Today we sat again as a team. The six of us, Team Luminous. The previous 48 hours had been painfully long and frustrating and disappointing, and despite finally getting a good night’s rest, the heaviness remained.
We were supposed to be in Vietnam this month…or we thought we were. We had been praying about this for months now and we were excited to experience this country to the fullest. Because of a number of very strange and unique circumstances of which i will direct you to my teammates blogs for details, we were denied entry into the country. Not only were we denied, the officials kindly booked us a flight back to Bangkok and personally escorted us to the gate to ensure that we left their country.
What are we supposed to think of this?? How do we explain feeling so sure that the Lord told us to go to Vietnam?? How did everything go so wrong?? How is God going to redeem this month for us?? How are we going to live on the very little money we have left for this month?? All of these questions are going on in my head when Lindsay looks at us and simply asks, “How is everyone?” …Here’s what was said…
Lindsay plays a song by Ginny Owens. The first verse sinks in:
The pathway is broken And The signs are unclear
And I don’t know the reason why You brought me here
But just because You love me the way that You do
I’m gonna walk through the valley
If You want me to
I read an excerpt from Ruthless Trust that had spoken to my heart earlier in the morning. Brennan Manning quotes Henri Nouwen as saying, “the root choice is to trust at all times that God is with you and will give you what you most need”.
Melissa says she is thankful for not getting what we want or expect. She is seeing the blessing in the heartache, and I’m glad for the perspective.
Dave reads Psalm 33 for us. He had prayed for a scripture and the Lord led him there…
Behold the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love…
Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.
Steph reminded us that its God’s money. I am reminded that His ways are not our ways… She is right, it never was our money to begin with, so being stripped of it should not matter. In Matthew it tells us that God thinks of feeding the birds, so why would he not also think of us, His children.
Benny- ever pensive and slow to speak, remains so. He says he has many thoughts rolling around up there, but hesitates to say anything as to not rush what the Lord is speaking to him about in his heart. Even this is comforting, knowing that lessons are being learned…God is still speaking and we are still meant to listen, even in Bangkok.
Lindsay joked that we have been through a Jonah experience. We all laughed, but we do kind of feel like we just got spit up. I dont think we were running away from anything by fighting so hard to get to Vietnam, but we got the message loud and clear that we weren’t meant to stay. So yesterday around 7:30 pm, Air Asia (the whale) spit Team Luminous back on to the dry land of Bangkok, Thailand. For now, we are here still trying to listen to what God is saying.
So please pray for us. We know in our heads that we will have a great story to tell by the end of this month, but our hearts are a bit slower to buy into that right now. Tomorrow morning we will sit together again, in the same room, praying once again for the Lord to lead us to where He can use us for His glory…and perhaps also where we might get some free food 🙂
group photo outside of immigration in Vietnam…we were so close!!
sleeping in the Bangkok airport when they wouldn’t let us on our original flight. Hey, it was free!
Sleeping in the Vietnam immigration area…we had been sitting, wating, sleeping in either an airport or on an airplaine for about 28 hours at this point!
