Chiang Mai, Thailand has been awesome so far! The city is great and so is the food. There is this street vendor that sells a glorious pastry called rotee. I pray that you will experience this little piece of heaven on earth one day.
(Banana and chocolate rotee)
My ministry this past week has been monk chat and slum ministry. Honestly I wasn’t very satisfied with the fruit we were seeing. In fact we weren’t seeing any fruit because we aren’t supposed to preach to the people here. We asked the monks surface level questions and it felt like a waste of time. At the slums, the people didn’t know English and the kids ran away from us. It kind of sucked.
Each morning we did a two hour prayer walk and I found myself sitting on the bank of a river that runs through the city. I told God how I was feeling about ministry so far and He showed me something really cool:
I feel like a little rock thrown into a river. The river is so big, how can the rock make any change? But when the rock hits the water it makes huge ripples that spread over a large area. The thing is, the rock never sees the effect it made because it is now below the surface. We, like that rock, don’t even know the difference we’re making.
But then I thought deeper. What’s the point of it all if the ripples just fade away? The answer is two fold. There are the results that are seen quickly- if you make a big enough splash, the wake is felt and feelings can bring change right away. Second is the long term effect that we don’t see. If you throw enough rocks in the water, they will build up from the river bottom to the surface, into something that is seen. Before long, all those little rocks that no one knew were there have made an island and changed the course of the river. Change can happen quickly or take a lifetime. Either way, keep on keeping on.
“But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.”
2 Chronicles 15:7
