Thankful for Prayers

It’s been a month since Narlin suffered from deafness and vertigo. She was diagnosed with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSHL). It has been a rough journey for her. The doctor requested an MRI to make sure that her deafness was not caused by tumor. We are relieved and thankful that the result indicates that everything is normal. However, the chance of her hearing will return is 50 only percent. The best that the doctor can do is to prescribe medicines for the dizziness (so that she can do things normally) and to give nutrients for the auditory nerve.

We are overwhelmed by prayers and encouragements from friends. Since we don’t have any health insurance, Narlin’s hospitalisation, MRI, medicines and treatments have been a financial burden for us this month. But we trust that the Lord will provide for this particular need.

Growing Challenge

The children are growing up and taking care of them is getting to be more challenging. We found out that the boys were sneaking out at night to play online game at a nearby computer shop. Jennifer discovered about it when Narlin was hospitalised. A heart to heart talk followed and we emphasised that they need to follow the house rules while they are living with us.

We expect more challenges with the girls in the near future. Please help us to pray for all the children. That the Lord will give them wisdom and obedient heart as they grow up. Pray that the Lord will provide love, patient and wisdom in raising up these wonderful kids.

Religious Camp

Most Thai school have religious day camp. This is the day when all the students are asked to join Buddhist rituals. We had been thinking of holding a separate religious camp for Christians.
Mae Sai Municipal (Wat Poweehan) is the school close to our heart. The director is our good friend and her assistant (who was just a head English teacher when we first met her) is one of Narlin’s best friends. Last year Teacher Pu, a new English teacher joined the faculty. She is a Christian and she becomes our close friend too. She sometimes stays in our house and goes with us to the church.

Teacher Pu insisted that the Christian students would not participate with the Buddhist religious camp. She pushed for a separate camp for Christian students. So we requested the YWAM-Borders to host the camp for Christian students. Twenty-six students (including our children) attended and fifteen of them have made commitment to follow Jesus.

We are thankful to the Lord that believers are now being recognised in the school. We are praying that this will be an opportunity to share the gospel to the other teachers and students. We are also considering that our ministry in the school is coming to its conclusion and YWAM-Border will take over. We believe that God is directing us to minister to village schools. We don’t know how it will happen but God promised that he will make a way.

New Life Garden
In our nine years of living in Mae Sai, we had been part of the beginning of new ministries. This year, we are blessed to be part the New Life Garden (Ban Suan Chiwit Mai). A new ministry that seeks to help young women and children from human trafficking. God has given us the opportunity to help connect people, introduce it to the community through English camp, to help in creating English Kid's Club, and English tutorials for young people and adults.

Eventually, we hope to hold training skills and provide shelters for young women. We also coordinated to make the New Life Garden to be a member of Network for Children and Women Under the Same Sky Association (NCWSA). Please pray for this ministry. We don’t know yet how long we will be working in this ministry but we hope that God will use it for his glory and advancement of his Kingdom.

Family Update

We are missing our children. Jared finished his studies and is now teaching in a private school. He will take the teacher’s board exam on Sunday (27 September). Please pray that he can pass the test.
Jillian is on her last year of studies and doing practice teaching at a local school in Baguio. Reuven is freshman taking up psychology. Please pray for protection (we are not there to look after them) and provisions (school expenses and house rent). We hope to be reunited with them in the near future.

More Prayer Concerns

• Most of the children will go to Bangkok to compete for national English drama competition. Pray for safe travel.
• School break is just around the corner. Pray for the children’s activities during the break and provisions for another school term.
• We cancelled all our English teaching (when Jennifer left) to give Narlin a break and time to heal. Please pray our regular students that can come back when she resumes teaching.
• Preaching is a part of our regular ministry. Please pray that God will use this as channel to share God’s blessing to the Thai people.

We are certain that God has called us to serve him here but without your love, support and prayers, we know that we could not stay here a day longer. We thank the Lord for using you to fulfill his calling in our life. You are a huge blessing to all of us and the people we are helping.

Through the years

Happy New Year! It’s a bit late greeting but we missed the opportunity to do it because we skipped sending you our January Newsletter.  We thanked the Lord for your continued partnership through out the years. Nine years to be exact.

We came to Mae Sai in January 2006 hence we are now on our ninth year here. This year, we were together in celebrating God’s faithfulness in our lives and ministries. We are grateful that Jared and Jillian were able to come to celebrate Christmas, New Year and the anniversary of our coming here in Thailand.

Team Visits

They came with a purpose to help the children at risk and we happen to have ten of those. Seven wonderful young ladies from YWAM DTS-Madison came to help us with the children and also with teaching English at the Municipal school. They stayed in our house for almost a week. We also took some time out to show them to few interesting places in Mae Sai. They came at the right time because we needed to go to the Philippine Embassy in Bangkok that weekend because Reuven had to take the Alternative Learning System Accreditation Equivalency (ALSAE) Test. We had people who looked after the children while we were away.

We also met with a 32-people team from South Korea through our Pastor friend. They were doing mission exposure in Southeast Asian countries. We were grateful to them for taking the time to visit our place and for encouraging us. We were able to help them in our own small way to look for an overnight accommodation.

We will also be working with YWAM Team from South Africa this month. Please pray for the school activities where these young people who will minister among the students of the municipal school.

Children Update

We thank the Lord for his provision for all the children’s school expenses. They are all doing good in the school. Being with them and seeing them 24/7 make us oblivious to the physical changes happening to them. We just noticed that their clothes are getting too small for them.  So we are again buying them new set of clothes and school uniforms.

Our own children are doing well in their studies. But Narlin and I think they need somebody to be with them to help them keep the house tidy and prepare food for them. Jared will be graduating in May and Jillian will be in her third year. The fact that they are in the Philippines in college is a miracle of God’s provision.

Reuven took this year ALSAE Test. If he passed, he will go straight to college in the Philippines. The test is specially difficult for him because the test is 90% in Tagalog. For someone who who live in Thailand for most of his life, written Tagalog is not easy to understand. Please pray that Reuven will pass the test this time.

HT Related Projects

Please continue to pray for us as we help our friend to start his ministry projects in Mae Sai that seeks to prevent young women from becoming victim of human trafficking (HT). We hope to find a place to rent to be used as vocational trainings centre (initially sewing for crafts like dresses and bags and maybe more courses later) and another place for shelter. Pray for our friend's health and pray for wisdom and provision.

During our last meeting with the Network for Women and Children, someone brought out a pressing problem. We are told that the Thai Immigration Office deported several young women who are working illegally in Thailand. Although these girls are from Burma, they practically grew up here. They couldn’t speak Burmese and they don’t have any idea where their family are located. Allegedly, they ended up homeless and raped by the police.

We are hoping to help provide solution to this problem by having people in the immigration office to look for the deported girls and provide them temporary shelter until such time they locate their family in Burma. This is a good opportunity to share God’s love to them.  Please for God’s guidance and provisions.

Members of Network for Children and Women (NCW) sharing problem on human trafficking and sharing ideas on how to provide solutions.

Thanksgiving

• We thank the Lord for another year he has given to us. We are looking forward for a fruitful 2015.
• We thank the Lord that our children from the Philippines were able to celebrate holidays with us.
• We thank the Lord for friends who are faithfully supporting and praying for us. We pray that God will bless you always.
• We thank the Lord for leading us to a local church where we can serve him.
• We thank the Lord for the opportunity to serve with the international community (who need spiritual feeding too) in our once a month English worship.
• We thank the Lord for the opportunity to teach English and the Word to the children and young people in the community. 
• We know it's still early but please help us pray for our visa and work permit this year. We are grateful that we did not have major difficulties in extending our stay in Thailand.

Thanksgiving Message

Philippians 4:4-7

We non-Americans will never fully understand why the Americans celebrate thanksgiving. Sure we can know its history and how it is being celebrated, but for us it is totally an American holiday just like Loi Khratong is a Thai festival. We may know about it and participate in it but we it would not be meaningful if we are not a Thai.

Charles Dickens once said that they are somewhat mixed up in America. He told an audience that “instead of having one Thanksgiving Day each year we should have 364 “days of thanksgiving.” Use that one day just for complaining and griping,” he said. “Use the other 364 days to thank God for the many blessings He has showered upon you.”

As Dickens suggested, we should not wait for a special holiday to express our gratitude to God. Instead, thanksgiving should be a part of our daily lives. In fact the bible is very clear that thanksgiving is perhaps one of the most vital characteristics of any child of God. And there’s good reason for that.

As a Christian, God expects us to have a thankful spirit. We should be the example of what it means to be a thankful person.

Let us look at Philippians 4:4-7 to know how we show to people that we have a thankful spirit.

A thankful spirit is a joyful spirit (v. 4)

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice.

A thankful person is always rejoicing in the Lord. As you may already know, when Paul was writing this letter he was not in a comfortable position. He was actually in prison. The reason we have a joyful spirit is because we know God through our personal relationship with Jesus.

The joy we have inside our hearts should not be affected by the bad circumstances that are happening around us. Paul shows this truth to us. He is full of joy because he knows that no matter what happened to him, he has Jesus Christ in his life. We can be joyful because we know for sure that God will provide for us and takes care of us.

And God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19)
Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always. Whether we like it or not, we are commanded to  do so not because we could not do it but because it is something that a true Christian should be doing. It is our testimony of how faithful God is to us.

We rejoice because he makes us happy. We rejoice because he gives us exceeding joy. In this passage Paul are trying to resolve some problems in the church, but in spite of that Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always!

To rejoice means to be exceedingly glad The ability to rejoice or to have a joyful spirit is built on our relationship with God, not with what is happening around us.

A thankful spirit is a gentle spirit (v. 5)

Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

Joy is not always evident but the way we relate to other people is. A thankful person will treat people as Jesus would treat them.

The word “gentle” is very difficult word to translate in English. One word is not sufficient to get the full meaning of it. Different translations translate it as gentle, moderate, kind, reasonable, considerate.
The word refers to a spirit that is reasonable, fair-minded, and charitable. It describes someone willing to yield his or her own right to show consideration and gentleness to others. We may find it easy to be gentle with some people but it is hard to be gentle to the people who makes our life difficult.

Paul is saying that “gentleness”  towards all people should characterise the people of God. He is calling the Christians in Philippi and us for that matter to have the gentle forbearance and meekness of Jesus. It should be one of the most prominent attitude that Christians should show to all people.

The sudden inclusion of the sentence, “the Lord is near” is ambiguous. Paul could have intended it to be like that. First, it may mean that Paul is saying “Rejoice in the Lord always,  and let your gentleness be evident to all for the coming of the Lord is near. On the other he may mean to say that the Lord is always near. Or he says it to mean both.

In the light of the persecution the Christians are experiencing in the hands of those who proclaim that the emperor is Lord and God. These words, I believe, serve as encouragement and affirmation.  That they can do all these commands because the Lord’s second coming is very near and while he is not yet coming…the Lord is near in a very real way to those who are praying to him.

And because of these truths, we are motivated to be gentle to the people who live around us. First, to our brothers and sisters in Christ and second to those who are lost.  A thankful person will treat other with love and respect.

A thankful spirit is a trusting spirit (6)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Circumstances will not shake us. A thankful person  will have full trust in God. This verse literally is saying to us that we should stop being anxious! We should stop worrying. This is the scope of our trust. We are to trust God in every situation.

Three words are use for prayer here: prayer, petition and requests. I looked at the definition of these words. Petition is a formal written request, typically one signed by many people, appealing to authority with respect to a particular cause. A request is an act of asking politely or formally for something.

So this verse clearly tells us that if something is making us anxious we have to pray to God and we have to pray together to God and trust him that he will take care of it.

We cannot let circumstances shake our faith. Anxiety can cause to be irritable and defensive. It is like a fertiliser that make little problems grow bigger. The church at Philippi are having internal problems and it is causing disagreement among the Christians there. It might have been easy for the church to just stop carrying out their ministry that they are called to do.

I had seen the enemy use anxiety to keep us from serving God. If he can get you to focus on problem and be anxious, then we lost our focus on God.

Here Paul says that prayer is our first line of defence. The cure for anxiety is not inaction but prayer with action. Sometimes preparing a message can give like this gives me anxiety. I may get extremely anxious to the point that I can not do anything.

On the other hand, I cannot just pray to God that he will prepare the message for me. I have to read and study the Bible, study other resources and pray for guidance that I can write this message.
Do not let our anxieties stop us from doing our best. Do not let it stop us from serving God instead trust that God will take care of our problems and then we will be empowered to do God’s works.

A thankful spirit is a peaceful spirit (7)

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

God’s peace will guard our hearts and minds as we live for Him. When i read this passage the first image that comes to my mind is the image of secret service guarding the president of the America. And I believe Paul has the same imagery in his mind when he wrote this passage. The image of Roman soldiers standing guard all over the city. Peace is guarding our hearts and minds against the attack of anxieties and many other negative influences.

When things are falling apart around us, we have peace within us that we ourselves could not fully understand. All we know is that God gives us the wonderful gift of peace. This peace gives us clear mind and correct judgement when bad things happened around us.

People might see it as indifference. Sometimes we ourselves thought we should be more worried than we should be. But we need to realise, it is not us. It is the peace that guards our hearts and minds.
Jesus said that he will  give us a unique peace that the world will not understand. It is hard to explain, we may not be able to explain it to others or even to ourselves but we just praise God for it.

If we don have a peaceful spirit, we will have a hard time being thankful. If we are worried and afraid all the time, we will not be able to thank God for what He has done because we will be distracted on the problems before us. Being thankful help us to focus on God more and more.

Conclusion

During a harvest festival in India, an old widow arrived at her church with an extraordinarily large offering of rice – far more than the poor woman could be expected to afford. The itinerant pastor of the church did not know the widow well.

But he did know that she was very poor and so he asked her if she were making the offering in gratitude for some unusual blessing. “Yes,” replied the woman. “My son was sick and I promised a large gift to God if he got well.” “And your son has recovered?” asked the pastor. The widow paused. “No,” she said. “He died last week. But I know that he is in God’s care; for that I am especially thankful.”

For Christians, every moment is an opportunity to give thanks to God. Everyday is thanksgiving day.

The image is from wikimedia.org