As mentioned a while back, Chrislyn and I spent the first couple of weeks in Thailand apart. She was with a group of women in Bangkok (the setting of her encounter with God in the red light district) and I was with all of the men of our squad in Mae Sot, a city on the Myanmar border. Rather than share about my experience there, I want to share about how God directed our steps during the latter part of the month.
For the last two weeks of our time in Thailand, Chrislyn and I as well as the two other married couples in our squad were assigned to “Unsung Heroes” duty. What this entails is researching, networking, and praying our way to new ministry contacts around the country. Our goal was to encourage all of God’s workers that we came into contact with as well as to seek out new ministries with whom our organization can partner in the future. This assignment is vastly different from what we do most months, working in ministry alongside an established contact in a predetermined city or town.
While still apart, the husbands and wives both decided it would be prudent to pray and ask God where in Thailand he might have us go. Rather than ask God, pause for a second, and then go about our day (as many of us are prone to do), we asked God and then we waited and listened. In our separate locations, hundreds of miles apart, both the husbands and wives spent an hour or two, listening and sharing with each other what it is we felt God was speaking to us. With little to no knowledge of the geography of Thailand, we prayed with a map before us.
We husbands felt a strong assurance that he was calling us to go the more rural northeastern region of Thailand after we each sensed God drawing our attention to three separate, but very close and aligned cities – Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, and Nong Khai. In addition to this guidance, one of the men saw a vision of a path leading to railroad tracks. Our wives, having no knowledge of what God had spoken to their husbands, prayed the same prayer and waited for God to speak. It turns out, that in their involvement in ministry in the red light district during the weeks prior, God was already turning their hearts to the northeastern region of Thailand, the place from which the majority of girls who end up in prostitution come from. In addition, two of the wives heard God calling them to Khon Kaen and Nong Khai. To be more specific, Chrislyn felt God leading us to Khon Kaen, the exact same city that I felt God was directing me to in my time of prayer!
When we finally came together to discuss what God had spoken, we were blown away at the clarity and unity of God’s call on our group. It was settled then, we wanted to act in obedience follow God’s voice so we planned to catch a bus that Thursday. Keep in mind, however, that at this point, we still had neither a contact nor a place to stay up in this region. The only possible lead we had was the name of a person who had previously served at a children’s home up in that region. Through a bit of research, we stumbled across House of Mercy Foundation in Khon Kaen. I called the name I found on the website, Rob Dunk. A kindly, older gentleman with an Australian accent answered the phone. I’ll admit that I was probably a bit awkward as I tried to explain how I came across his name and why exactly I was calling. Rob, hearing God’s voice as well, invited us to come on up, as we later found out that he too sensed that God had ordained this meeting. A wise man, he not only sought God’s voice, but his wife’s as well, before blessing us with an invitation to stay with them for a few days. This all happened on Thursday morning, the very day we were to catch our bus.
We took the night bus and arrived in Khon Kaen at 5:30am on Friday morning. So convinced was he of our need to meet, Rob even came to pick us up from the bus station at the crack of dawn. We arrived at the Ban Meata Children’s Home and were offered breakfast before we sat down with Rob and his lovely wife Jean. Rob was actually leaving town that day, but had cleared his morning so that we could meet with him before he left. So he shared the amazing story of how God had called them to start this ministry years ago and how He had continued to provide for it ever since.
Before he left, Rob gave us the name of another missionary couple there in town and actually arranged for us to meet with them just hours later. From that contact we gained many more, each person we met, introducing us to many more. And in that way, we went from Khon Kaen to Udon Thani to Nong Khai, meeting God’s people all along the way. We were amazed at how God guided our steps, ordaining encounter after encounter, with many ministries confessing they had been praying for more workers and saw our meeting as an answer to prayer.
Oh by the way, it was that second couple that we met in Khon Kaen that had a community ministry in the slums of Khon Kaen. They took us there to see the work. As we walked down a narrow pathway through the shanty houses, we eventually came to a set of railway tracks. With conviction in his voice, my friend exclaimed, “This is it.” It was the exact place he had seen in a vision while we were praying just the week before. As if we were still needing confirmation, God left no room for doubt. He speaks. We need only listen.
