Lemme just tell ya about our crazy awesome ministry host this month.
His name is Pat, and he is Thai. When he was young growing up in Thailand, he started getting involved in some gang activity and drug use. As he continued to get into trouble, his parents decided to send him out of Thailand to the United States. (As if that could keep someone out of trouble!)
He first lived in California, then moved to none other than Orange Beach, Alabama. He lived in good ole Bama for 15 years!!
When we first met him and he told me he lived in Alabama, my heart was so happy and I immediately knew I’d feel comfortable with Pat and his family. I felt such a connection. He even asked me if I was a Crimson Tide fan. (Don’t worry friends, I told him I was a Troy Trojans fan through and through, and he even knew that Troy beat LSU last weekend!)
Wow God, you are intentional even in the little things that we care about.
6.5 years ago, as he was getting deeper and deeper in the trenches of his sin (he claims he was on his way to kill his wife), a missionary shared Jesus with Him and something shifted. He went home and started reading the Bible, found the Lord, and everything about his life changed. No more drinking, no more drugs, no more crime.
Then, God told him to go to Chiang Mai.
God started giving him a vision for his passions and future ministry prospects. He eventually started a farm in Hang Dong, Chiang Mai, where we are staying this month. The farm is absolutely beautiful! He knew nothing about farming, but God showed him the way! Not only does the farm sustain his family, but his farming supports and feeds the community and villagers nearby. He also allows his home to pose as a sort of halfway house, doing ministry in prisons and allowing troubled youth into his home to be discipled and taught how to live off the land. He’s passionate about teaching others to use the land, and loves knowing that he is sending people out to do even better jobs than him. In addition, one of his passions is finding people jobs. He has a coffee shop upstairs in his home where he has a full espresso machine that he uses to train people to become baristas. He’s respected and well-known in the community, and has even received a reward from the Princess of Thailand! He is a full-blown evangelist and keeps things simple; sticking to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament. His personality actually reminds me a little bit of the mannerisms of Jesus.
He shares his wisdom with us and we have all realized that when he speaks, we need to listen. He is helping us realize the simplicity of the Gospel and he presses into the fact that you don’t need a seminary degree, ministry training, Bible school, or anything special to be a servant of the Lord. God has used a simple guy with no special training to be a huge impact on his community. A big saying of his is “one life at a time”, and that’s how he serves people each day. He cares about multiplication but has no interest in being part of organizations or sending out newsletters or keeping track of numbers. He just lives the way God commands for us to live. As someone who has been involved in organizations that harp way too much on the numbers and theological knowledge, this is refreshing and humbling for me.
I asked him what he thought of churches in Alabama. He laughed and said, “they don’t like people like me in church. They would say things like, ‘why are you here, you need to leave'”.
Isn’t that so infuriating?! The Western church needs to wake up. The Church is supposed to look like every tribe, tongue, and nation, and instead we give funny looks to people who show up and look a little different from us. We argue over theology, we are too afraid to raise our hands during worship, and we complain about the music being too loud and the lights being too dim. It’s simple. The Gospel is simple. We NEED more simplicity. Less theology, more Holy Spirit. The idea of the church is simple and God made it easy for us to understand, but we overcomplicate it. God loves seeing diversity in the church, and we should love it too.
If you’re reading this, take some time to read through the Gospel of Luke and the way Jesus spoke to us. Did he say “being a Christian is a very complicated process that requires years of training”?
No. He said, pick up your cross and follow me. He sets the perfect model for evangelism and discipleship. He commanded us to preach the Gospel to every tribe, tongue, and nation. It’s that simple. It’s not about if you feel “called” into it. Everyone is called! Does your life reflect this commandment? What are you doing to be obedient to the Simple Gospel?
Here is Pat and his baby girl, watching the Alabama vs Texas A&M game 🙂
Our home! We’ve been working away like natural-born farm girls.
