I feel like so many of our God encounters happen on the truck taxis. I love that on our way to our actual “ministry” God uses us to minister to someone or just to have a conversation that He will use in ways we will never know. Our thanksgiving miracle came from one of these non-coincidental, God orientated moments. I am definitely learning to not try and hide or skirt around the true reason we are here when we are asked while we are in a country where it is not dangerous to be open about it. The conversation I had tonight (it’s Thursday as I’m typing this) with a German man, we will call him Jeff (partly to protect his identity, and partly because I am not 100% positive how to spell his real name), about what we are doing in Pattaya resulted in the miracle we had been praying for. After we asked where we were from, the conversation lead into me telling him all about our trip to 11 countries for 11 months telling people about Jesus. I didn’t know anything about why this man was in Pattaya but I found myself telling him about us going into the bars to talk to the prostitutes and try and build relationships with them. and I somehow kept my cool and continued smoothly with the conversation when he replied, “oh like him!” in reference to the man he was with when I said we worked with the prostitutes. I did find out in the conversation that he was Catholic, but no longer practicing. He wanted to know if we were being paid to do this, and when I told him that we had to raise all of our support to be here and had a very limited budget to live on each day, he wanted to know if he could take us to dinner. well, we were on our way to bar to meet the rest of our group to do our outreach, and we figured it might be a tad sketch to go with him to dinner, so we had to politely decline. He did not stop at that, however, and insisted on giving us money for our dinner. Well we are not ones to decline money for food these days, so we gratefully accepted. He ended up giving us what translates into roughly $100 US dollars, and as he handed me the money, I realized he was the answer to our prayers as we had been praying for some kind of miracle to allow us to have a Thanksgiving meal of something other than the chicken and rice that our 30 baht ($1) a meal allows us to have. I was nearly brought to tears as I thought about the blessing he had just been to our lives, and about the mexican feast we had been craving and were about to have on Thanksgiving. He told me he hoped this might have tipped the scales a little in his favor, and I replied that I would be praying for Him and you never know what God will do. Sometimes He likes to show off a little for us and remind us that our faith in the small things, like provision for a thanksgiving meal, does not go unnoticed or unprovided for. So I will be praying for Jeff, the German man who has a wife in Korea, a homosexual partner in Pattaya, and used to be Catholic. I am praying he was impacted in some way by our conversation and what we are doing. and I am thankful that my wonderful boyfriend is half German which allowed this whole conversation to begin.
i embraced my inner Pocahantas/princess warrior in celebration of thanksgiving.
burrito thanksgiving feast. it was a thanksgiving ill never forget.
