It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Thailand for almost a month now! It’s hard to believe it’s already getting hard. No, not like the initial “I’m homesick” hard or the “I miss my air conditioning and peanut butter” hard, there are challenges here that I’ve managed to avoid during my 18 years in the U.S.
Here, God is really taking my team out of our comfort zones. It’s hard to not run into conflict once and a while with one another and it’s even harder trying to confront one another about it–we call this feedback. And as hard as it is to give it, it can be just as hard to take it. That’s right, your pride gets shattered, but in the best way possible–I call that growth. Ironically, we are becoming less and less in that growth. John 3:30, anyone? He>Me.
Watching our incredible host family lose a precious amount of their crops as the River Kwai swelled and flooded during this rainy season was hard and I’m sure it was completely beyond any of our comprehension just how much that rocked their world. My heart aches for them.
Going out into the market for ministry to hand out pamphlets about Jesus and overcome a language barrier is hard. Knowing that “to be Thai is to be Buddhist” is a daunting obstacle when you want to share the Good News with everyone and by doing so, you’re asking them to abandon their comfort and everything they have ever known. Often times, if they decide to accept Christ, you’re even asking them to abandon their families as well.
In my attempts to write this blog, I realize how hard it can be to be a missionary when you desperately want to share every experience with friends and family at home. Learning and seeing what I do on a daily basis, I want to impart it all onto others and yet I have to realize that most people, even after seeing a thousand pictures, reading all of my blogs, and hearing every story I have to tell, will never quite understand what’s happening here. No mass of words or visuals could ever really compare to the real thing.
Along with countless other difficult things that we face each day, whether they’re illnesses or sticking it out during the manual labor–farming ain’t easy, friends–or even just forcing ourselves to smile when we don’t want to, it’s easy to become consumed in the hardships but that’s where a big twist comes in.
A small piece of our ministry here in Kanchanaburi is to lead English worship, give our testimonies and preach for local churches and small groups. Wouldn’t you know it, through my weaknesses, God is moving and working. He has been laying the word “perservere” on my heart for a couple days now not only for me to apply to my own life, but also to base my own sermon on. Putting it into motion each day isn’t something I’m necessarily excited to do. Thankfully though, He has blessed me with a crazy hunger to embrace the changes that He wants to see in me and He has made it evident that there will be plenty of them. Hard, but fruitful. Now as far as putting this sermon together goes,I haven’t got a clue where the Lord is leading me just yet, but I can’t wait to find out.
Perservering through the rough times doesn’t entail that you have to be smiling from ear to ear for every single second of it all. In fact, it doesn’t mean you have to smile at all or even try to pretend that everything is just dandy. It means that you need to keep pushing forward and not give up, it means finding contentment in the place that you are without becoming complacent. It means trusting in the Lord with all that you have whether you have everything or nothing. It means that no matter the situation, you walk through it with confidence knowing that the One who can part the sea and move mountains and make dead men walk is with you and loves you and wants nothing more than to take care of you.
Every storm passes, it’s what you learn from it in the end that counts.
