotion and continued with tour debriefing. We also collected an offering for the Myanmar church. Tonight is our last night here and we are inviting the BH church leaders to dinner. Tomorrow we will check out of the Guest House and is planned to be a shopping day. After shopping, we will eat dinner at the mall and bus to the airport to catch our midnight plane to Korea and then back to LA. This will probably be our last report from Thailand so we will report on the dinner, shopping, and flight back after we return. Just remember our Home Concert is Saturday, Aug. 15, at 7:30 at FEC Glendale. Hope a lot of you will be there to rejoice with us.
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