Pretty incredible how God can work in such a short amount of time. When we came to Lyon Village, we were not sure how we would be received. Coming into an 80% Muslim and 20% Buddist Village we were not sure how the spiritual forces would react to 4 Christian missionaries walking into town...
We were so pleasantly surprised to be immediately greeted so warmly. The leader of the village basically gave us free reign to minister. We reconnected to one of the ladies who is also one of the leaders and she immediately took to Zina calling her family. We did not have a translator so I had been praying that God would work miraculously so that we would be able to communicate. Zina speaks some Thai, but the South dialect is very different than the North. God miraculously intervened as Zina called us aside freaking out because she could understand and communicate well above her natural abilities. This woman that we spoke with invited us into her home and said that I was now her son. Something that you must understand about Thai culture is that everything they speak (this is part of there language and culture) comes from the heart. So when she says that she really genuinely means it!
We came in not having a lot of set plans other than to pray, get a bearing on the needs of the community and test the spiritual waters of the area. We were blessed to make a friend named "Dee" who spoke decent English and gave us some great information on the people and there needs. The general consensus that we heard from many people is that they want to learn English. This is an incredible opportunity for the right person to minister here as they have a house, a community center and the people who need the love of Christ, they just need someone to minister here. Dee's son likes Muay Thai and noticed Docs shirt was from a Muay Thai camp and so we asked if he wanted to train a bit, (his son was 5). We began training/playing around with him and kids just started pouring in! Within 10 minutes we had probably 15 kids that we were teaching Muay Thai too.
After we got done teaching Muay Thai we spent some more time in conversation and meeting the people. I saw my friend from my profile picture, Khun Chow and he immediately recognized me. He brought me into his home and introduced me to his wife. He speaks no english and his wife speaks very little, but through the grace of God we were able to have a conversation! Its kind of a long story, but praise God that by myself and my 20 phrase Thai vocabulary and there broken English we were able to connect.
One of the people we met last time and reconnected with this time, Khun King Kong (yes thats his name :)) we spent some time with as well. This its an interesting character that Zina described as kind of snake like. He has a tattoo of a Tiger on his forehead and we asked him about it and he told us he had received that spirit. Zina explained that some of the Buddhists will go through a ceremony to receive these demonic spirits into there bodies so that they gain the power of that demon. You could see that as we spoke of love and expressed those sorts of things he went into a coma type of state where he was just completely out of it. Clearly you can see some spiritual principalities at work in this individual. Glad we were able to see him again, I could see a lot of ministry potential in him.
After finishing with Khun Chow I returned to our house only to find Zina teaching some of the kids dance lessons. I started assisting in teaching a little Cha-Cha and the kids came flooding back. We got to begin developing relationships and truly expressing love in Christs name to these children and some of the adults. I feel that the day was very successful for not knowing at all what we were walking into. The Harvest is RIPE here in this village for the person that God places here to reach.
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