This Is Thailand
Things I love about Thailand:
-Thai New Year/ Water Festival – basically a huge water fight throughout the entire country where everyone piles in the backs of trucks with trash cans full of water and drive around throwing it on everyone!
-Waterfalls – in just a week and a half we have already visited 3 waterfalls and gone swimming in all three, mostly because they are close and out Pa is worried we will sweat to death.
-Gulf of Thailand – the water at the beach here is the same as bath water and they have inner tubes to swim with.
-Thai People – the people here are ridiculously friendly. Everyone smiles, but no one stares at us. People are always willing to help us when we don’t understand and no matter where we go we are given fruit and sometimes even ice cream!!
-Ice Cream
-Pa and Mai – Dad and mom. They have adopted us as their own and it’s so funny to see how they worry when a group of fifteen year old boys come and swim next to us. They are protective, loving and passionate. Mom is always trying to get us to eat more and more while she is full and doesn’t want to get big. Dad goes running in his adorable soccer uniform every day and makes jokes with us about things that we hardly understand. We also have a 9 year old brother who is what every 9 year old is: slightly adorable, slightly annoying. But he must really believe we are his sisters because he trusts us and is spoiled by us.
-Ice Cream
-Internet – It works! It’s fast and it works! It’s everywhere! I can post pictures and blogs!! I can skype, I can write a billion e-mails and not worry about it cutting off!
-Hospitals – they may be expensive, but they provide slippers, free internet, a shower, toiletries, TV (fox news to be precise), coffee, and toilet paper! Oh and they give legit IVs, we know this because Kacie spent a few days there.
-Ice Cream
-Jesus – He is here and He is obvious in the nature. The earth here praises the Lord, it’s so lush and beautiful and full of life!
Chanthaburi, Thailand
With all this stuff that I love about Thailand and let me tell you I’m absolutely in LOVE with Thailand, there are a few things that I can NOT stand about Thailand:
Temples, Incense, Shrines, and Idols. They are everywhere here and it reminds me of my time that I spent in the Pacific Rim in 2009. I can feel the heaviness that lies over these people; they live in fear of their so called “gods.” Incense fill the air and it makes me sick to my stomach because I know that demons are being called into these places. I walk around with a heart burdened for these people because they are living in fear, they are living in lies! There are so few Christians here too, out of about 65,000 people in Chanthaburi only 200 are Christians. When we go to church on Sundays we are the only people in our church, it's completely empty.
With a major language barrier, I can't even talk to most people and share the gospel with these people. But I can do one thing and I do it every time I walk by, drive by, see a shrine:
PRAY
So I'm asking you to join me in prayer. Prayer for the people of Thailand. Pray for the lies that rule over this country and for people to be sent here to share the gospel. Pray for the churches to be filled with people seeking and knowing the Lord. Pray for the 1% of Christians here to get BOLD with their family and friends.
"Don't turn away to follow worthless things that can't profit or deliver you; they are worthless."
-1 Samuel 12:21
"He will set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt; he will burn their temples and take their gods captive. As a shepherd picks his garment clean of lice, so he will pick Egypt clean and depart. There in the temple of the sun in Egypt he will demolish the sacred pillars and will burn down the temples of the gods of Egypt.”
-Jeremiah 43:12-13
" Their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak ,
eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk.
They cannot make a sound with their throats.
Those who make them are just like them,
as are all who trsut in them."
-Psalm 115:4-8
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
-Acts 17:24-31
"The idols will vanish completely."
-Isaiah 2:18
Most Photos by: Brianna Danese
Briannadanese.theworldrace.org
