Steven writes…
More than we can imagine. [Last days in Thailand and final thoughts, 6/20-6/23.]
Day 10 [6/20]: After eating breakfast and dressing up, Doc, Zina and our team drove the 20 minutes back into Krabi Town to Santisuk church to meet up with the other church members that would be attending Radt and Wuut’s engagement ceremony in Lam Thap. After another 20 or 30 minutes, we were met with the familiar sights of Lam Thap, Radt’s hometown and the village where the 2007 team did the majority of its ministry. It was crazy nostalgia to see the school we visited almost every day, as well as walking into the epic shelter of adventure (it was now a storage shed, lol) where the guys stayed in ‘07. Even the football we brought had been saved, pumped up and everything! They had also saved the framed picture of the 2007 team that we had left them as our thanks, hung proudly on the wall in the middle of the living room. However, it was clearly different as well, as new buildings and stores had sprung up next to Radt’s home. Sitting in the shade of one of the store’s canopies were a few of the local kids. Walking by them on our way towards Radt’s house, Jay and I immediately recognized several of them, now inches, if not feet taller! We tossed the football around with them before the ceremony started, for old time’s sake.
Radt and Wuut’s engagement ceremony was an excellent combination of Christian and traditional Thai customs. All of their relatives, friends, church members, and our team filled the small room and watched as one of the pastors from Santisuk church conducted the ceremony and prayed over the couple. Of course, there was a massive frenzy of pictures afterwards. After seeing Pa Radt’s new, giant pet snake (ok, Pa Radt is such a beast that I’m not even going to try to describe how beast he is here, just ask me for stories, lol), we settled down for a home-cooked Thai lunch… Ma Radt’s cooking = so delicious! After lunch, we toured the new church to-be behind the house that another YWAM team had come to help build. We played some more football with the kids, took some pictures, and then we had to leave again. We would have liked to spend a lot more time there, catching up with the kids and Radt’s family, but were forced to go. At the very least, I took the time to commit the kids’ names to memory so that we could pray for them and remember them for next time. Still praying that those kids would continue to hang out with Radt’s family and get to know Christ.
In the evening, we traveled to a private beach to celebrate Zina’s birthday. We played frisbee, splashed around, and just fellowshipped with each other. Oh yeah, and this is where I got stun by a JELLYFISH. AWESOME. Ironically enough, Doc had just been praying that we wouldn’t get stung by jellyfish, and right as he left, I got stung. Basically, we were in the water playing frisbee, and as I stretched out my left arm and leg to go get it, I felt immense stinging sensation all over my arm and leg. Pretty epic fail owned. And so I “ow’d and ooh’d” my way back up to the beach where I sat down and attempted to focus on more painful things that I had gone through before (this wasn’t the worst thing ever, lol). The places on my skin that had made contact with The Jellyfish’s tentacles started swelling up like crazy, and I sat there “ow”-ing as the team gathered around and heatedly debated if they should pee on me. (NO THANK YOU.) In hindsight, it was pretty freaking hilarious. Someone then intelligently asked some of the Thai girls that worked at a nearby store what we should do, and they brought some herbs and vinegar for me to spread on the affected areas. It was a pretty FTL experience. Upon returning to the guest house, I took some benadryl and passed out. Apparently, fresh water on the jellyfish stings can release the toxins and cause more FTL, so I couldn’t take a shower that night. So, in all of my sweaty, sandy, vinegary glory, Peter had to share the bed with me that night. Props to Peter for being a warrior, lol.
Day 11 [6/21]: In the morning, (after showering), our team ran the entirety of the service at Santisuk church, including worship, Josh speaking, Peter’s team doing the drama, and Jenn and James sharing their testimonies. We again had a terrific lunch prepared by the ladies of Santisuk, and proceeded to hang out with the kids after lunch, including some group frisbee! We then went with a bunch of the local kids to an “aquarium” in Krabi, which was truthfully a big fish farm where they grew different kinds of fish… unspectacular. And hot in the afternoon. The church then held a party to send us off at a local river/creek, where we got to kayak, swim, and have a picnic. After saying our last goodbyes to the people of Santisuk church, we returned back to Ao Nang to pack, rest, and do some final things in Thailand.
After dinner, a few of us visited some of the friends we had made around Ao Nang, including Reuben and the suit shop guys, to say goodbye and tell them we would be awaiting their emails. Later that night, some of the guys, led enthusiastically by James, ordered this gigantic family meal from McDonalds as one last hurrah and splurge (ironic, I know, last night in Thailand and we ordered like $30 worth of McDonalds.. but it was epic: BigMac, Samurai burger, bucket of fried chicken, some spicy chicken wings, 2 large fries, and some coke, lol). We hung out until late in the night in James and Michael’s room, watching bad Thai music videos, chowing down on McDonalds, and cuddling in Michael’s bed, lol.
Day 12 [6/22]: In the morning, we packed up all of our luggage, loaded them into the truck, and headed over to the resort where Radt currently works. We were treated to a breakfast buffet (no 7-11 tuna pies today!) to start off our day of debriefing and travel. After breakfast, we all gathered by the pool to debrief and share about the things that God had really impressed upon our hearts during our time in Thailand. Short version: an insane amount of answered prayers, of God showing up big, and the awesomeness of getting to share the Gospel. After the sharing time, our team split off to different places for one last bout of relaxation before the ridiculous bout of traveling. Some went for massages, some to the pool, and others to nap or just lounge around outside. After a quick take-out lunch and saying the last goodbyes to Radt, Pastor Roslen and Doc & Zina saw us off to the airport.
We arrived in Bangkok in the early evening where we said our farewells to Mark, who would be heading to north Thailand to take part in a baptism. We returned back to the YWAM Bangkok base with just enough time for one last full team dinner at Turtle Bakery before setting off to the airport once more. The Austin-bound team said our goodbyes to Jenn, James, and Char, who would be heading to China, Hong Kong, and Seattle, respectively, before finally starting the 36-hour trip back home (Bangkok to Seoul to Atlanta and finally, completely exhausted, arriving in Austin). Our trip was complete! Time for some Rudy’s!
Final thoughts: I hope that this 6-part, month-long series of posts has given you at least a glimpse of everything that God revealed to us during our short yet insanely intense two weeks in Thailand. To all of you that read, thank you so much for bearing with me — I was not very good at getting these posts out diligently. To all of you that prayed, I cannot quite express the enormity of my gratitude to you, but thank you so much. The phrase, “we couldn’t have done it without you” is cliche and does not do this situation justice, but you were a crucial part of everything that happened through us and to us in Thailand. Please continue to pray for the nation, its people, and the Christians doing work there, as well as our team, as we try to figure out how to bring back what we learned into our lives here and discern God’s will for us in future missions.
The night before I left, I put up this
post with the main prayer requests of our team. It was simply the things that God had revealed to myself and to our team, through Scripture and prayer and more Scripture. And thus, we know that prayer works and that our God is good, because every one of those prayer requests were answered profoundly and emphatically.
1.] That preaching the Gospel and glorifying God would be our mission above anything else.
-For something that the members of our team had very little experience with and didn’t really understand the importance of before coming to Thailand, God came through in this like CRAZY. As I touched on
before, Scripture shows us that every aspect of sharing the Gospel comes by God doing it, not us. We need only take up the call and obey. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel was proclaimed in Thailand, in Krabi, and in Ao Nang where it never had been before. God delivered everything to us: the desire and motivation to go out and talk about the Gospel, His heart for the Thai people that deeply loves every single person that doesn’t know Christ, the boldness to swallow our nervousness and pride and go talk to people we didn’t know because God was calling us to that person, the right words to speak into their lives that came from the Spirit, divine appointments and opportunities up the wazoo… everything was taken care of by our awesome God. With no particular training or schedule or anything, because of God’s conviction, all we wanted to do all the time was share the Gospel with people who hadn’t heard it yet. By the end of our 5 days in Ao Nang, we had covered the entirety of the beach front with proclamations of the Gospel and intercession. We were granted the privilege to share the Gospel in places it had never been heard, to bring the Spirit to places that had only known darkness before, to bring truth to a place soaked in falsehoods. And the best part about it is that none of it was of our power, and we get to take no credit for it. All done through His unending power and all for His glory. Awesome.
2.] That we would have protection from spiritual warfare in every possible way.
-This was also something that we had very little experience with beforehand that God opened our eyes to pretty forcefully while in Thailand. I think I covered some of it in the
strongholds post and a bit of how we battled it in the
Psalm 18 post. Suffice it to say, because of the prevalence of the spiritual oppression upon our team while in Thailand, we were utterly forced to dive into the Word and fully rely on the Spirit, pleading for God’s protection and saturating every person, place, or activity we were a part of with prayer and intercession. Despite all the attacks and some hard moments, our God is faithful and loves us deeply. And thankfully, Scripture is chock-full of passages on undertaking spiritual warfare. Please, continue to lift up this nation in prayer and wage spiritual warfare for these people through intercession. We are confident that God’s vast love will drown out the darkness of this nation, that He will free people from their chains and bring revival and light to this nation.
3.] That our team would be unified in Christ, in our mission to spread the Gospel, and in love.
-What can I say about this? I love our team. A lot. This is meant in no way to exclude anybody or to make us exclusive or something stupid like that, but God definitely brought us together way beyond our expectations. Even now my parents are confused at why I’m still meeting up with the Thailand team a month after we came back. Simply another testament to God’s power and grace more than compensating for all of our crap.
[team! this is a lol picture.]
This is in no way the limit of how many answered prayers God brought us, just simply the ones that we had laid out before we left. God revealed himself in ways that we could not have even imagined or asked for, in a laundry list of answered prayers. It was curzy. Prayer is insanely powerful, and something we can and should do all the freaking time, for everything.
And so, on our return to the States, we are left to attempt to understand and process what God wants us to bring back from our experiences and lessons in Thailand. That, in part, is what I have attempted to do with the posts, from
spiritual warfare and strongholds of the Enemy to
desiring to share the Gospel to
relying on God’s strength and more. And I believe that even though all of these experiences were unique to Thailand, the things to be taken away from them are not: they belong in our everyday lives as followers of Christ and tools for His kingdom. We utterly need to take all these things to heart, to arm ourselves for warfare of unseen realms, to have urgency in proclaiming the Gospel to those who don’t know it, to depend wholly on God in everything we are. That we would be in the world but definitely not of it. That God would be the only one we worship and are completely in love with, not other things that pale in comparison in every way. And because we can taste that love, we are convicted and on fire to go tell people of this love that saves us, the Gospel. I pray and ask that God would powerfully give every person that professes to follow Christ this urgency and passion to do His work and desire to love on the people that are searching for the way to salvation. His grace and power are enough to overcome any darkness, any trial, anything at all.. if people would only know of it! But.. “how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” Evangelism isn’t something that only a few are gifted with and assigned to do: we are all called to proclaim it as apostles of Christ.
I hope that these posts would be an encouragement of how great our God’s love and power is to whoever reads them. And that God would convict you, the reader, of a heart of intercession and evangelism, of living missionally. Ask for it! and he will undoubtedly answer in ways you cannot even imagine. Again, thanks for reading these ridiculously long posts, and I am always down for talking about it or praying for you in any of these ideas.
And so, to complete this all, I pray the following over all of you and over the body of believers in Thailand:
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
