Despite the early 6am start, the trip down to Mae Tia was awesome! I'm actually really glad that i woke up early to go to the meeting and prayer time at 6am that day. it was just a really nice way to start the day, reading parts of God's word, being reminded again of the gospel and why it's just so important for others to hear it and praying. As people slowly drifted into church, what was originally going to be about 25-30 people going, ended up being about 50 of us!
In the lead up to the day, i was again able to see God work in amazing ways in just the group that i was working with - with the kids. Originally, it was just going to be me and Gun looking after the kids (which could have numbered up to 90), which was a seriously daunting task, as i've got plenty of ideas in how to run the time, but not the language to control 90 kids, and Gun has the language, but probably isn't the best upfront person, and didn't know many of the games or skits we wanted to do. So, we obviously prayed a lot for a suitable solution. Thank God that he was able to give Kim the day off work, so she could come, along with Maggie and Ice too. Thankfully as well, we ended up with about 20 kids, instead of 90 (which would've just been crowd control). So what was potentially going to be a nightmare, ended up as a really good time, where we were able to share with the kids what Christmas is really about, a simple explanation of the gospel through 'gospel beads' and give them all some presents.
Apart from what we were doing with the kids, there was also heaps of medical stuff going on too - with general check ups, dental hygiene, physio advice, eye checks and even hair cuts. But while all that was going on, there was also a team of people who were just chatting to people there and sharing the gospel with them. We also had a brief time to go visit the houses too to chat to more people who might not have been able to make it out to the area we were holding the mission. It was really exciting to see how the different professions and abilities of people were able to join together as one body for the sake of the gospel.
It was actually pretty funny at times to realise that many of my thai friends were struggling to understand all that these people were saying too - as many of them spoke a weird northern dialect which they probably only really use in their muu baan. So it made me feel a lot better that i wasn't the only one who was struggling to understand what they were saying.
Our prayer is that our time there would have opened more doors for Png and others in the future who have the chance to go and be a witness to this village. At the moment, there aren't any christians there, but there are some who are interested and the fact that they let us come in and do a mission is huge as well. Please pray for this village, to come to know God, and especially for Png as she will probably continue to be the main christian contact that this village has in the near future, for her to be able to keep on proclaiming Christ to them. Pray for the villagers, that they will come to know Christ and accept Him as their saviour
