After a 10 hour bus ride and a 14 hour train ride, B squad has made it to Chang Mai, Thailand!
My team, Empower Rangers, have been placed in the city at the Adventures in Missions base; a hostel called Zion. A team that works for AIM, lives here long term to run the hostel. Its a great place to meet people passing through Thailand as well as giving us a chance to invest in the local women they have employed to work in the coffee shop on the main floor.
Ministry looks a little different this month. Its very relaxed but kind of difficult because we have to come up with our own things to do. This is called ATL; Ask The Lord. A lot of our time is spent in prayer, asking the Lord what He wants us to do, where we should go, what we should look for. We ask Him to place people in our path with open hearts, ready to hear the gospel. We do prayer walks around the city, always asking God where we should go, left or right, this coffee shop or that massage parlor? We ask for opportunities to open up for us, anything really, where we can spread some love and shine some light.
Yesterday we had the chance to go to a monk chat. A monk chat is a time specifically open to asking monks questions and time for them to practice speaking English. We spent about an hour talking to a 27 year old man that has been a monk since the age of 14. He told us he became a monk because Thai culture believes that if one person is a monk or a nun in the family, the whole family will go to heaven. His parents chose him. If he breaks any of the rules, he can not go back to being a monk. Now that’s a lot of pressure! There are over 200 rules they have to follow, everything from not sleeping on a bed, to the obvious ones like thievery or murder. His biggest desire is to teach people about Buddhism. It was hard to open a conversation about Christ because many questions he did not understand. It’s also intimidating being a foreigner in a country and challenging someones beliefs on probably the only thing they’ve ever known and something you have almost 0 knowledge on. And how do you bring up Jesus, when you’re not really suppose to, because it might disrespect him? To share the gospel with a monk is asking him to let his whole family down, to turn away from everything he knows as true. It would be a big risk with the chance of losing family, because it takes away their chance to get into heaven.
Before I talked to a monk, I viewed them as something holy, because that’s what they are suppose to be. I wondered if they ever laughed, if they knew about the outside world, if I was aloud to even talk to them. Turns out, monks are normal men that make jokes and have Iphones and social media and love watching TV. They are extremely educated and they work hard for what they believe in. They have familys that they love, and they sacrifice a lot to lead this lifestyle.
Buddhism is an interesting religion and I wish I knew more about it so that I could understand this culture better. But the little I do know, makes me really sad. The monks spend their lives giving their all to something that doesn’t even exist. There is so much false hope. The better they are, the better their next life will be. If you’re a normal person, giving food and money to the monks and the idols is how you earn good karma and a better second life.
It breaks my heart that there is such a better way of life but I’m not sure how to tell them; where you only have to have faith, and you will receive more love then you could imagine. A life where you don’t have to earn your way to heaven because you only need to confess with your mouth that you are a sinner and believe in your heart that God is the Lord of Lords. A life where you can have a relationship, a friendship, with the God that created and sacrificed everything for YOU.
Please pray for my team and I, that we can clearly hear the voice of the Lord this month, opportunities to share His love would be abundant, and that we would have the knowledge on how to do so!
Xoxo from Thailand
