New Family Members!

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

We have two new family members that I am now discipling!  Ja and Best both came to Christ a couple of weeks ago and are learning how to walk with Jesus daily.  It is exciting to be a part of their lives and to see how they are changing!  (Read on for more details.)

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Please be praying for me as I disciple Ja and Best each week.  Pray that I will have wisdom to know what to teach and how to teach it, and pray that I will live my life before them in such a way that they can follow me as I follow Christ.  Please pray that they would search the Scriptures to ensure that what they are learning aligns with God's Word and that they would be obedient to it.

2.  Pray for a group of believers at The Well that will begin meeting together as a church for the first time this week.  Ask that the Spirit would direct us, that we would hear from Him when we meet together, and that He would add to our number.

Dinner at the restaurant where one of our friends now works  

3.  Please ask that the Father would bless our outreach efforts into the red-light areas each week.  I go with two different teams (one Tuesday, one Wednesday) each week.  Please ask that He would draw each team together in unity and that we would reflect Christ to all we meet.  Ask that He would continue to grow our friendships with the women there and that we would have opportunities to share the Gospel with them.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

I had something entirely different in mind for this blog, but something incredible happened this week, and it became my top priority to share with you.  The Lord allowed me to lead my first new believer to Christ!  And, consistent with His character, He even gave above and beyond what I had asked for and gave me not just one but TWO new believers.  I am still bursting with excitement, so you'll probably have to forgive my excessive use of exclamation points in this blog. :)

Let me tell you how it all came to be:

About a year ago, I got a phone call from a missionary friend who lives in another city in Thailand.  She had a friend who knew a lady in Bangkok who wanted to learn English with a native speaker.   Did my friend know anyone who might be willing to teach her?

So my friend called me and asked if I would be willing to do so and, I must admit, I was really reluctant.  This lady was not part of my target group of women working in the red-light areas and, honestly, I can't think of many things I enjoy doing less than teaching English.  I just felt like it would be a distraction from what I was sent here to do.

But then my friend said the magic words:  "She's interested in spiritual things."

So I began meeting with Ja weekly.  We chatted, we played games, we did grammar exercises, we did vocabulary quizzes, and we had a great time together.  From time to time, she would also bring her 16-year-old daughter Best to our English lessons, and I became great friends with both of them.

But the main thing I wanted to do in our English lessons was to share the most important thing there is, so we always read chapters from the Bible during our time together.  We started at creation, and Ja really ate it up.  And she had all of these amazing questions:  Why did God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden?  Could the snake walk before God cursed him?  Why didn't God accept Cain's offering?  Why did God destroy all of the people with the flood?  Why did God command Abraham to obey Sarah's wishes and send Hagar and Ishmael away?  Why did God forgive David for such terrible sins as murder and adultery?  Should we pray to Mary?  And the list goes on...

Each week, Ja and I would have these wonderful spiritual conversations, and we always reviewed the previous stories we had studied as well.  At one point, I brought a friend from church with me to our lesson so that Ja could practice her English with another native speaker.  Ja proceeded to accurately relate the stories from creation all the way through the life of Abraham.  Yeah, it was pretty impressive.

Through all of this, I had multiple opportunities to share the Gospel with her, both in English and in Thai.  But it still seemed like it wasn't getting through.  She seemed to love the stories but would then go to make merit at the Buddhist temple.  I knew that one of the major barriers to the Gospel in Thailand is the idea that Christianity is a Westerner's religion, that it's fine for others but that their religion is Buddhism, and to turn from that is to betray their culture.  So I really wanted her to hear the Gospel from someone in her own culture.

I invited her to a social event my church was having on a Friday night.  I knew she wanted to practice her English as much as possible and wanted Best to practice also, so I thought it would be good if they could come and be with my church, which is about half American and half Thai.  They came that night and had a great time, and Ja left saying she wanted to come back soon.

So, when the church planned a weekend retreat at a nearby province just outside of Bangkok, I invited Ja and Best to come along.  I was hoping the Thai believers at my church would share Christ with her and that she would see Truth in a way that she wasn't hearing it from me.  I was overjoyed when they accepted the invitation.

Riding an ATV at a recent church retreat

Once we arrived at the retreat, there was a group time that evening that involved some discussion of Scripture.  When we got back to our cabin afterward, Ja asked me if she needed to come to church every Sunday because she has some difficulties in doing that at the moment.  I was a little confused by that, as she had only attended one social event and never an actual church service, so I asked her, "Ja, are you saying you want to follow Jesus?"  When she said yes, I was overjoyed!

She then proceeded to explain that she had recently talked to her mom and asked her what she would think if Ja chose to follow Christ, and her mom said it was fine.  So she and Best both wanted to become Christians.

I was shocked, since I really didn't think anything I had been saying was getting through.  I tried to be sure she really understood what she was getting into.  My own problem, when I first became a believer, was thinking that Jesus had saved me but that I could continue to live as I wanted to.  He was basically "fire insurance" (salvation from hell) for me; what I didn't realize until later was that surrendering to Christ meant my life was no longer my own.  It now belonged to Him to do with as He wanted, and it was my responsibility to obey, even if (and probably when) that obedience meant suffering.  I explained all of this to Ja, and she responded quietly, "Yes, I understand."

And still... she wanted to follow.

The next day, as I was teaching Ja and Best how to have a quiet time, Ja began to ask me questions that showed how she is really thinking through how to live out her new faith in her culture.  Things like how to continue to show honor to her Buddhist mother but to only worship the One True God.  It was encouraging to see how real this has become to her.

This past week, Ja and I met for our regular English lesson, which has now become a discipleship lesson done in a mixture of English and Thai.  She and Best, separately, are each reading a chapter a day from the book of Mark.  When I asked how things are going, she told me that they are each praying daily.  Best is reading Mark with wide eyes as if she were reading the latest bestseller.  Ja told me that she herself is sharing the stories she has learned with the kids at the after-school center that she and her mom run.  And we are beginning to discuss baptism, which will occur as soon as possible.

Folks, this lady is for real!  She blesses me in so many ways, and it is a joy to call her and Best my new sisters.  What an encouragement it has been to be a part of someone coming to know Jesus, to see how their lives are changed in an instant, and to watch them "get it" and obey it!  It is sometimes so hard in Thailand to continue to share with people who seem so disinterested, but this one makes it all worth it.

Me with Ja (left) and her 16-year-old daughter Best

 Please pray for your new sisters Ja and Best, that they would grow in maturity and in intimacy with the Lord Jesus and that they would continue to walk in obedience.