Monday, July 9
Last night, there were several young people from City Gate Church and from the church sending team we met a week ago during the house dedication (from Nigeria, Ghana, Hong Kong, the US, etc) there and between us while walking, we passed out a lot of tracts. We (Vision) did not get to talk to people much but the others with us had ample opportunity, we just did not have a chance to hear their stories. Pray for the young man from China (an engineering student at Kunming University) we met just as we were leaving last night. He said he had spent two hours arguing with a Chinese pastor and said he was Marxist, but something touched him in the few minutes we spoke to him and sang. He kept waving to us and smiling when we left. It was a divine appointment in that brief encounter and a seed planted.
One more item from last night: it rained quite hard before we left, but after we prayed, the skies cleared and except for some drizzle, we were able to go to the night market to do the street ministry. We slept in late and got together at 10:30 to do a short team devotions and debrief the last days' activities. Pastor Tom helped us appreciate how special it was for God to come in His manifest presence on Saturday night and to choose to come when it was just the younger people and Joe there. How fitting it is that He spoke to us when our theme is "listening to God". After lunch, we packed up our sleeping mats, equipment, clothing into 3 vans. In addition to Pastor Gampon, 4 ladies from his church joined us for a total of 33. We left at 1:30 and as soon as we got I. The vans, it started to pour. During the ride, the lady whose dad accepted Christ yesterday told us how much her dad had changed already, so joyful and peaceful instead of angry. It just showed us the grace and power of God. After driving north for about 2 hours, we arrived at the first village, a beautiful place lush with greenery in the middle of nowhere. The air is fresh, it is cool and breezy, maybe Eden was kind of like this. The women, 21 of us are staying in 3 of their homes and all the guys are sleeping in the church. We had some time so we walked to an even smaller minority village (Palang or something like that) to invite them to the meeting tonight. We have agreed to buy a pig for 3000 baht ($100) which they are going to kill and barbecue for our dinner after the service, a treat for the whole village. But they also served us the dinner they had planned, chicken soup, rice and scrambled eggs, a feast for them. After dinner, those that wanted to got to see the pig killed, cleaned, including all the entrails. For us city folks, it was an interesting experience. We started our program about 45 minutes late (Lahu time) and ended about 9:30, with Pastor Tom speaking about the prodigal son inEnglish, translated to Thai by Pastor Gampon, then translated to Lahu or Palang by the local pastor. Praise God one man accepted Christ. Pastor Gampon also prayed for several in the village who wanted healing from various minor illnesses. Because of all the plant growth mingled with cooking fire smoke, Andrew C. Had a little problem breathing when the service started. A few of us prayed for him - out here, we realize we just have to pray for healing - and Andrew did fine, singing all the songs even when he was excused from singing. After the service, we ate the pig which ended up being coked by our three van drivers, Boyle, Moses (who are believers) and Ed, who is not but seems quite open. Ed is also Ching and Thang's neighbor. It was delicious with a lot left for the villagers to enjoy. We then went to bed a little about 11 PM.
Tuesday, July 10
The guys slept with all the windows open to keep it cool and it was OK. Most of us did not get bitten by mosquitoes. At 4 AM, the cocks started to crow, almost continually until after 6. If you pretend the sounds mean "hallelujah" in chicken talk (it has the same rhyme), it actually does sound like they are praising God for the start of another day instead of annoying. So by 7, we were all about awake and had breakfast at 8:30. Some local native ladies stopped to sell their hand-made handicrafts, so we got to buy some souvenirs. We took an offering, collecting about 3,000 baht to give to the church. We left to go sing at the government school were most of the children here go. We sang to about 40 kids, and A. Sue gave her beads Gospel message. Most of the children indicated their desire to accept Christ. We gave these children a small toy along with the beads. When we left the school, we saw a young boy crying and lying on the ground. He was covering his ears when we sang, and he had strings around his neck and arms. Some of us took compassion on him and prayed for him. We felt he was possessed, but when we prayed for him he stopped crying and smiled. As we left, we then realized we had some baby toys to give the babies at the place we stayed, so one van returned to give these gifts, while two vans waited at the school. While waiting, we saw a dozen young people trekking by. They were from Holland, so we had a chance to sing to them. They are not necessarily Christians but God brought them to us to plant a seed. We ate lunch and drove to the second church site, sleeping most of the way and recovering somewhat. Since we are running early, we stopped at a national park about 10 minutes from the church, the Buotong Waterfall Park. It is located in the middle of a pristine tropical forest, with water from a spring forming a waterfall. The spring is a multicolored pond reminiscent of some of the colorful pools at Yellowstone. We then went to the church and had our small group devotions. The local pastor's father is ill, suffering from abdominal pain and has a hard time urinating, so we went to pray for him. In the US, he would probably have had an ultrasound to see if he has kidney stones, but here, he suffers. He said he felt better after prayer and our singing "Our God" (with key words that our God is healer, awesome in power). We then ate dinner provided by the church. Our program started with A. Sue talking about the beads and we gave each child a set and a bookmark to the adults. They then sang and danced a welcome song for us. We sang our program, Katie gave her salvation testimony, and we performed the puppet skit. Pastor Gampon preached (so we did not have to translate a third time) and the local pastor translated to Lahu. After we sang another song and danced for us. We left at 9:25 and arrived back home at 11, tired and weary.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "FECA Vision Choir" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
visionsings+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/visionsings?hl=en
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment