Drew in Missions

Sorry for the low quality, but something was messing up in my iMovie application, and I wanted to get this done while I still had the time. The first song is by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and the second is by Sister Hazel. Hope you enjoy!

Today I started reading a book that I tried to read back in the day, but it was too much for me. Now that I’ve got a little more maturity and discipline, and faithful readers to share with, I’m going to try it again.

The book is just called “Prayer.” It was penned by Richard Foster, author of several great books on Christianity, most notably “Celebration of Discipline.” If you want to follow along, it’s well worth the price to buy it, and I feel like the knowledge within its pages can help believers in any stage of life. My hope in sharing my thoughts and feelings from the book is not only to let you see what’s going on with me, but also to give y’all a chance to learn and grow with me. Comments are always welcome, but especially so as I delve into a subject that is way over my head.

I won’t be reading it front to back, instead I’ll be reading whichever chapter I feel God leading me towards. Today, that chapter was Intercessory Prayer.

The chapter starts out with the following words: “If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others.” Foster goes on to outline how as priests in the faith of God, we are not only given the chance to intercede between God and others, but it’s our duty, our job.

It’s really a call to pray unselfishly. Intercessory Prayer is all about spending your time and energy investing in someone else, knowing that by praying for them you can make a difference. When you start to do this, putting others above yourself in your prayer life, it seems like it becomes easier to put others ahead of yourself in the physical realm. Once your heart and spirit are in the habit of serving others needs, your body follows suit.

Foster gives an illustration from the Bible. In the Old Testament, two battles were fought simultaneously. The physical battle was waged by Joshua and an army of Israelites. The spiritual battle was fought by Moses, Aaron, and Hur on a hill overlooking the fight. While Moses lifted his arms in prayer for his people, they were winning, but when his arms tired and fell, their side began to lose ground. Aaron and Hur eventually had to help hold Moses’ arms up until evening, when both battles concluded victoriously.

This is a great example of Intercessory Prayer (henceforth I.P.) at work, because it shows all four participants in the cycle. Joshua and the army are the prayed for. They’re out on the front lines, in danger, needing help from above. Moses is the Intercessor, who puts his heart and body into praying for those he is called to lift up. Aaron and Hur are right next to Moses, ready to encourage and help him in any way they can. They stick by his side until the task is completed. And God is the most important player. He gives the victory to Joshua, he puts the will to pray in Moses, and encourages through Aaron and Hur.

As far as I.P. goes, I don’t think we need to worry about God holding up his end of things. He’s more than able, so I’m more worried about the human aspects of these prayers.

First off is the Joshuas, who are out in the middle of the fray. Sometimes those we need to pray for don’t recognize that they’re in the middle of a spiritual war. They don’t see that they’re fighting for their lives. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference. In times like those, I think a good place to start is to pray that God opens their eyes to their surroundings.

Next are the Moseses, who are greatly invested in the outcome of the battle they are watching. Maybe it’s a family member who hasn’t put their trust in Christ or a brother or sister who is fighting against a stubborn sin in their life, but I feel like we all know someone in the middle of a spiritual onslaught. When we care enough about them, and we realize we can’t do anything to help on our own, we are drawn to petition God on their behalf. It’s natural to ask for help for them, letting our concern give birth to prayers and supplication.

Last are the Aarons, the men and women who encourage the Moseses as they lift up others. As a Moses pours himself out, he needs an Aaron, maybe several, to encourage him and fill him back up. Giving one’s all in prayer for another is an arduous and tiring task, and is something very difficult to succeed in on your own. You need people around you to lift you up in the moments when you would give up and lose heart.

Foster then writes about the Interceder, the one who spends day and night going between us and God. Jesus is indeed our greatest Interceder, and without Him we would not be able to entreat God on our own or anyone else’s behalf.

He then get a little side-tracked, but in a good way, about praying in the name of Jesus. He argues that praying in the name of Jesus is a lot more than tacking on a tag line at the end of every prayer we say. It’s about praying by the authority given to us through Jesus Christ. He and He alone has granted us the chance to pray directly to God, and we can do so by praying in His name. But this also means that when we pray in the name of Jesus, we should pray in the mindset of Jesus. We shouldn’t be praying selfishly, asking only for that which would benefit ourselves, or even our loved ones. Jesus commanded us to pray for those who persecute us, then acted it out on the cross when He asked for forgiveness for the very ones who nailed Him there. Praying in Jesus’ name means praying with both the authority granted by Christ and from the mindset Christ instills in us.

As Foster goes into how long I.P. might take, he gives the definition of supplication. It means to ask in earnestness, with intensity, and with persistence. Supplication declares to God that this isn’t some passing fancy we’re praying for today, but will have forgotten by tomorrow. In supplication, we entreat God over and over, letting the overflow of our heart drench the altar of prayer. In doing this, we not only show God how much this means to us, but we see for ourselves just how important our prayer is to ourselves.

But I.P. isn’t just an individual activity, or one for just a few people. Whole congregations can come together to petition the Father. Biblically, the body came together to pray for Peter while he was in prison, and were so into their supplication that they ignored him knocking at the door. When an entire group of believers comes together to Intercede for others, powerful things can happen. Foster records a few Intercessory success stories in this chapter, before moving on.

As he closes, he hits a few more notes about prayer for others, one that really struck a chord with me. He urges us not to feel bad if you don’t pray for everyone in the world who needs prayers. This seems like an obvious thing, but there have been many times when I’ve felt guilty about not praying for needs that I know of in the world, but just don’t stick with me much. For example, I’ve heard Australia is a very atheistic country. I could pray that Australia is lit on fire for God, but that’s not where my heart is. My heart lingers on the inner cities and on Thailand, on Aggie HYPE and Camp of the Hills, the ministries of Central and A&M Church.

Foster encourages us to realize that we are human. We cannot possibly pray for every person who needs to be lifted up, or even every ministry we know of. He suggests that we pray hard about what God puts on our hearts, look to His example through Jesus, and just do our best. His grace will cover the rest.

Looking back over this post, I realize that these aren’t going to be very frequent posts. As you might have noticed, it’s a lot of deep stuff, and requires time to sort out, then even more time to write coherently. That being said, I feel like this is going to add a much deeper dimension to my blog. Instead of a constant stream of stories, pictures, and videos, this will possibly fuel thought and discussion.

I started this post over 24 hours ago, so I’m quite happy to be clicking the Publish button. Until I click it again, blessings!

Wow, what a week it’s been! I’ve climbed a waterfall, taught tons of English, kicked butt in Thai class, sang with The Birthday Suits, played soccer, and memorized scripture. I guess I’d better start typing!

We visited an absolutely gorgeous waterfall last week. There was some mineral in the water that caused anything that it touched for long to harden, so everything from the ground it was flowing over to roots and leaves caught it its path ended up rock-like. This meant beautiful, scenic falls, and lots of photos. The lush jungle backdrop was amazing, too. Green trees, exotic flowers, and huge creeping vines surrounded us.

Speaking of vines, John and I found some that went crazy high, but were bunched together. I said to him, “You thinking what I’m thinking?” And with that, we both began to climb. When I reached the highest point I could reach without seriously endangering myself, I was a good twenty-five feet in the air. It was an amazing experience, and I hope to share it with you through pictures in a slide-show later today.

English teaching has been going quite well. Not only have we been teaching at the Christian Zone, but we’ve been presented with opportunities to go elsewhere as well. For example, Saturday we got to go visit the judges in Lampan. They’re the ones who took us out for a day to learn to use English in conversation a little better. We spent the morning and early afternoon giving them several very practical lessons.

One was on how vowels sounded when coupled. like the difference between the a in cat versus the ai in train. Another lesson focused on teaching the linguistics of saying th instead of t, and distinguishing the r sound from the l. While they seem like easy things, they’re very tough for Thais, but I feel like we were able to help them out a lot. We also worked on conjugating verbs into the correct tenses, past, present, and future.

We ate lunch as a group, and I sat with three Thais. I did my best to use the words I knew in Thai, and they were quite impressed. They taught me a little more, and I think it really helped our relationship that they saw me trying to communicate in their way as they were trying to communicate in mine. Learning Thai is certainly a useful ministry tool.

My job was to facilitate some games in between the lessons, to make the day more fun, and less like going to school on a Saturday. The simple game of telephone became very complicated when playing with mainly Thais, but that made it all the more fun, and several other English oriented games helped break up the monotony of learning ridiculous English rules.

When compared to other languages, I feel sort of sheepish explaining to people the rules of English. I find myself often uttering the sentence, “I know it doesn’t make any sense, just go with it.” It must be frustrating for non-English speakers to try to learn this language that is so full of inconsistencies, and then come to America where it seems like people look down on you if you speak slightly broken English. This experience makes me want to go out of my way to encourage people who are having a hard time with the language, and hopefully you’ll do the same. Let’s face it, English makes little to no sense sometimes.

Thai class is going much better nowadays. I spend about an hour before each class scarfing two plates of Pad Thai and looking over homework and vocabulary, and it really seems to be paying off. I’m enjoying it much more than when I studied Spanish, and I think that’s because Thai is all around me, and each word I learn is another chance to connect with the people I’m here for.

Last night John and I got another chance to sing with The Birthday Suits. They’re getting really good, and their repertoire of songs is growing. Unfortunately, w didn’t know the songs too well, so we had to sorta learn as we went, but we rocked out on the one we knew well. My personal favorite of ours is a alternative rock version of Rihanna’s Umbrella. It was a big hit among our campers at CotH last summer, and each time I sing the chorus, it reminds me of certain kids.

Yesterday was also our big game against another squad in football. I played goalie for the entire game, 75 minutes. In that time, our team made a lot of great plays, including some great defensive stands against an aggressive onslaught and a couple of beautiful plays on the other side of the field, netting us three goals. Our stifling defense didn’t allow much to get to me, but I saved just about everything that got to me. Only one goal was scored on us, and this was on the big field. Regulation size, this field was roughly the size of an American football field. We had about eleven on each team, and our team had three or four subs, so our guys who were running a lot got some rest every once and a while. The guys all were happy with my performance, even Bon, who’s probably the most competitive guy on our team. I was happy to have done my team proud.

Lastly, yesterday after church, John, Julie, and I got the opportunity to recite the verses we’d been memorizing. We We had learned the first eighteen verses of John, which we all feel really good about. We got a video of it, and once I know which blog it will be posted on, I’ll let you know.

Today I’m going to be relaxing, eating some good grub, and possibly working out. I love off days. Hopefully my new waterfall slide-show and the verses video will be up early this week. Until then, blessings!

Editors note: This was written Sunday night, but I didn’t have internet access, so I saved it and pasted it here. Enjoy!

Holy cow, there is a Thai woman massaging my feet as I type this. And by massaging, I mean tickling with a stick. I’m not a very ticklish person most of the time, mostly because if I’m ticklish, the CotH kids will use that weakness against me in the pool, but for the life of me, I can stop smiling and clinching my toes. She looks up at my attempts to hold in laughter every once and a while, and chatters to her friends massaging next to her in Thai. I’m thinking that she’s mocking me, but considering how good this feels, I don’t care.

But why am I partaking in this rubbing of the feet? Well, that’s because every Sunday at four o’clock, our most athletic and energetic members gather to play “the beautiful game.” Football, or soccer as you probably know it, is great fellowship. We use it to forge bonds between us and non-Christians who are friends with us, to reach out to others we might run into or play against, and to just have fun.

I am not a footballer. That’s because I can’t run well, I have poor foot-eye coordination, and I haven’t ever played much. But I have something that few Thais can bring to the table. I’m over six feet tall.

Now unless the ball needs to be headed, that doesn’t help too much for most positions. But one position on the field is greatly aided by a tall player with long arms and legs. It’s a crucial position, but one not many people gravitate toward.

I am a Goalie. A Keeper. The last line of defense preventing the opposing strikers from scoring that final, decisive goal. It’s not always a fun job, because each shot taken means a ball is rocketing at the area I’ve pledged to protect. Each goal scored means you’ve let the team down, and they have to work that much harder to overcome your mistake. But that’s the life of a Keeper. Each shot grants an opportunity to either make a spectacular save, or to become the goat. Turns out I’m a decent Keeper. I’m not great by any means, but I have my moments.

Our matches are played on one of two stages. The first is a dusty field, with two movable goals at the ends of the field. The other is a cement basketball court, with makeshift goals of metal about two feet tall by four feet wide under the hoops. I greatly prefer the field, because the large goals can accomadate true goalies. The court is so small with such tiny goals that having a Keeper use his hands would make it impossible to score.

Today was not my day. We didn’t end up playing the other team we’d been promised. Without the extras we were counting on, we didn’t have enough to play on the field. This meant my cool Goalie gloves were not going to help me out at all. They would be sitting in my backpack safely, while I stood in front of the goal.

Turns out my feet and legs became the opposing teams target practice. In two hours, I only gave up three goals, which isn’t to bad. two cam in the space of three minutes, both by the same kid. The third was right as the game ended, so I wasn’t happy at all about ending on such a bad note. But over the course of the game, I did make a lot a good saves, so looking back I’m pretty happy with my performance.

Well, the lady is almost done reviving my aching feet, so I’ll leave off here for now. I’ve also got a new slide-show in the works about our trip to the waterfall yesterday. Be looking for that and more this week. Until then, blessings!

Sorry for not posting very often this week. It’s been a bit hectic, and I’ve had some unexpected technical difficulties.

My main problem i that the two new videos I want to show y’all, one of the entire Princess Skit and another giving you a tour of the church and my living quarters, are both rather large files. It’s proving tricky to get them uploaded to youtube, thus difficult to post on my site. Hopefully Kaz will be able to help me remedy this ovr the next week. Until then, I ask only for your prayers. I’m down to less than three months here, and I want to make them meaningful and focussed months of hard work.

In other news, last week I weighed myself for the first time in a month or so. I have reached 188 pounds, which is the most I’ve ever been. Maybe it’s eating multiple plates of food at every meal…

Well, I feel like I’m really settling in to the schedule around here now. Basically weekdays minus Monday are really similar. Wake up, study Thai or have equipping time with Robert, eat lunch, hang out with whoever’s at the Zone, teach English classes from three until six, each supper, and hang out with more people until it’s time to hit the sack.

Lately, we’ve been attracting more and more students for our English lessons. Yesterday each of my one hour slots were filled, for the first time. I’m now teaching about eight classes per week, and I’ll probably keep gaining students until they’re are filled.

Some of my classes end up being super easy, while others are difficult and can be frustrating. I’ve found that when my student or students have very little English knowledge, class become very difficult. I have the ability to explain myself eloquently in English, but that doesn’t help when I’m teaching the meaning of “shirt” and “pants.” Luckily, years of improvising when faced with trying to teach kids at Camp have made me able to roll with the punches fairly well. Take yesterday’s class with Joy…

She has learned how to sound out and read words off of paper very well, but doesn’t have a clue what they mean. We are studying lesson two, which deals with clothing, so when I realized that our handout was missing some important pages, and that it wasn’t going to last the full hour, I started to think. Joy and I continued working through the worksheet as my mind raced, trying to think of ways to both teach and stall simultaneously. First, I defaulted to the educator’s standby…

I drew stick figures on the board. I then drew on them the best semblances of different articles of clothing listed on the sheet, and asked her to identify them. This worked well for a few minutes, but some of them weren’t easy to draw. (How do you make someone understand ’suit’ using a stick figure on a white board?)

Once that had run it’s course, I commenced our next activity, identifying what we were wearing and what color it was. Unfortunately, I was only wearing a T-shirt, blue jeans, and a belt. What a day to give my CotH hat some time off! To make matters worse, she was only wearing a skirt, a shirt, and a watch! I knew we had to find a way to expand this idea. Then it hit me. Explore the Zone.

We went into the main room and sure enough, there was a slew of people, many wearing different items of clothing. I would direct Joy to someone and ask her to tell me what they were wearing. This got us to the end of our time, and seemed to be helpful, so I felt good.

My easy classes aren’t quite as structured. For Troy and Rit, I’m basically an editor and tutor. They bring in their homework, and I help them understand it better, correct grammar and usage problems, and define difficult words for them. By far my favorite part of teaching is working with them, because it’s easy to talk with them. They aren’t looking for a crash course in the English language, they just need a little confidence boost and grammatical editing.

Moving on to food, I still can’t get enough of Thai food. I’ve found some nearby foods that have become staples, and I rotate them based on how I’m feeling. My newest addition is a dish known as Pad Thai back in the States. Noodles, chicken, and sprout-type veggies with a lime squeezed over them. It typically includes eggs and peanuts, but I’ve gotten good at informing Thais of my allergies. More than a month here, and no significant allergic reactions. God’s taking care of me.

But what happens if I start missing American food? Well, we found a place that caters to the unhealthy American. It’s called “Mike’s Burgers,” and we three apprentices have fallen in love with it. I don’t know where you ate the best burger of your life, whether it was in your uncle’s backyard, at Storm’s in the hill country, or at some big barbecue, but mine was right here in Thailand.

When you’re metabolism is as fast as mine is, you’re almost always hungry. Combine that with Asian foods propinquity for leaving you hungry an hour after you eat, and you have a recipe for a man who wants a heavy meal.

Mike’s specializes in providing that very experience, as well as the experience of heartburn. My order is typically a burger, a hot-dog, and an order of fries. The key to making it a thing of beauty is that they are covered in homemade chili, onions, and ketchup. Add in a ice-cold Coca-Cola, and a few onion rings, and I might as well be back in America, at least for that moment in time. It’s great to get that homey feeling back, even for a moment.

I’m looking forward to a great week coming up. It’ll be my first Valentine’s Day that I won’t begrudgingly call “Singles Awareness Day,” which I’m pumped about. Beyond that, our Valentine’s Day Party on Saturday night should be amazing. The Birthday Suits are going to be playing, we’re having lots of games, great food, and a surprise from Kaz and me.

We’re in charge of putting together some skits for the time in between activities, and we’ve got some great ones lined up. The Thais have already told us they’ll have video cameras ready for these, since they missed the opportunity to capture our previous skits on film for Blackmailing purposes. And yes, both Contagious Office and the Princess Skit will be featured for a largely unsuspecting audience. Maybe the videos will make it to this site. Until then, blessings!

Well, it’s been an eventful few days, to say the least, which explains why I haven’t updated much. I’ll try to catch y’all up on what’s been happening.

My student who I taught about public speaking, Troy, came by to see me today. He couldn’t stay long, because he was helping decorate his dorm for the Chinese New Year, but he wanted to let me know that he knocked his speech out of the park. He was so well prepared that his teacher had to cut his time short. He felt great about the presentation, and I can tell he’s excited about learning even more.

Robert is now back to his old self, minus a few pounds. It’s great to have him back around the zone.

I’m now teaching eight English classes per week at an hour apiece, and taking six hours of Thai lessons, plus time out for homework. I may gain more students yet, because people just keep showing up.

I’ve been invited by some of my new Thai friends, Bon, Noom, Thum, and former intern Marvin, to join their band for the time I’m here. We don’t actually play any real gigs, we just go to music stores with practice rooms and they play. They’ve got Thai guys to sing the Thai songs, but they want me and John to rock out the American ones. They call those the Farang Songs. It’s a good chance to connect with thm and form closer friendships. I’ve heard some funny band names before, but they found a good one in The Birthday Suits.

But the nast news I’m going to share is the main reason I didn’t do any blogging over the weekend. You see, I met this girl from the AFC, who was there a few years before my time. She’s been a missionary here before, and right now is doing the same while teaching English in China. Her name’s Haley Edmiston, and we really hit it off. And when I say hit it off, I mean that within a week, we had begun praying about whether God wanted us to be in a relationship. God was faithful, as always, and by Sunday we had our answer.

For the first time in my life, I have a girlfriend.

She’s visiting Malaysia this week, then will be in Chiang Mai the next week, then leaves for Bangkok and then China. While some would count that as a bad thing, it would be really hard to focus on ministry with a girl as beautiful as she is around, so I’m counting it as a blessing that we’ll be starting our relationship in the midst of putting God ahead of our own wants. I’ll still be able to communicate via email and SKYPE once my day is done, which is a blessing as well.

After years of hearing that I’d find the perfect girl once I stopped looking, I finally believe it. The past month was the first time in my life I wasn’t actively seeking a girlfriend, and lo and behold, God drops an amazing, Christian girl into my arms.

I’m going to upload a picture of us, so you can get a better idea of just how blessed I am. Until my next post, blessings!

So, Friday may have been one of the best days ever. There were many reasons, but I only want to share one of them right now, since I don’t have a lot of time before church starts.

So, the Chinese students who I taught on Thursday signed up for Wednesdays and Fridays, so they showed up Friday. Since the other group wasn’t there, John and I were able to tag-team them. This was important because our male student, Troy, brought homework to work on, and the girls just came for English conversation. We decided that I’d go one-on-one with Troy because I’m a little better with grammar and word usage.

After going through some of his graded homework, taking a look at each question he’d missed and why he got it wrong, he told me that he had a speech due on Monday. He had done no preparations for it yet; in fact, he had never even been taught how to present a speech.

Now I’m not the best public speaker ever, but I’ve taken two excellent speech classes from amazing teachers. I can’t remember every detail of what I learned, but what I could recall was more than enough to give Troy an edge over his classmates.

Maybe it was standing in front of a student who was hanging on my every word, or that he was taking notes about everything I said, or that I was writing on a dry-erase white board, but I realized that I absolutely love teaching subject matter I know. He listened in rapt attention to my suggestions and advice. In turn, I revealed more than just the basics of a good speech, but delved into how to keep from being nervous, how to prepare, and many other lesser known parts of a speech.

His talk is one of many that will be given this week, all on the same subject: health. My first suggestion was to brainstorm all the ideas he could think of dealing with health, regardless of how good they seemed, then we would narrow his talk down to the three strongest points. (This is a little trick I picked up from listening to my Mom talk about meetings at her work. She’s great at stimulating thought.) Though I gave him a little help in the process, he came up with most of the six or so ideas on his own. From there, he said that his strongest three would be eating the right foods, exercising, and spending time enjoying life and having fun.

Secondly, I took him through the basics of an informative speech. I explained the purpose of an introduction and conclusion, how to organize his points based on strength, and tips for catching the attention of the audience. w set his points up with his strongest point, making sure to take the time to enjoy life, as his final point, his second strongest point, eating right, as his initial talking point, then squeezed his weakest subject in betwixt the two. We worked on creating a hook to grab people’s attention early, and a good summary of his thoughts for the conclusion.

After we went through those basics, we dove into each of his main points. He would suggest details that he could talk about that supported his overall point, and I’d encourage him while writing them down on the board. After we got done with the first one, I sat down and told him to present the first point to me as if it was his real speech, using his notes. At first, he wanted no part of it, but after some coaxing, he got up in front of me. It wasn’t the best presenting I’ve ever seen, but I could tell that he understood the basics of what I’d been saying. Not only that, but his fears of not making the time he was set were blown out of the water. He was able to talk about eating right easily for two and a half or three minutes. He even was able to maintain control when someone came in to borrow a guitar, which was a distraction I was afraid might cause him to lose track.

By the time we got done with that, we were running behind. We decided to run through the second and third points quickly, then finish up with some last minute tips. For example, he told me that his teacher counted off for not making eye contact, but when he catches someone’s eyes during a speech he forgets what he was saying. My remedy was to just look like he was making eye contact, by looking at peoples foreheads, scanning the room without letting his eyes stop on a certain person, and looking barely over the heads of the back row. It was cool to see how these ideas affected him. He began smiling at the thought of being able to feign eye contact whilst maintaining his train of thought.

Lastly, I gave him a motivational talk, citing his superior preparation and tutoring as reasons to be confident. I told him that confidence is the biggest factor in a good speech, other than preparation. I told him to just practice it a lot over the weekend, then go up there knowing that he had a great speech that he knew well. He seemed almost excited about it when he left, twenty minutes after we were supposed to end. But it was well worth the extra time, and my five o’clock had canceled on me anyway. It felt great to help someone out that much, and know that I was good at it.