The pastor and his wife showed up with several hundred bibles from The Gideon’s International. We would be handing out bibles, but we weren’t quite sure where. It didn’t really matter, because I would gladly give a Bible to anyone that would take it and possibly read it. For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), it is through the word of God that men are born again (1 Peter 1:22-25, James 1:19-25), and it is through the Scriptures that we can come to an assurance that we truly know Christ (1 John 5:13); so yeah, I am way down with giving people the words of life.
Our intention is to hand the Bibles to soldiers at a local military base, and as we pull right up to the gate we are stopped and flagged over to the right. A couple soldiers, holding completely oversized machine guns, begin walking towards us. “Doesn’t look like we will be giving the bibles out here today,” I think to myself before I see the pastor’s wife jump out of the cab, bibles in hand, and begin handing them to all the soldiers on guard. They won’t allow us in, but they direct us down the road.
Not sure why we put away the camera when they came over.
We then pulled in to what appeared to be another military base. Turns out it is actually a military run camp for children. They call them boy scouts and girl scouts, but it is nothing like what you see back in the States.
Not sure whether this is orientation or indoctrination.
We get out of the truck, and begin handing bibles to all of the uniformed teachers, who greet us kindly, and thank us. We converse in broken Thai, Khmer, and English. Another uniformed gentleman directs us to where the children are, seated in rows, and awaiting orders. We hand out boxes and boxes of Bibles, and are taken to the next group of children, where we hand out more Bibles until we run out.
Boxes and boxes of Bibles.
The instructor doesn’t even seem to notice me here.
A few days later, we would receive another shipment of nearly double the Bibles, and head back to the same camp, where a new group of kids are just arriving for camp. We watch the orientation speeches and the reading of the rules. The kids then pick up their bags and have to run through the mouth of a massive tiger head billboard thing and through a low ceilinged tunnel full of tires. We were waiting on the other side, to hand Bibles to the few hundred campers as they ran past. About fifteen minutes later buses full of new campers pull up and we do the whole thing again.
A new group of campers.
Running away, Bibles in hand.
Before leaving we hand out more Bibles to the staff, and are asked for a picture in front of the tiger’s mouth. We might have handed out over a thousand Bibles. I think to myself, and maybe even say aloud, “I think I could probably do this every day for the rest of my life.”
Rarrrrr…
As we pull away we think about how crazy it is that we were allowed to do what we just did. “If they knew what Jesus taught, they wouldn’t be so eager to have us handing their children Bibles.” One of the camp leaders told us that he has been reading the Bible we gave him, and that it brings him peace.
This guy has to have been the tallest Thai person there is.
Everyone, look at the white people and laugh so they will think we are talking about them!
Although, we weren’t able to preach the Gospel to these children, we trust in the sufficiency of God’s word, and are trusting in Him to do a great work.
Welcome to camp, let me get you a bible.
I had to take a turn running through the tiger’s mouth.
