"There are few things more exhilarating than venturing out with no better option than to trust and then finding the Object of your trust worthy of it! The act of trusting forges a strong and powerful memory of the kind of grand adventure that comes only from letting go"
Venturing out and trusting is what five of us South-bound members decided to do last week. We arrived in Thailand a week ago, with ministry set up for us here and more than enough of that to keep us busy and eliminate too many off-times. So when we did get time-off, Pieter shared with us that he felt that God's ministry that He planned for us was more than what we planned and His off times were not our off-times. That morning in his prayer time a word came up in his mind (which he eventually, when he took the map of Thailand, realized was a small coastal town in Phuket about 150km from where we were staying), he was also sure that myself, P.J, Paul and Tobi (he has just started his work here in Thailand as a long-term missionary and is joining us for this time of ministry) had to accompany him. "Go baptize those who love Me" was the mission. At first he didn't know what to do with it, but eventually decided that ignoring it would be worse. So he first told Tobi about it, to which Tobi replied that he had made a list just the previous night that he didn't tell anyone about - with things that he felt he had to do as soon as possible... and getting baptized was on of the things on his obedience-list. So Tobi committed to this 'trust-testing, faith-building excercise'. Pieter told the rest of us about it and we didn't want to be disobedient so we also agreed. Next thing we were on our way to the bus station for our sudden Luke 10 journey, straight after the morning program with the kids finished.[ A Luke 10 journey refers to a journey as described in Luke 10, where Jesus sends out the disciples to go minister in a specific manner. All the teams will have a ‘scheduled' Luke 10 journey this year, guess we were just provided with a 'practice-round'].
Just as in Luke 10, we didn't take anything: no money and no food. We weren't completely sure where we were going, but we were going, being obedient and trusting God. We had no agenda whatsoever, we were going to travel to a town very far from us in a country with hardly any English signage or people that could understand us, to go do ‘whatever we felt led to do' at a beach which no bus even travels directly to. Nevertheless, we were convinced that we should go and sure of one thing: that if it was really of God, He would provide.
The moment we arrived at the bus station, we prayed and then asked someone for money to travel to a nearby town. They provided us with some money and we knew immediately that our journey had started. A bus pulled up right across from us that was leaving to that town right at that moment, while we were under the impression that the next bus would only be in an hour's time. So we were off... and got to speak to a few people on the bus already, very ‘carefully arranged' appointments that we are sure of and we believe will produce some fruit. We also prayed and read, enquiring where to and what and why!?
First stop: a bus stop near to the beach where we had to be. As soon as we got off the bus and walked to the other side of the road a truck picked us up, actually understood us and where we wanted to go, went through so much trouble to get us there and dropped us right at the beach. So there we were. As we were walking, Tobi realized that this was close to where he would be doing most of his ministry in Thailand, so this was in his community that he would be serving. Except for that, we still knew nothing, we were just trusting and looking for people to baptise.
We walked along the beach praying and as Pieter walked, words came up that served as ‘clues' and as we followed the ‘clues' we eventually found six 14-year old Phuket school children at a bar leading out onto the beach. We approached them and felt it necessary to intervene in some of the things that were going on there. They were drawing so much attention to themselves so the beach police were noticing and enquiring about them. They saw us as someone that could plead their case with the police and let us defend them and by doing that allowed us to approach them. They eventually quieted down and sat down with each of us individually and we had the opportunity to just talk with them and share some things with them.
After a while of talking one of the guys prayed the Salvation Prayer, we gave him a Bible and took them home, praying and hoping that everything that had been said would produce fruit in these kids' lives and that they would be touched by that evening and by their friends' decision and remember all that happened and was spoken about.
From there on we started walking along the beach again and realized we were hungry after thewhole day's travels and needed somewhere to sleep. We prayed for food and as soon as we finished praying we looked up and saw a cross not so far away. We followed it up until the point where we could see it was a fluorescent cross light on the roof of a restaurant. As we came closer a waitress approached us and asked if we were hungry. We told her that we were but that we didn't have any money to buy food, so she signaled a few things...made us wait for 2 minutes and then set us a table on the beach next to the sea and they started dishing up some tasty fried egg- rice (a typical traditional Thai dish) for us. Just after our meal, she also offered that we could sleep in their restaurant, so a place to sleep was also provided for us.
After that we still approached people in order to ask them if they were beleivers , however few could understand us. Seeing it was late by then, we waited for the guests at the restaurant to leave and we started to settle in for bed (bed meaning: a wooden floor and two straw mats to sleep on). The mosquitoes were, however, telling us in a very harsh way that they were there first and as they woke us up one by one during the night we continued prayer-walking on the beach - praying for the city, the people and everything we felt to pray for.
So many things happened in so little, but we were aware that the one thing we came for still remained. So we waited for sunrise, prayed and baptized Tobi in the ocean at the beach in his community where he will be serving. The scriptures we read, were also confirmation on everything that other people read before but nobody knew about! After finishing what we came for, we assumed that our journey was taking the ‘home-turn' and so we prayed again that if God wanted us to go home that He had to provide and if possible that we could be back at church at 10:00 (because we had some responsibilities to perform at the service). Just after we said ‘Amen', a truck stopped to pick us up and dropped us in town at a 7-Eleven. We had 100 baht left (about R25) from the previous' day bus trip and Pieter felt we needed to get breakfast with that money. We went inside the shop to buy each person a coffee (which was all we could afford) and the moment we stepped out of the shop, a bakkie that was on its way to our town where we are staying, stopped to pick us up and take us to right in front of the community centre where we are staying - ten minutes before the start of church!!!
"Moments of trust are incarnational moments, whether we realise them as such or not".
What an adventure, what an exhilarating encouragement to have been obedient and trusted God to see how he could re-shape our paradigms and take us to ‘places' and back and in the end finding God worthy of our trust, because "He who promises is faithful "(Heb 13:6).
When God revealed to Mary through the Angel that she would bear a Child and that He would save the world, she could have said no, she could've chosen to be disobedient, it wouldn't have done anything to her, but her one sustained yes - to bearing the Saviour of the world, brought His sweet Kingdom closer to us, to this world that we live in. Trusting God does that every time. After receiving a mail from one of the girls enquiring about what we spoke about the other night and wanting to get in touch with us because she says she sees the difference in her friend that we prayed with and gave the Bible to, we are thankful that our sustained yes and hopefully our talking, praying, proclaiming and baptism brought God's Kingdom closer to those kids' lives, to Tobi's life and that His Kingdom will& nbsp;come closer to everyone that lives in that town!!!
"If God has placed you in a moment that requires trust - or the long sustaining of it - He has brought you to a place of great intimacy and possibility. Trust is for lovers not for strangers" Leigh McLeroy
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