Well my time in Thailand felt like a blink. This time last week I was running around the mountainous jungle villages slaying scorpions, and now here I sit in Cambodia at a Siem Reap guest house, pool side, sipping a cold pressed organic juice. Two totally different worlds.
If I am being completely honest I have been trying for the last week to write a blog about my time spent in Thailand. I’ll write a little something about how eye-opening and life changing it was to work with Pastor John and his ministry, but then when I re-read the words they seem lifeless compared to what I really experienced. So I’ll just click the red x on the top left, and when it asks me if I want to save the changes I made to Document1, I’ll quickly click the “Don’t Save” button and carry on with my day.
Working for Pastor John was something that cannot easily be put into words.
I mean this man has a heart of pure gold. His spirit completely radiates the love of Jesus like nothing I have ever seen. At the age of 39 he could pass off as 25. He said the trick to never aging is never worrying. He told us that one day God told him not to worry so since then he just simply doesn’t worry. Easy as that, no problem.
A couple of days ago, our team reunited with the rest of the squad as we traveled together to Cambodia. We were so eager to share about our love for Pastor John and his wife with anyone who wanted to listen. We quickly realized that the only way to love Pastor John and his wife as much as we did was to experience it first hand. Everyone could nod and smile and ooh and ahh at our stories all they wanted but without first hand experience, they could only appreciate a fraction of what we felt.
Nobody knew what it felt like to be invited in as part of this Thai family. To be proudly known throughout the village as the 6 foreigners who belonged to Pastor John and his wife.
We were the only ones who carried the weight of being frequently reminded that we were an answered prayer, as Pastor John had been praying for many years to have a mission team sent to his village and we happened to be the first.
Or what we felt as we watched the woman with tears streaming down her face walk for the first time in 4 years, as Pastor John sat beside us not looking one bit surprised.
Or what we felt as the other 10 or so people we prayed for throughout the month also experienced healing.
It was hard to explain how mouth wateringly glorious the banana roti was that you could get from the street vendor down the road from the school. Or how Pastor John had a knack of knowing exactly when we would be craving it and would pop over to our little home on his motorcycle just to surprise us with 6 banana roti’s.
Nobody could really comprehend the immense love that this couple had for the village children. Pastor John and his wife unfortunately may never be able to have children of their own, so they did not hesitate to take in 3 children who needed a home, and sponsor 10 other children with scholarships to go to school.
On top of leading a church, sharing the gospel in surrounding unreached villages, visiting believers every night who were unable to get to the church, having a family of his own, planting churches in remote villages, and disciplining existing members of the church, Pastor John decided to start a foundation so that no child in the region would miss out on the opportunity to receive scholarships for schooling.
Oh and if that isn’t enough he also informed us on our last week that the day after we left he was headed to Bangkok to present the dissertation he had been preparing to his Bible College.
Not to mention he plays instruments, repairs guitars, sings, cuts hair, used to be a barista, makes a 5-star mocha frappe, knows how to re-wire the electricity to create the most beautiful outdoor dinner party, planted a garden in his backyard of about 2 acres of exotic fruits, and of course he casually used to own a gourmet Thai restaurant allowing him to make the best Khao Soi you could ever dream of.
While PJ might be one of the most gifted people I have ever met, it is the way he uses these gifts that is the most beautiful.
Selfless is an understatement. PJ and his wife serve others without question, without wondering where the finances will come from, they just simply give joyfully all they have.
Nobody else had the honor of seeing the way PJ’s eyes lit up as he proudly showed us the bag of gifts he had slowly been purchasing for the past year to give to every student at one of the poorest village schools.
We were the lucky ones that got to laugh alongside of PJ as his English learned from YouTube didn’t always translate properly.
And we were also the lucky ones who were able to watch PJ’s biggest prayer be answered as he found a pastor to take over a village church plant he had been praying about for years.
One day I was completely moved to tears listening to him talk about his dreams for bringing the gospel to the surrounding unreached people groups. It wasn’t so much the words he was saying, but the way his heart feels so deeply for others.
Since he was 15 years old he has woken up at 4am every morning to pray for 2 hours. He says it’s nothing he chose for himself, but rather that the Lord chooses to wake him up every day at that time.
While we were there to serve PJ and his ministry, he continued to overwhelm us with the way he so graciously hosted us.
The last Friday night in Thoen we decided to surprise PJ and his wife with a thank you dinner. My heart broke as PJ teared up telling us that while he is always making dinners for others, this was the first time anyone had ever made a special dinner specifically for him and his wife.
And then this sweet man decided to out surprise our surprise. He had quietly been taking note of the shoes we would wear each day, and when we weren’t noticing he traced each one of our shoes on a piece of cardboard. He then proceeded to visit a shoe store with the cardboard pieces and buy each of us a new pair of the local Thai shoes that fit our feet perfectly.
Whenever I think of the beautiful country of Thailand with all of it’s green jungles and waterfalls, rolling mountains and turquoise beaches, I think first about how much of a gift it was to become family with these people whose spirits radiated more love, joy and selflessness than I can even put in words.
As I was thinking about my inability to express what it is like to know PJ and his wife I couldn’t help but think about what it is like to have a relationship with Jesus.
I mean we can listen to nice stories, and tell nice stories, but what fun is that. Jesus gives us a free invitation to move from the sidelines to really participating, really experiencing love and joy to the depths we were created for. And unless we start participating, we are honestly only getting a tiny piece of understanding.
I don’t know about you but I refuse to go through life just telling other people’s stories about the crazy things the creator of this universe is doing.
I want to know the whole story by experiencing it myself.
And even more that that, I want to be a part of the story.
