Why hello all you wonderful people utilizing your screen to read the text I created. How are you doing today? Oh, that’s either really good or really bad to hear depending upon your answer. I’m not God so don’t think about me like I know how you answered. I have a bit of extra free time today and am bored. So now I am blogging. I hope you enjoy these updates:
I did take my team to go to a mall to evangelize. The mall was filled with more Thai people rather than tourists, which made the evangelization more difficult. Thai people don’t really have a concept of praying for people, so that came up multiple times. I would say that a majority of interactions I didn’t do a great job getting past the stranger talking awkwardness. The conversations moved, and I tried, but the conversations didn’t go great. I’m sure I’ll get better as I practice. It also takes two to engage in a conversation, so it is what it is.
Speaking of prayer requests, there were a couple of interesting encounters in the mall. One of our team’s squad leaders and I were a part of one of them, as we were teamed together for the assignment. There was a man who was in a wheelchair and had Alzheimer’s. I initially asked him for prayer, and he did not understand and was not interested. Even his Thai caretaker didn’t understand the concept. Despite the initial disinterest, my squad leader kept pushing and he agreed to try and help his Alzheimer’s. She did a great prayer for him, which he appreciated.
Then he got into a conversation with us about God and the idea of suffering. He talked about how he knew people who survived in an earthquake and were thanking God for that. He didn’t understand how they could be happy about the earthquake and didn’t want to be disrespectful to the people who did die. I understand the intellectual answer to the idea of evil argument whenever it is used online (the idea of evil presupposes objective suffering, which means that there has to be objective “good” and “bad” which don’t exist materialistically). But the truth is since there is a God, it is a question that doesn’t provide an answer that puts you at peace with suffering. Which is objectively good, because suffering is objectively bad. It reminds me of in Job when Satan had the chance to kill off his wife and friends but elected not to in order to frustrate Job with how they were responding to his questions about suffering.
I was just honest and said that there isn’t a satisfying answer to the question. We just try our best to do the right thing while we are here and have faith that things will be set right in the next life. I just want to put out a prayer request for him, his Alziemer’s and walking issues, and, most importantly, that he has a radical encounter with Christ. While my encounter was going on one of the teams found a prayer room and just so happened to be praying, so that was pretty cool. The other encounter I was not involved with but was an employee at the music store who was a former Christian that fell away from the faith.
I made a big cultural mistake yesterday. I was teaching active listening, so I decided to play Simon Says with the girls. I was having fun with it and it was going really well until I told them to put a shoe on their hands and clap. One thing that I had learned and had slipped my mind was that the bottoms of feet are considered unclean in Thailand and it is disrespectful to point them at other people. A couple of their facial expressions changed and they didn’t do the action. That made me remember it. I had been very careful about that, but I was having fun and trying to be creative so it slipped my mind. After the game I bowed and apologized, and they seemed fine with it, but it does suck when you try and have fun and things go awry.
I’ll just end up by putting the fundraising link to one of my teammates who has had trouble fundraising. Feel free to donate, if you feel called to.
Now back to being bored!
Good to hear from you. Your S0Z0 family was asking about you this past Sunday. Glad things are going good and you are adapting to a new culture. Not sure I could do that. Proud of you and will continue to pray for God to use you and that you would be listening.
Aaron- you are such a fun guy! I love how it is so easy for you to just be real and go with the flow as you love people freely and easily!! You are a great storyteller, and it is fun to read your blogs!!
I’m glad you are learning this new culture. I’m sure it’s not easy but it must be great to experience that.