Leap(?)

Hi everyone / random blog-reading people:

I'm posting this message because I believe that you who read this blog are praying types of people & that all of you—in one way or another—may have some interest in my Thailand activities.

A few weeks ago, one of my former associates from GES who now teaches at Satit Kaset—an International Program school based on the Kasetsart University campus in Bangkok—informed me of an open "assistant librarian" position with the school. He told me that I would probably be a good fit, that the school was a great place to work (from his fresh perspective, having just been hired in May) and that I should seriously consider applying for the job.

Being a person who likes to keep his options open, I figured that there would be no harm in me applying to Satit Kaset and seeing what (if anything) would come from it. A little more than a week ago, I e-mailed my resume to one of the school's Ajarns / administrators, telling her that I was interested in the open position, and I just received word back from her this morning. The school seems interested in my skills, and would like to further pursue the possibility of my employment at Satit Kaset: they asked me to fill out an application form & also send them copies of my academic transcripts. If they continue to like what they see, I may be up for an interview & possibly an offer of employment back in Bangkok this fall.

Here is where the subject of this e-mail gets its purpose, and here is where I need your help. Over the past 6 weeks, God has been making it clear to me & I, in turn, have been making it clear to God that I should be (and, indeed am) willing to work for Him wherever, whenever, however He would like me to be. This, of course, also includes the possibility of me giving up all of the plans & goals that I have had for my life—even the plans I used to hold so strongly—in North America (which every person holds, since nobody starts off assuming that they will be leaving their home-country & living their life somewhere else) and pursue ministry / work in Thailand. My request, therefore, is for your prayers. I ask and even urge you to pray for me at this time. Pray that God would give me wisdom and discernment; that He would continue to guide me where He would want me to be, and that I, in turn, would be willing & humble enough to listen and follow Him wherever it is that He may take me.

Right now, I can't say with 100% certainty that I will be returning to Thailand: that, still, is in the palm of God's hands. There still is an application process through which I need to pass before getting a job with Satit Kaset. If it is God's will that I return, though, I would ask that you guys pray with me to see this happen (or, if God so has in mind, another better opportunity). If, however, the Lord has other plans for my future, I would ask that you join with me in prayer also, so that God would make it clear to me in this situation by closing this door, breaking off this opportunity and showing me a new direction that my life should take.

It's an interesting time for me right now, one that honestly has me a bit scared since even I cannot see the ledge to where God is asking that I jump. Nonetheless, I know for certain that He is saying, "Jump!" Right now is that interesting moment where faith is tested; and where God must move to catch me in this leap of faith and place me on the very ledge He desires me to walk along.

Thank you all very much for your prayers in this situation & in this time. I'll be certain to let you all know where I end up landing.

Humbly in the service of our Glorious Father, who knows all things & works all things both to His good and to our own, I remain.

April

It's Palm Sunday. I just finished preaching at the church plant which I've been involved in. I'm emotionally drained and I feel like finding a diversion or an escape from reality. So that being said, this update will probably be short (a muffled "Hooray!" can be heard from the audience, no?).

I leave to return to Canada on the 26th of April. The last day of classes was on Friday last week, which has left this past week to be filled with library cataloguing minus the student interaction. Saying my goodbyes was hard. I will greatly miss my students. My two-year compatriot, Jonathan and I both had to choke back tears as we bid our Grade 11 students farewell. After having said goodbye to all my students from each grade level, I briskly walked to my bedroom & proceeded in a small emotional collapse. The only thought that was in my brain, after knowing that that day marked the end of my regular interaction with those kids, was: "We could have done more." Each thought turned to asking why I didn't get up earlier; why I didn't stay up later & push off my time-insensitive work activities until later in the evening, when there weren't students around. I asked myself why I didn't try to interact with people or perform some sort of outreach ministry on Saturdays or Sundays; why I had gone to the beach that one weekend; why I pray more; love more; serve more. Looking back, I can see my emotionally-overloaded brain responding as it should when the reality of separation from those one loves becomes blatantly apparent. The worst of it, though, wasn't the separation from my Christ-believing students—it was knowing that there were still so many that were left outside the kingdom. It still breaks my heart. All I can do, though, is trust that God will use others in the Kingdom to reach those destined for salvation and hope that indeed every one of them belongs to that group.

This year has been a difficult one for me in terms of relationships. I've watched as a handful of my friendships with people—staff and students alike—have evaporated over what amounts to nothing more than bad communication (up to the point of a refusal to communicate). I'll spare the dramatic details in each case, save for the fact that only one has started toward the road of reconciliation. One of the others has told me to not talk to them for at least a year; another has told me that I was never their friend to begin with. How these things happened, I still am uncertain; all I know is that one-way relationship repair is about as possible as illumination from a broken light bulb.

I'm ready to come home. I cherish the relationships that I have & I know that they will remain persistent in my life. I know that I have impacted people in my time here. I know that I have encouraged people both in coming toward an initial relationship with Christ and in growing closer to Jesus in an already established relationship.

I have one more week of full-time work in the library, and I believe that my goal of cataloguing the non-fiction collection indeed will come to fruition. Next week Wednesday, I'm flying to Taiwan for a 10-day excursion on that island before returning to Thailand, packing up my things & jetting to Canada.

There have been talks about the church I'm working with to have me sponsored through the Mennonite Brethren missions' board in Thailand, but as I said in my previous post, the pragmatic road-blocks to / the requisites for my return to this country have not vanished. Pray that God's will would be done in the next 4 months of my life and that, in that time, the Lord will make all things clear.

I'm working on having one of my students & friends—in fact, she's a daughter of one of the families in the planted church—come for a visit to Canada in July/August for the purposes of exposing her to Christian community over on this side of the world. Presently, I feel that the Thai Church has incorporated much of the ineffective aspects of Western Christianity's form to the point of—at times—ritualising procedure at the cost of promoting the development of deeper relationships in Christ. The most effective Christian environment that I've ever been a part of has been Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp, and it is to this ministry that I'm hoping to bring this girl for a month. Pray that God would oversee the logistics of this Christian cultural exchange & that it would be a prosperous venture.

Look at that: 200 words shorter! My next update will probably be while in Taiwan and posted during my short return in Thailand.

Penultimatum

Tomorrow marks the penultimate week of the school year here at GES, and it just so happens to coincide with the penultimate week of me teaching at GES (though not the penultimate week of me working here). Things find themselves drawing to a close, and as the ink dries on these final pages, the storyboards for the next chapter start to fill in.

I'll do my best to try & keep this short—I know that verbosity tends to be one of my weaknesses, as far as it comes to the written world. So, let's talk about March.


Work

The past two weeks have been pretty much business as usual: cataloguing the non-fiction collection on the English library, serving students books and teaching Grade 7 computers classes. I've discovered that by using two web browsers while cataloguing (out catalogue database is an SQL-driven web application that uses cookies to store session states & whatnot, and it's been designed in such a way that multiple instances of the same browser will only end up confusing the app, sometimes completely "crashing" the session & losing all your work.), I've been able to ramp up my cataloguing productivity by about 50%. In January, I was happy at completing 40 book records in a day & particularly proud of myself if I hit the 80 mark (our books' spine labels come on sheets of 40, which is the reason why multiples of 40 are my milestones). As is improved my skill, familiarity & efficiency in cataloguing & data collecting, my productivity moved up to an average of about 60/day. Now, mid-March, 80 is my daily target & 120 records is my "proud point." I've been able to ramp up my throughput mostly because of the many obscure books in our collection: the less common the book, the longer it takes for our catalogue to search the 20-odd z39.50 online library database resources that I've configured for record "outsourcing", which inevitably means that I sit idly waiting for results. Now that I've started using multiple browsers, I can leave an obscure title searching in one browser while searching for / cataloguing another title in the second browser. Talk about being a nerd, right? :)


Play

A group of us teachers decided to go and eat at one of the classiest Japanese buffet restaurants in Bangkok last week: Oishi Grande. It costs 750 baht for all you can eat Japanese (sushi, maki, etc. And also the hot foods), Chinese & Italian food. Considering the price, one meal there could have paid for almost three weeks' worth of meals at our local restaurants around the school... But the fare at Oishi Grande was worth every single baht.

I've never before been able to go to a restaurant where you can have as much New Zealand beef tenderloin steak or rib eye steak as I could handle—not to mention the bottomless pit of shrimp, salmon, snow fish, tuna maki, tempura and almost anything else that you could possibly imagine. It's the only restaurant that I've been to that offers an unending supply of brie & Gouda. Amazing. Simply amazing. :) We were thinking of perhaps going again today, but then the financial centre of our brains kicked in & we were reminded that 4 meals at Oishi Grande would end up being over 10% of our monthly incomes. Nevertheless, we'll be going again before we leave...

This past weekend, the high school teachers & I hosted an all-night party with our students which was a good deal of fun. The guys were almost completely absorbed by the 18-player LAN games of Counterstrike, while the girls were either scaring themselves witless by watching scary Thai movies, or they were off in secluded areas talking about things that only girls talk about, I imagine (to be honest, I don't know where they were—I was too busy playing computer games! Ha!)

One of our students from last year, Babe, was able to come & hang out with us which was pretty much awesome. She's one of three students that I've had the pleasure of teaching /spending life with in the past two years who are responsible for bringing the greatest joy into my life. Babe and her boyfriend, Tee (who belongs to the first graduating class from GES ever), belong to the uncommon demographic known as Thai Christians. The sad thing is that they do not have home churches—or even a group of Christian friends with which they can meet regularly & walk together in this thing called Christian life. I was hoping that this weekend would afford a time where I could talk to Babe & Tee & Katak and maybe even Tony about the possibility of meeting up at a neutral location somewhere off of campus to try & give them some semblance of Christian community / discipleship—or at least introduce the idea to them before I leave in April. These four students make up 2/3 of the Christian population either in or associated with GES from grades 10-12, and they comprise 80% of said population that is in Thailand (there's one Christian, Sai, who's now living & studying in Virginia). I'm afraid of the underlying possibility from this observation that this could be the potential reality of Christianity in Thailand.


Church, the Future & Stuff

Last week, I was told by my church-planting partners that the Thai pastor who's part of our group was going to go & meet with the Mennonite missions board in Thailand to see if they would be interested in sponsoring me as a missionary under their covering. I haven't yet heard back about what had happened in that meeting, but I think that eventually I'll hear something.

Given that I won't be returning to GES, the Thai people with whom I've been helping plant a church in the community fervently have been looking for a way to have me stay with them in Thailand and continue the work that they (we) have ahead of us. In all honesty, I can't yet say where I stand on all of this. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I want to serve God wherever He would have me be; I just don't know where He wants me! Pragmatically, I have some large financial obligations in Canada that require my attention, and it would be irresponsible of me to pretend if said obligations did not exist. On the other hand, I know that God is fully capable of fulfilling my financial obligations in whatever way He would like, which means that He could very well work out a way that my debts would be paid off while serving Him over here in Thailand. Further pragmatic concerns involve language & cultural barriers. I'm not fully convinced that a "Farang" outreach missionary would be altogether effective in this country. Thais are (or at least they seem to be) very resistant to alien ideas, but at the same time, they're very accommodating... Which lends itself to producing much lip service & little deep-impact. In order for Thailand to be reached for Christ, it primarily is going to have to come from indigenous outreach activities. Were I to partner with this church for any serious length of time, my role would need to be, therefore, one of equipping, discipling & supporting those who could make real headway on the "front lines."

Given this, here are my current thoughts: I think that the only prudent way for me to return to Thailand and work in partnership with this church would be if I myself had an immediate source of support—a partner of my own who spoke my native language. If I were to return, I would need at least one other person to be operating alongside me in the same (or very similar) capacity—that is, full-time supportive ministry. It would not be prudent for me to come back alone without a full-time, dedicated partner-in-crime with whom I could communicate in the same native language. I would also need some sort of financial arrangement that could satisfy the reality of my financial obligations—both in the current and in future considerations.

I don't know. I leave these things to God. In all honesty, this letter is really the first time I’ve been able to articulate these thoughts with any level of cogency (and look, we're already at 1,400 words!). What I do know is that God has given me an opportunity unlike many other to partner with a group of Thai nationals & begin to meet a dire need within the Christian community in Bangkok & surrounding areas: the need for fellowship & for Christian support. Conversely, I know that I have over $20,000 of student debt that needs reconciliation, and I know that my employability in Thailand is scant at best (the same goes for my employability pretty much anywhere, owing to my educational background). So I find myself stuck... The only thing(s) that I know for certain right now is that I have a plane ticket taking me home on 26 April, and the soonest I would even consider coming back to Thailand wouldn't be until September—and that only if I know this is where God wants me.


Pray for these things. Pray for Christians like Tee, Babe, Katak and Tony who are isolated in a sea of Buddhism. Pray that God's will would be made clear for me & for my future. Pray for the final weeks of school here at GES—for graduation, exams & final report cards. Pray.