As a country, Thailand is as Buddhist as it gets. The saying is, “to be Thai is to be buddhist”, and that is how the Thai people are born and raised to identify. Last month my team was stationed in Nong Khai, a vastly spread city nestled right along the Loas border. Statistically, the population is only about 0.1-0.25% Christian, and Christian churches are about 1 per 50,000 people. On a good day, it is a challenging place to be a Christian or an evangelising missionary.
When we arrived at our ministry homestay, our American host, Bob, gave us a rundown on the state of the Christian church in Nong Khai and explained to us his vision for our time together. We would spend the first week doing prayer lead day trips to the least reached districts of Nong Khai. Our agenda was to reach out to the local churches, evangelize in the communities and pray over the land and important spheres of social influence. With a sheet of stats in hand, we prayed together and set out for district 14, the number which had been mutually placed on our hearts during prayer. The district was listed as having one church.
After an hour’s drive we reached our destination and began speaking to locals via our two Philippino translators. People were generally friendly towards us, but not particularly interested in hearing about Jesus. We prayed around the police station, around a school and around a park. We prayed for direction on our little spiritual treasure hunt and then began asking people if they knew of the local Christian church. Our hope was that someone would be able to give us directions on how to find the one church listed on our stats sheet. Some people had never heard of such a church, some claimed to know of it and gave us directions. After following about 6 sets of directions and having all of them amount to nothing, Bob explained a cultural norm to us. In the Thai culture, if somebody asks you a question to which you do not know the answer, you just make up an answer that you think will please them, rather than saying “I don’t know”. This practice was not working for our benefit.
We were just about ready to give up on our church hunt when we pulled the car into one last driveway. Out of the home came 2 older/middle aged Thai women and a young girl. Eden, our translator, asked the women if they knew where we could find the local Christian church. One of the women replied, “There is no church. I am the church.” Intrigued that such an unusual group of foreigners had shown up on her property, the woman quickly invited us to come sit down. She set floor mats out for us and brought us some water to drink. After introducing ourselves and explaining what we were doing, the woman began to tell us her story. She had become a Christian years ago when one day, after a long day working in the rice fields, she put her hand into her pocket to find that her cell phone and all of her money was missing. Losing such a valuable possession and all of her cash would be a devastating blow to a woman in her financial state. She searched for hours, scouring the 4 rice fields that she had covered that day, but she found nothing. So, in her desperation, she did something that only drastic circumstances would warrant. She prayed to God that He would lead her to find the phone and money. Just moments after saying the prayer she found the phone and money withing 50 feet of where she was standing. In that moment, she knew that there was a God who was listening and who cared about her. This was something that she had never experienced in all her years of devotion to buddha.
She went on to tell us of how God had been so good to her over the years and of how she experienced God’s love for her. She also explained that there had been a church years ago and that her brother had been the pastor. He unfortunately had walked away from the church and left Thailand a few years prior. After he left, the church had kind of just dissolved and dispersed. To her knowledge, she was now the only Christian left in the area.
As she told us her stories and explained to us about the church, tears rolled down her face. In fact, of the hour or so that we spent at her house, I’d say she was in tears about half the time. When we asked why she was crying, her reply was beautiful. She told us she was crying because she was overwhelmed at God’s faithfulness and love for her. Here was a woman with no Christian community to speak of, living in a country where it is a shameful act to leave Buddhism and profess any other religion. Over the years this woman had suffered loneliness, scorn and ridicule as she willfully hung on the outskirts of society, clinging to her faith in Jesus Christ. And yet, on that day, God had delivered 5 Americans, 2 Phillipinos, 1 Canadian and 1 British believer right to her front doorstep.
We talked with her and listened to more of her story. She told us that she had prayed for medicine for her high blood pressure and that God had sent us to bring her healing, and so we prayed healing over her. We brought out a guitar and sang some worship songs with her. As Eden sang, “How Great is Our God”, the woman was again brought to tears and told us of how the Lord had asked her to sing that song just a few hours earlier. We shared encouraging words and bible verses with the woman. We prayed blessings over her, her home and her family. We were even able to share the gospel with her younger sister who was at the house with her that day. The sister told us that she believed in Jesus but had chosen not to follow Him due to the social implications. You could see the gratitude on the older woman’s face as we talked with, challenged and encouraged her sister. We even got to leave the sister’s little grand daughter with a teddy bear and some children’s books. Altogether, it was a pretty special encounter for us all.
That day got me thinking about something, which I have continued to think about for the past 5 weeks, and that is God’s amazing faithfulness. It was not by chance or coincidence that we landed on the doorstep of the 1 lone Christian during our single day visit to district 14. That woman was literally the 1 church per 50,000 people. And there was nobody else in the church to support or encourage her. Yet she stayed faithful to the God whom she had chosen to give her heart to. In return, our loving Father has never left of forsaken her, and He never forgot about her. We prayed that morning for direction and we chose to faithfully follow the direction in which we were lead, even though it may have seemed pointless and discouraging at times. In the end, God used our faithfulness to show His faithfulness to one amazingly faithful woman in a small area of Nong Khai, Thailand. Awesome.
What an adventure it is to serve such an amazing, loving, and faithful God.
This is only one story from one day in Thailand. I wish I could share everything with you awesome people who are interested enough to read right through to the end of this blog, but alas, I cannot. I will say it’s been quite the adventure thus far. I am on a great team of strong funny and adventurous women. We have been doing all sorts of ministry from teaching english, taking school kids on field trips, digging trenches, cleaning up and making improvements on ministry properties, evangelizing to people all over the planet, and pushing hard into prayer intercession and spiritual warfare for the countries and people that we are coming to know and love. I have learned more in the past 7 months about my self, my God and this planet than I ever imagined I would. I have also learned to love myself, my God and other people better than I ever knew was possible. I am so grateful for this opportunity and can’t thank you enough for supporting me in your thoughts and prayers. So much love to all of you! Keep an eye out for my month 7 vlog, coming soon!
Cheers, God bless, and thanks for reading!
(L-R) Eden, our other translator, younger sister and her granddaughter, Sherry, older woman, me, Laura, Shayla and Jill 🙂
