Wednesday, December 14 ; 12:10:00 AM♥
God works in awesome and mysterious ways. For a day comprising mainly of traveling in the morning and shopping in the afternoon, there were surprisingly many learning opportunities.In the morning, as we left Baw Gaew, we did a collection for the local church to thank them for their generosity. Haley later shared with the group that our hosts were in turn grateful to us for bringing such life and light to their humble home. As a little hill-top church community, the small numbers can be discouraging some times. Coming from a seedling church (Bishan CoC) myself, I can empathise with the villagers. It is great that with God, we could be lights to their world.In the afternoon, while we shopped in Kad Suan Gaew, one of our Soymates lost his wallet. Some of us did a chain prayer with him, some comforted him, while yet others helped to look for the wallet. We must learn from Mary and Martha and appreciate that each of us have different strengths and have different roles to play. We are all different parts in one body of Christ. An interesting point that was brought up was that the person who picked up the wallet had been blessed indirectly because there was money as well as some bible verses in it. There can be blessings in any situation.Back at Payap, we had devotion with the congregation. During a sharing, we realised that a recurring theme in this trip was the faith of little children. There is much we can learn from them because of their innocence, open hearts and gratefulness. From another sharing, we realised the importance of letting our lives be living testimonies unto God. Our friends are watching our every action. Are our actions declaring God’s glory or are they sending out mixed messages? What kind of tools are we for our God and master?On Tuesday when we visited the Payap canteen, we made friends with a young lady called Oi. Ever since, she has joined our activities every day. She shared with us this evening that we were her among her first few friends here, she too having just moved into Payap. We were, in her words, “like family”. In the five days she was with us, she told us that she had become a new person. Her two comments brought to my mind two scriptural thoughts. The first is that we should treat foreigners well because we too were once foreigners. Next is that in Christ we are new creatures. Truly we can see the changing power of God at work here.After devotion, our team celebrated the birthdays of Sheena, Shermaine and Jia Ni. Due to a chain of miscommunications, the birthday girls felt rather low. Our team discussed the whole issue as we felt this mustard seed of a miscommunication could fester and become a mustard tree of distrust. The Devil was trying to throw us off the spiritual highs we are at. By going through the matter with our Lord, we can now claim triumph over the Tempter and through Christ say to him, “Get thee behind us, Satan”.Agape,Jeremy Tan(Bishan church)Labels: Asian Mission Exposure 2005