First Fruits
After several days of meeting new high school students every day and worshiping with different church groups a few times, we finally got to spend a few days seeing the same. We worked with the English club from the university on Wednesday and Thursday, and then spent all day Friday hanging out with them at Sun’s family’s pineapple farm. We made fast friends with all of them, teaching each other English and Thai, playing volleyball and eating together. By Thursday we were already playing games where we made animal noises, danced funny, and sang silly songs. Throughout both days we learned about each other’s families, what movies and music we liked, hobbies, and even who our heroes are. In short, we became friends, and it was an immense joy to spend all day Friday together in the beautiful mountains on the Burmese border at Sun’s pineapple farm, followed by swimming and hot springs. We threw in a dance party and some karaoke for good measure, and got to help make papaya salad, which takes an awful lot of work but seems to be the dish of choice for most Thai people (and many of us as well). It was one of the best days I’ve ever had, made all the better by the company we spent it in.
As we got to know our new friends, God provided many opportunities to share testimonies about God’s work in our lives and answer questions about who God is, what He means to us, and why we’re doing what we’re doing. It was immensely encouraging that they were not only unopposed to hearing about God, but they were genuinely curious about how this relationship with God worked for us and why we would leave our homes for a whole year. So often at home as soon as people get the sense that you want to talk about God, they shut down and don’t want to hear it. I was very thankful that these students, in only a short time, felt they knew us well enough to trust that we might not be completely nuts, that maybe there could be something worth hearing.
As would be expected it was not easy to say goodbye, especially when we felt God starting to do something in their lives. They are each amazing people that I felt blessed to spend time with, and I hope to stay in contact with several of them. In addition to the love I have for them as people, they also have a special place in my memory as they are, in many senses, the first fruits of my ministry on this trip. The looks on their faces as they tried to grasp what we were telling them about what God means to us showed me an inner hunger for more, and that is a huge encouragement to me – just the fact that they might be more open to what God wants to do in each of their lives. I’m thankful I got to be a part of that, and pray that God would continue to step into the lives of my new friends.
