Ai Jai Thai! (wYw)

Today was definitely one of the toughest days of wYw 2011 thus far.  It started at 5 am with quiet time, some worship, cleaning and packing.  We met Ps Silvanus after this and went into town for our final meal together.  It consisted of egg roti (Indian bread) served with a side dish of curry sauce.  India seems to stick to our group.  This was washed down with a coffee, iced tea or milo.

Ps Silvanus mentioned that Henro’s sermon of last night was good and the alter call had a few people recommit their lives to the Lord.  We had the privilege of praying with them and to bless them.

After breakfast Ps Silvanus drove us to Tapha, a town close to Langkap and on the main highway to Thailand.  This is where the team split up again.  It was a “short” 4km walk to the highway where we were picked up by a truck driver and then the traffic police.  They, like most Malay people didn’t understand the concept of hitch hiking and instead of dropping us on the highway, they took us into town to the bus station.  Here we decided to have lunch as it was 12h by then.

A lift took us back to the highway, but about 10km back.  We then got a lift on the back of a truck that took us to the spot where the traffic police should have dropped us two hours earlier.  At least our tummies were full now.

Here we got stuck again.  We started at a toll gate plaza, but after some time not getting a lift, we walked further down the highway to a “better” spot.  After a couple of hours there, we met a guy there who told us to try the toll plaza to go to the bus station.  At first I thought “nah”, but after thinking and praying it through, we decided that this felt God sent, so we walked back to the toll plaza.  Here we just sat down for a while and met a Malay guy who asked about our travels and took the GCEX website address for his brother.  Watch out for that random Malay member on GCEX next year. 
A man then picked us up and took us to the bus station in Ipoh, the town we have been circling for more than 5 hours now.  He had a Buddhist shrine thingy on his dashboard and so we spoke to him about Jesus and GCEX.  He seemed in a hurry to get us out of his car. Very tired, sun burned, thirsty and drained, we decided to buy ourselves bus tickets to Alor Setar (a 40min drive from the Thai border).  The bus left at 18h30.  This means that we covered some 60 kms from 8 am to 6h30 pm.  Tough day at the office!

On the bus I was listening to some music and pondered on the events of the day and how we stayed in one place for such a long time, just going in circles.  This made me think.  Isn’t our lives like that as well?  When we do not listen to God or learn the lessons that He wants to teach us, we go in circles.  And we will keep going in circles until we listen or succeed in our tests.  We had three people point us to the bus station in Ipoh, but we wouldn’t listen.  When we eventually got the message, the next bus to Hat Yai (our destination in Thailand) was full.  To top it all off, we were at the bus station earlier in the day when the previous bus left for Hat Yai.  We were just too stubborn to go there.

God spoke to me about my attitude towards our travels of the day.  “Are you hitch-hiking to tell people about Me and testify about Me, or do you just want to get from point A to point B without spending money?”  This was indeed the case and the result was God forcing us to use our money to get from A to B.  I repented immediately and spoke to the guys about it and they all felt the same.  The other team contacted us and told us that they were already there.  Philip made the statement that although it was a tough day that he wouldn’t change it as we all learned and were reminded of what we are really busy with.  GCEX is not a travel agency!
So, we are currently sitting in a KFC in Alor Setar with free WiFi to send this blog.  Philip and Welman are sleeping at the table and Freddy is on Facebook.  It is 02h10 and time to go find some place to lie down my head before starting again in the morning.
Sorry for the late blog, but I’m sure you can understand.  From now on our blog might skip a day or two every now and again as we will start our Luke 10’s on Sunday.  Please bear with us.

Here’s the video!

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPpU3tGuSI 400x400]