One Month and Counting

Grace to you Brothers and Sisters, Mothers and Fathers in the faith. Praise Jesus Christ for His grace and love never end.

Last week was a busy week. I started working with Microfin (a business modeling system for microfinance institutions). Over the past three months Timmy has been learning how it works and gathering data about Step Ahead to put in the program. He gave me a copy of what he has done so far and I am helping him gather the data needed for the program to work properly. This program is very important because it will help Step Ahead use their resources efficiently to help the maximum number of people. In the process I am learning a lot about what microfinance can do to assist in helping the poor. Please be praying that God will reveal Himself to the members, save them and sustain them in this life.

Saturday, we had kids club and 30 kids showed up. That is the most I have seen come since I've been going. Since I have been in Bangkok, I have seen the life people live in Klong Toei. They work 6-7 days a week working street businesses for 10-16 hrs a day. They live in small shacks with no air conditioning to escape the 100 degree weather here. This is a hard life but its not impossible. What breaks my heart most is seeing beautiful and elaborate spirit houses in every house and business, incense burning to them all the time, food offerings laid in front of them only to be eaten by the animals, temples and Buddha statues all over the place, people bowing and praying to the Buddhas, and buying flower wreathes to put on the Buddhas and spirit houses. These people are so religious, they just worship gods made by man instead of the one true God. I can't help but wonder how many of these people carry on in this practice, enslaved to their own creation, because they have never been told about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When I am at kids club and play with these kids my heart is excited to laugh and play with the kids, but greatly burdened at the thought of these kids following the footsteps of their parents and grandparents.

I mentioned last time that one of the volunteers with kids club is a Buddhist. After kids club Saturday, I had lunch with her and we talked a lot about God, Jesus, and Christianity. She was asking me a lot of questions. She is curious about Christianity. I recognize I can not save her, only God can change a heart. Please pray that God works through me and the other Christians in this girls life to share with her the truth, and that He would save her. She told me she wants to go to church with me next Sunday. I don't know what God has planned for her, but I pray it includes her salvation.

Sunday, a friend took me to a temple to look around. When we went in, I was shocked to find myself looking at a 40 ft Buddha, gold plated, sitting on a five foot tall decorated podium. It was like I imagined when I read the stories about the Israelite kings who made idols in the temples and the stories of the idols of other countries. I thought of the story of when the ark of the covenant was stolen and put in the temple with an idol. The idol was found the next day broken, laid prostrate before the ark. How I wish something like that would happen here. When a person becomes a Christian here there family disowns them. I met one man who married a Thai girl 30 years ago. She was living in Japan because she had converted to Christianity and her parents started persecuting her. The couple chose to get married in Bangkok but were not able to stay because the ladies parents gave them too much trouble. They just came back for the first time since then. Pray that God would save whole families and give courage to those whose families do not believe.

Tonight I will start teaching English to the Step Ahead staff. Pray for that opportunity. Hopefully through this process I can get to know them more and we can mutually encourage each other in our faith.