WOW!
We are currently in Koh Chang, an island in the north of Thailand (on the opposite side of Phuket), where we are serving at the local community centre and the only Christian church on the island! Just before we got here, we were in Trat for a few days we took our first official faith journeys as colour groups! It is so amazing to see the goodness of our Lord Jesus through the testimonies that came from the faith journeys!
04/04/10
WE ARE ON OUR FAITH JOURNEY! This morning we had an Easter Sunday service at a garage in Trat that is now a church on Sundays, together with Suranya, the missionary we will be working with on Koh Chang! Daniel preached and it was so refreshing! The greatness and significance of this was glorious! If the family from that garage could not get people for a church service, they had to travel to another province just to be able to go to church! So when Suranya quickly came to meet us before we went on our faith journeys, she invited us to the church and asked one of us to preach and that we would all eat together there for lunch! Already God provided not only for our lunch, but also for a church service for that family! Afterwards, we as yellow got together and started sharing what God has told us regarding where to go and what to do! All I had was 4:11... Not knowing what that meant! Then Danie said he got Isaiah 55 and 58! Is 58:13 & 14 says “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord‘s holy day honourable, and if you honour it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.” So this was pretty straight forward for us… we were staying right where we were (in Trat) and resting on the Sabbath, and not going where we please (which would obviously have been the closest sea or island for most of us)! As we walked from the garage to town to find place to stay, we walked past both the private and the government hospitals, so Elsabe and I went in to check it out and to ask if we could play with the kids or anything like that! We were turned down in both hospitals! (God placed hospital ministry on my heart since November last year!) Meanwhile, the guys got us accommodation for the night at a guest house, for Bt 200 (about R45) for all of us! We spent the night chatting, sharing, reading and meditating on the Word and resting! God revealed 4:11 to me that night, it was Hebrews 4:11 (from verse 9) that says, “There remains then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.” So that was just confirmation that we were where God wanted us.
05/04/10
We decided that we would be fasting as a team for the day, for our families and friends! Also, to just make us more sensitive to the Holy Spirit so that we might only follow God’s route for us for the journey! Daniel gave our team a word from Isaiah 30:21 which says, “Whether you turn to the left or to the right, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying ‘This is the way, walk in it’.” So that morning we had a prayer session and then just decided to follow the voice of God! We started heading off through the streets and as we were walking, Danie stopped us and said we must just pray again… he felt strongly about the hospital ministry! So we prayed that if that is what God wanted, then someone must give us a lift to the hospital (we were heading in the opposite direction)! As we started walking in the direction of the hospital, not long after praying, Elsabe got us a lift that dropped us off right in front of the government hospital! Praise God! The couple that drove us there spoke no English, but we gave them an English/Thai New Testament Bible! May that seed flourish in Jesus name! We walked into the hospital and I started talking to the lady at information… through difficulties communicating (she thought we wanted to admit Wynand)… she then just asked, “Oh you Christian?”! we leaped with joy and answered YES! Then immediately she phoned one of the doctors! I thought she was phoning some traditional doctor or scary doctor we should go to because we Christian J It turned out she phoned Dr.Preeda, a dermatologist working at the hospital, who speaks good English and who has been a Christian since the age of 15!!! I spoke to him on the phone and he told us to come to his house, which happened to be on the hospital premises! So off we were to his house! He welcomed us in and seemed sceptical! He asked us a lot of questions… who we are, what we want to do, why we want to do it, how we came to know Christ… a whole interview J God was with us and we aced the interview! Dr.Preeda told us that we are welcome to walk through the hospital and that he would take us the next day to speak to the patients and pray for them, and he would translate (on his holiday)! He prayed for us, and gave us some tracts to hand out that were in Thai! Praise God! We were so excited for what God had planned! We went straight into the OPD area of the hospital and just spent an hour there praying! Then we walked through the hospital and the wards and did some prayer walking! SO WHAT NEXT?! We got together in the lobby of one hotel and had a prayer session for friends! We weren’t exactly sure of our next step, but we knew God was with us wherever we went (Joshua 1:9)… and then we remembered Word that Wynand got& hellip;Luke 5:4, “When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch,’” So we decided to head to the water, to the fishermen! We took a taxi to the peer where you take a faerie to Koh Chang! When we stood there, to our right in the distance we saw the fishermen boats! So we headed there! It was quite a walk and it was hot and we weren’t full of energy at this point! When we got there, we plonked down in the shade and just enjoyed the view! after a while Wynand went to see if he can chat to any of the fishermen, and while he was doing that, a lady came to speak to me, just wanting to find out if we were tourists and what we were doing there! When people asked as the question where are you going or what are you doing here, we couldn’t always answer, as we were there just waiting to see what God wanted of us! Just before she came to me, I actually asked the Lord to show us why we are here, because we were just sitting there at that point! As I started talking to her, we found out she is a 60yr old lady, Buddhist, who used to be an English teacher and now helping out a friend there at the peer! We chatted to her (Sumalin) about what we do, who we are, about her and her family, about her country, about religion and next things she asks was if it was my Bible next to me that I was holding the whole time! As soon as I answered yes, we gave her one of the English/Thai Bibles! She was very grateful! She agreed that I could pray for her, and I really trust that the Holy Spirit started working in her that day, and that she will grow in awe of God and His love every day as she reads the Bible we were led to give to her! As soon as I finished praying, I knew that she was the reason we were sent to the fishermen… God had a divine appointment with her that day! We exchanged details so that I could send her a South African postcard when I am back home and to just hear her testimony that I am believing for! She offered us a lift to the closest town so that we didn’t have to walk back again, and there she even arranged a taxi for us to take us back to Trat! What a blessing she was for us!
As we got back to Trat we decided to go to the same guesthouse again for the night, and this time, Dylan, the guy that works there, gave us a bigger room for the same price! Praise God! We enjoyed another prayer session that evening for friends, family and the happenings of the day and then rested! I had a huge expectation for the next day’s hospital ministry! It is only by faith that we can reach out and do something like hospital ministry, for there is nothing we can do, it is ONLY through God and the Holy Spirit that we can help those people! So I was excited to see what God was going to do!
06/04/10
WHAT A DAY! We started the day with a great breakfast and spending time in the Word and in prayer! We had to prepare spiritually for the afternoon’s hospital ministry! The previous night we as team, had also decided that we would only be buying breakfast and that we would just trust the Lord to provide lunch and supper and even accommodation for the last night, and decided to then buy balloons and sweets for the kids in the hospital and to bless someone with the rest of the money! As we were doing bible study that morning we got several scriptures, among them Luke 10:2-10, Mark 16:7 and Matthew 17:14-21! With the time we spent at the guesthouse, we chatted to Dylan quite a few times, and just before we left, we had a nice chat to him again and he really seemed interested in Christianity… so we gave him a Bible J May God use him in mighty ways! As we were walking to the hospital, I remembered PJ once saying that you must just trust God even for the small things, like a Coke! Since the beginning of the journey, Danie was super excited to be able to buy himself a Cornetto at the end of the journey, just because they are so cheap here (less than R5)… so I was just thinking as we were walking that we should just trust God for that too… how cool would that be!!! When we got to Dr.Preeda’s house he introduced us to his son, Mo, who is 21 and studying at the University in the next town, and can speak a bit of English, so he was also going with us to help with the translation! That morning we were chatting about how I feel for the paediatric ward and Elsabe said God is leading her to the women medical ward and maybe ICU! So as I asked Dr.Preeda where we’ll be going, he said he had a connection in the female medical ward, and when I asked him about the kids, he made a call and it was organised! We then went and individually prayed for each lady in the ward, probably about 40-50 ladies, all with different problems! One lady I prayed for was pregnant and was in hospital for rest after some difficulties with the pregnancy, and as I was praying for her, with my hand on her tummy, I felt the baby move! This just reminded me of the scripture in Luke 1 where the baby in the womb leaped when the Holy Spirit was there! It was so cool! So many friends and family were there among the patients and I just felt that they would be the witnesses of what God was going to do in the lives of those women!
We then went to the Paediatric ward where they got the kids together for us and we gave them all balloons and sweets and sang a few songs for them! We then also prayed individually for them! I asked the Dr if there was a boy in the ward with epilepsy/seizures (after the scripture I got in Matthew 17), and he took me to the one boy who has been having convulsions due to fever! I immediately prayed for him and I have faith that God healed him. Nothing is impossible for God! The whole afternoon was so exciting and it was such a treat so just be able to pray for the patients and smile at them.
As we walked out the hospital, the boys mentioned (in Afrikaans) that they could really do with some food J We were still trusting for lunch (it was about 3 oclock) and as we entered Dr.Preeda’s house, there was cake set out for us on the table! CAKE FOR LUNCH! WHOOOHOOO! As we sat down and was about to indulge in the cake, they told us to wait, and out came a whole bag full of CORNETTO’S!!! We each had one, and then Kaew (his wife) came in and started up a feast for us! She wanted us to have traditional Thai food and served us braaied bananas with a caramel sauce, sticky rice and mangoes and cokes! We were so in awe of the goodness of our Lord Jesus Christ! He provided for us in abundance! We left their house, tummies full, with a bag of left over sticky rice & mango, cake (we were too full to eat ours and she gave us extra to share with the team)! We had to take a moment and just thank God for His provision! I mean… Cornetto’s!!! How cool is that!
We then decided to start walking towards the garage where church was on Sunday, as the ouma there offered us a plce to sleep there if we had nowhere else to go! And we thought we could then bless her with the money we had left over for accommodation! As we were walking, about 100m before we got to the garage, there they were… Dr.Preeda and his whole family! They had driven past and saw us, and Kaew felt they had to pick us up! They invited us with them to Chantaburi, the next town about 60km away, to eat PIZZA! So we all jumped in and squashed in the car with HUGE smiles on our faces! God is good! We got to a huge shopping centre and got 2 pizzas… this was strange for us… driving 60km to get 2 take-away pizzas for 8 people! But we were so grateful just for pizza for supper!!! Then, before we know it, we stop at a real Thai restaurant and we all get out and sit down, and not more than 10minutes later, the first dish arrives followed by another and another! Fresh fish, prawn soup, crab omelette, calamari, prawn salad and a cashew/chicken salad (which was absolutely divine)! We had a Thai feast! And it doesn’t end there… while we were driving, Kaew had organised for us to go sleep in their church for the night! So they dropped us off there (which happened to be right across from the private hospital), and had prepared mattresses for us on the floor in a room with AIRCON! Mo decided to sleep there with us, and we all sat there, in awe of our God and enjoying our cake for desert! What a day!
The next morning we decided to do some prayer walking in the private hospital and then we walked back to the other hospital to take Mo back and to greet Dr.Preeda and the family! They were such a blessing for us sent by God! We later met up with the rest of the teams at the garage, blessed them with the cake, and then we all travelled to Koh Chang where we are now!
The faith journey was exactly as the name explains it… it really taught me more faith and more dependence on God… even in the small things such as a Cornetto! If God can give us that, then just imagine what greater things He can also bless you with if you just ask Him and have faith! God is a faithful God, a powerful God and a God who provides! Thank You Lord!
The team and Sumalin*
The team and Dr.Preeda and his wife!*