One Egg Short of a Dozen: Thailand

Sunday, March 7, 2010

"You are the God who performs miracles, you display your power among the peoples. With your mighty arm you redeemed your people" Psalm 77:14,15

Yesterday we visited in a Thai church that is mostly composed of the girls from the Tamar Center and their children. We listened to one former prostitute age 18 and who had two children, give her testimony about how she longed for her family to know God after she accepted Jesus as her Savior. Her brother didn't believe in God and many times she tried to talk to him about God. He called her one day and told her that he had broken his elbow and was in very much pain. Over her cell phone, the sister urged him that God could heal him. He finally consented to her praying for him. While she was praying for him, he told her, Oh, I feel the bones moving and now my pain is gone! Two days later he called telling her he was pain free, and had gone to the doctor to see why his arm wasn't hurting anymore. The doctor checked him out and told him, It is not broken anymore. He told his sister,"This God of yours does miracles!" I want to know more about him. From there she had opportunity to witness to him and he is listening. We were told that this girl is normally shy but as she stood in front of the church, everyone was amazed at her boldness in telling about Jesus' display of love.

For lunch, Mikki and Sarah were not feeling great so after dropping them off at the hotel, I went with Sarah and Jason and their girls to a great Indian restaurant. The food was delicious but what I had ordered ended up being quite spicy. It was good anyway. This also gave me time to talk with them about homeschooling etc. and encourage them as well as encourage Anna, their teen. Having grown up on the mission field as a teen, I felt I could relate to her some. It can sometimes be a lonely place.
We originally were scheduled to go out on the street but in the end some things fell through and God rearranged our schedule a little.

Later that evening, Sarah and Jason came up to our room and we all spent time in encouraging them, anointed them, praying over them and speaking into their lives. We also served communion with them. It was a precious time as we felt God move in and fill them up. Sometimes, missionaries are forgotten. They give and give and give out, without anyone ever pouring back into their lives. Human touch and on hand prayer over someone can be awesome and refreshing for them.
Mikki, Sarah and I all felt we needed to pour into their lives a little on a spiritual level.
Mikki laughed saying, "I have a captive audience and since I haven't preached a lot lately, you have to listen to me!"
But seriously, God was obviously present in our time together.
At 10:45pm our time we all Skyped into the morning service of our church and it was great despite some technical difficulties we had.
At one point, I probably embarrassed Duane, When I saw him right on the screen and blew kisses to him. I did not know we were up on the wall in front of the church! He said , "Yep, they saw you and it totally disrupted the announcements." So that was pretty fun. We ended up having to talk through the phone to the church and so it did not go as expected but they could hear us but not see us. Close to midnight our time in Thailand, we
fell into bed pretty exhausted.
There is a short clip below the pictures of the Thai service

The church is called "Street Church" but is held in a hotel. The first service is English but for this service , they had a translator.

The lady in the pink spoke in English but was hard to understand when she got excited. I loved watching her worship. Tears streamed down her face as she sang to the Lord.