Khonkaen, Thailand -- Thank the Lord for the fruitfulness from God’s hand! Many times we think we need to have a lot of things before we can serve God: We have to finish our degree; we have to make a lot of money first, get knowledge, buy a car or a computer, etc.  All of this is the way people generally think. Then we call out to God so we can get all these things. 

But did you ever think that God, not us, prepares everything that’s needed for His own work? Then God just waits for us to simply listen to His voice and involve ourselves in following His commands with all of our strength. Because when we do our best, God will do the rest Himself.

This is what God has been teaching me as I’ve been serving Him alongside my brothers and sisters at the Oikos Church of the Nazarene. We went together to serve and evangelize with the Khonkaen Church of the Nazarene to build relationships with the Sa-at Community. In the future, the Khonkaen Church of the Nazarene might move into this community that has no church yet. I thank the Lord for the various activities that He led to share the blessing of the Gospel.  Such as:

  • helping to clean the community child development center which we would use for the activities;
  • going out to witness for Jesus and to invite the neighbors to come; 
  • playing games, giving out snacks, prizes, and performing a skit the youth prepared;
  • sharing Pastor Panom’s testimony (my Pastor) and distributing used clothing to the poor in the community.

 
Wow! That was hard work. It was the first time we ever canvassed a neighborhood like this. We had no experience at all with organizing a ministry team or finding financial resources.  We couldn’t do it because everyone on our team was too busy.  Because most of us have jobs or studies, we only see each other on Sundays in order to prepare for any ministry tasks. 

But I turned around and looked at one thing we all shared in common: with schedules, strength and some money—we offered to God all we had, together, even though it looked like so little. But God’s heart received all of it and enabled our team to be able to use our limited resources to bear fruit—valuable fruit!

God also gave us wisdom to solve problems. For if we looked only at the problems, we could see only more problems. Instead, if we didn’t focus too much on the problems, we could see past our own interests and see God and His leading. And we could see God is always the answer to the problems. Especially for this trip. Our team faced so many problems from the moment we started planning this trip two years ago. Though we prayed and prepared, the problems never stopped coming at our team. 

First, our field Nazarene Youth International (NYI) leader, Belinda Allder, got sick. Then several of us, including myself, lost our jobs. Our local NYI president was physically attacked and our pastor was in a motorcycle accident. But in all these experiences we learned together that God helps us through our problems.

The biggest obstacle was that the coordinator from Khonkaen Church of the Nazarene, who was helping to organize our trip, was not able to be present during the time we finally were able to go because he had urgent business in Malaysia. And due to the political unrest in Bangkok, we had not been able to travel on the original date. But if we didn’t go soon, we knew we never would. In the end, we just went, ready to pray and ask for God’s leading. We had no idea what we would encounter next!

And God was so lovely! He prepared a new coordinator that worked with us to follow the plan we had already prepared. Neither I nor anyone on the team was too tired because we each received God’s peace in our hearts. That peace was the power that drove us through to finish the work.
 
Praise God for His greatness! He always stayed ahead of us. There were approximately 70 people who came to hear the Gospel, and 11 of them (mostly children) chose to receive Jesus as their personal Savior. As they prayed, my own heart was beating so fast. God seemed to be telling me that He is preparing laborers in this field! That the Sa-at Community was going to have a church! God was building His dwelling place soon through my faith and hope.

What I learned from this time of ministry gives me confidence that God is always with us just like He promised to all of us when He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Thank the Lord for strength of body, heart, surrender and prayer that we shared together in the Oikos Mission.
Until next time in 2011, may God bless you all!

-- Translated by Lisa Lehman.