The Present Resolution

Well, word back from Satit Kaset, the school to which I applied back at the end of May has been a long time coming. During the past 10ish days while I was enjoying a wonderful time of community, encouragement & service at Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp, I was sent an e-mail from the school's administration. It turns out that, during the lengthy process of my application procedure (delays, lost documents requests & all), Satit Kaset had filled the position that I had been applying for, and Ajarn Parichart (the second administrator with whom I was in contact) informed me that there no longer were any open positions at their school.

To boil that paragraph down into a more potent, compact form, it looks like the Lord has closed the door for my return to Thailand until further notice, and that He indeed has plans for me to continue onward in His service within the realm of this hemisphere.

Thanks for all of your prayers. It, actually, is encouraging to me & exciting to know that I can now start working on pursuing a definite direction until He whisks me away to another random assignment whenever He does will :)

Those of you in Thailand, I miss you much & I will continue to do so; the same holds true for my American compadres. My fellow Canadians: I look forward to advancing the Kingdom's borders alongside you as we march together in this land with the Lord at our lead.

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.

Fast Forward / Rewind

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Today marks the beginning of the end of my time at GES. It is the first day of the last month of my time here, it seems. It also marks the first of my eight remaining weeks in Southeast Asia before returning to Canada… though for how long, only God knows at present.


Let’s rewind… … …

My last official update left us all in the lurch, not knowing if my future would contain another year at GES or not. If you’ve been an avid fan of my blog, you pretty much know how that’s all turned out. To save all of you from needless internet surfing, I’ll do my best to distill the events of the past two weeks.

The day after writing my last letter, I went and met with my fellow leaders in the church plant mission. I left the details of why w were meeting vague, hoping to keep guards down just in case what I was hearing from my employers was true—that being that those with whom I was working were being highly offensive, divisive & hurtful.

The meeting was pretty straight-forward. I asked them about the beginnings of this church plant, where the idea came from, how it all started & what motivations were behind it. When I had planned to meet with them, I thought that we’d talk for maybe a half hour. Man was I wrong. It turned out that the desire for planting a church had been in their hearts for a long time, and that the feasibility of such a plan actually began to materialise about a year ago. One thing led to another, and at the end of the deliberating process, *voila!* we got an active pursuit of a dream in the hearts of some people.

Satisfied with their story and the consistencies it had with other events and reports, I proceeded to ask my brothers & sisters in Christ if they were aware of any word or deed that may have caused offense toward my employers. Initially, they couldn’t think of anything, but after a few minutes, a story was recounted to me wherein some activities or words, they thought, possibly could have been misconstrued as being offensive or disrespectful. They assured me that it never was their intention to be rude or upsetting, and when I asked if they would be willing to meet with the owners of the school to discuss the issue of my provisional return (the provision being I was not allowed to associate with anyone who was part of this church plant, if I wanted to continue working at GES), they expressed an eager desire to do so.

After my meeting with these people, it appeared to me that the issue at hand was the result of some major miscommunication(s) between these two parties. I then contacted my employers, who had flown to the States for a recruiting trip, and asked if they would be willing to discuss this matter & see if some sort of resolution could be reached. The next morning, I read their response which expressed appreciation in my concern for this issue, but that the conditions of my return would not change. Following the Biblical precedent, I urged them a second time to reconsider, mentioning that the issue at hand extended beyond my return, and in fact, its reach touched the very foundations of the Christian Church. I urged them to reconsider the communication black-out in service of promoting unity within the Body of Christ.

My second response from them echoed the first. I was lauded for expressing my concern about this situation and they admired my desire to see reconciliation, but I was told that they felt their position was the most spiritual one to have. They stated that they were working under the premise of Hebrews 12:14, and told me that their condition still stood: I would only be welcome in the GES 2009-10 family if I severed all associations with the Christians who were working to plant this church in Nonthaburi.

My hand was thus forced. I had no recourse but to turn down the terms of my contract. I could not, in good conscience, willingly dissociate myself from other Christians for the purpose of keeping my job. The choice was simple: Keep my job & promote division and discord within the Body, or lose my job and stand on the side of unity and harmony. I expressed my regret to my employers and told them that I would be more than willing to return to GES if they expressed a desire to work toward reconciliation within the greater Church.


The Fallout

As it stands, the reality of my termination at GES has shed new light into my current surroundings. The library catalogue software that the school purchased for over $3k USD in September, and that I’ve been furiously labouring on/with for the past 4 months, I’ve been told, will likely never graduate to a status of “fully operational.” In light of this, my goal of cataloguing the entire English library at GES has shifted toward an attainable goal before I leave: catalogue the entire non-fiction collection, so that at least the software could be used by students to locate research resources & titles in the library. Currently, as I’ve previously stated, there isn’t even an old-school version of a catalogue anywhere that anyone can find, so students end up struggling to find books on topics, assisted only by the librarian’s scant recollections of the several thousand books within the four book-lined walls. When the non-fiction section has a completed catalogue, students then will at least have some sort of method to search the library beyond staring blankly at the dozen or so shelves of random titles.

My impending end at GES also bears implications in the IT world on campus. The dreams I had of setting up network accounts & internal groupware services for staff & students will not be realised. The gigabit backbone connecting the main office to the school buildings will also probably never become reality, which in turn limits the effectiveness of the copious improvements I’d made to the school’s network environment. And, although I’ve established a couple of really slick WSUS servers—one for office workstations & one for the discreet-network computer lab, these services inevitably need a look-over every once in a while, not to mention the other various acronyms established this year: AD & GP, DNS & WINS, SharePoint search services, DHCP, RIS/WDS, PXE & TFTP—and the more common things like firewall settings, Antivirus health monitoring, hardware & software maintenance, etc. My hope is to leave the network(s) with as much extended features as I can while also making the environment as maintenance-free as possible (who knows what type of IT strengths the school will employ next year or 5 years from now?)


Conclusions

I’m sad that my time at GES is coming to an end, but I knew from the beginning that this was the inevitable outcome—if not this year, then next. In its current state, GES will never become an institution that generates careers. It has the potential, but it would need the leadership & vision to see such an outcome materialise.

What I will miss the most in 26 days, after we see the final day of this year’s term culminate, will be my students. I will miss the young, vibrant minds; the “I’m better than you” rebellious thorns-in-the-side; the unmotivated; the under-challenged; the overwhelmed and most of all, the curious way that these students always seem to want to hang out with their teachers after school. Sadly, I will probably miss out on the development of those new Christians & the gentle nudging of those newly interested toward the amazing thing that we call relationship with Jesus. But who knows? Maybe God will have me back here in September?

I can’t yet say.

Love's Labours Lost?

I officially am writing this letter for your reading enjoyment the day after Valentine's Day, and in all honesty, the contents herein may actually have a dash or two of love sprinkled about. But, enough of introductions: let's get to the meat.


Future Considerations

Well, it has been two weeks since my last update, and as I mentioned in that letter, there would be a good chance that I would be able to tell you what will be happening to me in 2009. Unfortunately, as my relationship with ministry in Thailand perpetually seems to be, there isn't simple, straight-forward answer. :)

Our offers of contract extension were to be given out at the beginning of this past week, and to my chagrin, I was away from campus attending a library automation conference for the first half of the week, which really only delayed the inevitable. When I returned to GES, I asked our English administrator, Michelle, what the scoop was with me. Quickly, she informed me that there indeed was an offer for my return to GES on the table, but she stated that it came some provisions. We met on Thursday to discuss what these provisions were, and it turned out to be one of the three fears I had anticipated. The provision was that I could return to GES in the same position as I occupy currently, provided that I sever all ties with the church plant dealie that I was working with. *Uugh.*


Politics

Here's a little more information, for those of you who'd like the elucidated version. The people who had started up this church plant used to attend the church in which the owners of GES hold leadership positions. The origins of the church plant stem from a small group that began as a ministry from this church. As the small group grew in numbers and depth, the church's original idea of constantly changing where the group met became unfavourable, so this small group asked the church if it could meet at one place. The original answer was one of approval, and due to the stability of location and meeting time, this small group began to grow even more until the church leadership decided that the group was big enough to be split into two small groups. The group, however, didn't want to divide, so as the church re-organised this part of its congregation, the group as a whole decided to continue meeting as a group of believers independent of the church's ministry.

At the same time that this was happening, there apparently were some pretty unpleasant church politics simmering in the background. I heard stories of how members of the church were doing and saying things to people of this small group that made them feel unwelcome & condemned—in fact, so much so that I saw some people pushed to tears over the way they were being made to feel by members of the church. As a result of the way they were feeling, many members of this small group started to attend other congregations scattered around Bangkok & even into the provinces while still meeting as a collective whole on Friday evenings for worship and Bible study.

It had been on the heart of many of the members of this small group to start an outreach ministry in the communities where they lived. They recognised the huge mission field that was around them and were compelled to do something about it after I had made a random comment one night saying, "Wow, those are a lot of really good plans." Later, I was told that my comment was interpreted as "You sure talk a lot, but are you going to do something about it?"—something that I never had intended, but I guess happens when conversing to someone through a second language!

Because of my inadvertent prompting, the small group came to an agreement that it would be a profitable decision to turn their small group into a community church—one where people would be able to come and share life together at any time of the day: a church whose doors were rarely ever locked. And that's precisely what they did.


Miscommunication(s)?

We now need to put this church plant into the proper light. The church that where many of these people had come from recently suffered a painful church split where the brother of GES's owner took a large portion of the congregation & also decided to make their own church somewhere. I'm not exactly sure what the timeline was for the event surrounding the church split, but I know that it occurred in the recent past. When the leadership of the church again saw a second group of its members leaving, it immediately perceived it as a personal attack, which I believe was an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Compounding this understanding were the events that surrounded my (and the king's) birthday weekend. Members of this small group had asked GES teachers to come with them to visit Lopburi & do some ministry activities with the church up in that province because it was a long weekend. We had been asked at the beginning of November if we wanted to go. It just so happened that a week or so later, the church from which these people had come declared that weekend to be the celebration of its 40-year anniversary. The GES owners suggested to our administrator to maybe have some of the staff come & help out. Unfortunately, the manner in which they presented the notion led our administrator to believe that this was an optional "would be nice to do" activity, so when she told us at a staff meeting, this was how she presented it to the staff. Things now turned ugly when the church leadership discovered that the members of the "contentious" small group had taken 6 GES teachers with them out of the city on the same weekend as their 40th anniversary celebrations. Again, the church leadership perceived this as a defiant attack against the church, which I'm pretty sure wasn't the case.

In retaliation, the owners of GES decided to forbid the children of one of the families in this small group from continuing in their classes until they paid more money, for the owners give their church members something like a 25% discount. This, in turn, upset the church plant community, who went to the school owners to try & reason/understand what was going on. From what I've been told, this meeting was anything productive, as both sides ended up hurting & insulting each other and the meeting ended with people walking angrily out of the room.

The tensions and problems have now progressed to the point where the school has told its Thai staff that they are forbidden to associate with members of this church plant under penalty of losing their jobs. I at first didn't believe this when I heard it, but it seems to hold some weight, since the same provision has now been extended to me—a member of this church plant who only recently has caught wind of these underlying problems.


My Desire

My desire in this situation is to see reconciliation and restoration of unity between all believers in the Body. Unfortunately, when I asked if the owners would be willing to meet with me & the "contentious" small group, I was told that it was out of the question. In all honesty, I'm confident that the whole situation lies in misunderstanding of events & defensiveness due to previous hurts—in both parties. But what do I do when my existence in Thailand is contingent on forsaking associations with a group of Christians who have upset my bosses—knowingly or not? I mean, if I say "no" to coming back, I throw away all of the foundational work that I have done with my ministry at GES _and_ with the discipleship I've started to enter into with the leadership of this church plant (by the way, my reservations and uncertainness with the members of this congregation have since evaporated due to a new openness that has flowered in the past two weeks. It's an openness that I can accredit only to God, seeing as it's engrained into Thai culture to keep dirty laundry and short-comings buried as deep as possible. Then again, is that really Thai culture, or is it inherent to the human condition?). If I say "yes" to coming back without investigating/trying to promote reconciliation, I submit myself to an unethical use of power whose goal is anything but noble, and in so doing, I abandon part of the body of Christ because someone tells me "Don't associate with them, or else."

My resolve is to investigate the matter & see if there indeed is anything that can be done to promote unity within the Body. If I discover that resentment, bitterness and "low-dealings" indeed have been undertaken by members of this church plant and that the motivations for the plant are less than noble, I will exhort them to practise humbleness and seek forgiveness from the church that they came from. If no such motivations are present, I will be compelled to ask the owners or GES again to meet for purposes of reconciliation, as it would then appear that this desire for perpetuated division and persecution is the result of bruised egos. In either case, the premises set by Jesus in Matt 18:15-17 & by Paul in Titus 3:10-11 perforce will be followed.

So what does that mean? It means that if the church plant is in the wrong and has no desire for reconciliation, then I wash my hands of them & I return to GES for another year. It also means that if this church plant indeed is willing to seek restoration, but if the owners of GES are not, my choice is limited to the adherence of the Biblical decree: I would no longer be willing to associate myself with GES and its authorities due to a poor spiritual standing. And then, there's outcome number three: if both parties are willing to cooperate & be united as a common Body of Christ (whether meeting in one place or severally), then I would be coming back to serve another year at GES.

So there you have it: two outcomes have me returning for another year, and one has me coming home. This decision will be made as late as Friday, when the owners expect my response to the job offer.

Please keep me & these two parties in prayer. I beg you. Petition the Lord for His will to be done.

Thanks.

Another Day; Another Week; Another Month

Time is a funny thing. It seems to accelerate the longer you experience it, and living/working at GES is no exception. 2009 is already 1 month down—that's 8% of the year already, and I swear that I was just in Canada last weekend!

All that being said, there have been quite a few interesting things happening over this past month & especially in the past week. Here's the condensed version:

Library & IT stuff

With the addition of my new helper, Ann, who's volunteering with is from Taber, the book cataloguing project has begin to take off with a bit more oomph. Alone, I was averaging 40 title records per day; with her help the past two weeks have seen 450 & 300 title records created! Definitely an improvement, but I don't think it will be enough to complete the digital catalogue by April.

I discovered, in my tinkering with our library software, that Phase II of our project—which I thought would be a mindless snap—is actually more involved. Phase II will involve bar-coding every copy of every book in the library, and originally I thought that this meant scanning the ISBN & sticking on a bar code to identify the copy with the title. To my chagrin, it looks like the software also requires a call number to be applied to the book for record-keeping. Thankfully, Ann & I have been working on this already (originally as a method to streamline res-helving for non-/low-level-English speakers, but now a veritable requirement for the database) & the extra step in Phase II should proceed without much pain.

(Warning: nerd alert. Read the following only if you're interested in computers & IT system management)

I'm furthering my knowledge of Microsoft server technology by creating a network-based installation source/image for our workstations via MS's free Windows Deployment Server download. The current version of WDS has been designed for Vista deployment, so there have been a few snags along the way to get an XP image deployed through this solution due to differing bootstraps for the two versions of windows. Today, I finished configuring the PXE server to load WinPE successfully, only to be hampered by PE's 'image capture' utility refusing to recognise my system volumes. Booting PE outside of the image capture configuration, I was able to create an image through the command line with ImageX. My next step(s) in this project will be to create an answer file for the hardware independent image to automatically install itself on remote machines. In the end, my several month "hobby" should make the 90 minute/machine OS & software deployment process complete in 20 minutes per machine (even faster if I'm able multicast... Not sure if WDS supports it though... Maybe Ghost instead).


Church ministry

I actually got a chance to go to the new church plant dealie that I've been asked to work alongside last week. It was a fluke arrangement, since the things that were prohibiting my attendance got rescheduled out of nowhere. I visited the church on Wednesday night for their Bible study & Sunday for the morning service. Here are some details:

• The church is situated in a community close to a huge temple school & a light-industry factory that employs over 200 people. We meet in a small, one-storey house that has four rooms: one for an office, one for services/meeting, one for a guy who needs a place to live to stay in & one for eating/welcoming. The eating/welcoming room is pretty much the atrium for the house, as the front door opens right into it. The hope is to keep the building open & occupied throughout each day for the eventual purpose to have neighbourhood dwellers drop on by whenever they're bored.



• So far, the church seems to have 13 members: the Thai family who started it up (6 people), the pastor & his family (4 more), Aaron, Lorrie (my American compadres from GES in this venture) & myself. We had a planning meeting on how to proceed with the church's mission & vision last week Wednesday, but not much has happened since (almost as if we're all busy already).



• In all honesty, there are a couple of things that make me uneasy about this church plant. 1.) it's a Thai church & although they do an excellent job of translating for us, inevitably there are things that get lost in translation which makes communication & planning a bit more difficult. 2.) This may be related to #1, but I get an uneasy feeling that there is some information—whether to do with the church or concerning the relationship(s) I have among the members of this Thai family, I'm not yet sure—that is being kept from me. I find myself being a little suspicious about something going on that is being deliberately hidden. Now, whether it's because "I shouldn't have to worry about it" or some other non-issue, there nonetheless is something leaking through the body language of certain members that makes me wonder. 3.) I find myself acutely aware that it would be foolish to enter into a working relationship with this church for an extended amount of time if I would be the only native English-speaker. Thankfully, Aaron & Lorrie have been recruited alongside me, but they're even more unsure where 2009 is going to take them than where I find myself when looking forward. The Thai pastor, when preaching last week brought up this very point in his sermon. When Jesus sent out the Seventy to go & preach in His name, proclaiming the Kingdom of God, He sent them out in pairs—never alone. The pastor's comments on this decision resonated with Ecclesiastes 4:11-12, where we're told that there is strength in numbers. In all honesty, I don't think that I could survive in Thailand without some strong sort of English-speaking interaction until I became fluent in Thai...

Students & Relationships

This past few weeks, one of my students in Grade 10 has shown a huge surge of interest in Christianity. His name is Tony, and he's fluent in English, owing to a couple years of elementary schooling in the USA. It's one of those things where you never thought things would happen, really. He said that the reason he started to become interested in Christianity was because of something I had said after a life group (a youth group type thing after school on Thursdays) game about talking to God & having a dynamic relationship with the Creator of the Universe. He asked me this week to pray for him because he wants to find God & experience Him. Pray with me for him, would you? Pray that God would indeed reveal Himself to Tony. That would be awesome.

On the other side of the spectrum, it has become strikingly clear to me that we as a staff have fallen into some bad habits—myself included. I've started to become acutely aware of a certain level of un-edifying gossip passing around from teacher to teacher. It's unfortunate, because such activities do nothing to build community, and I must confess that I also have been party to such activities. Expressing exasperation with certain colleagues to other colleagues just for the sole purpose of venting. Pray that this unhealthy environment would become rectified.


Future considerations

As I've been instructed to proceed in my life as if I were to work with this church plant indefinitely, I submitted an intention to stay for another year at GES. The school was supposed to come back to us with an answer either within 2 weeks of our submitted form or by the 1st of February, whichever was later. I received an e-mail on Friday informing me that these decisions would be delayed for another week (for now—that's my pessimistic attitude shining through). One of the conditions for me to stay in 2009 & help with this church plant is being able to stay in Thailand. Legally, in order to do that I'd either need to be married to a Thai girl, or I'd have to have some sort of employment. And there ain't no Thai girl in the works (or at least that I know of yet. Ha!). GES really is my only shoe-in, as all schools now require an education degree at very least (I'd get excepted at GES because of being hired before the law "came into effect") for employment, and my degree isn't a very attractive one in the eyes of most other employers. So, one of the big factors on whether I stay another year or not will—hopefully—reveal itself before my next update.


Summary

Okay, I'm tapping out. Pray for these things:

• Thank the Lord that Tony's showing interest in Christianity. Pray that God reveals Himself to this Grade 10 student


• Pray for revealed information & solidified intentions with this church plant: where they want to go & what they have in mind.


• Pray for healthy relationships & constructive communication patterns among staff—and all relationships, really.


• Pray that God would make it 100% evident on whether or not He wants me here another year or not in the next week or so through this re-hiring decision.


• Pray for my back! The chair that I use in the library is broken, and my back has started to notice this in the past week. It has started to vocalise its protest by means of sharp pains that occur usually in my lower back, yet they're not isolated there: some days the pain's much higher up my spine. You would think that this would be an easy fix: get a new chair, but practically all the unused chairs on campus right now are broken, and the school I doubt would be willing to spring for a new one (we need approval from the school's owners now to spend 6 baht [that's 18 cents] whenever we need to print something for class in colour).

I think that's it. Thanks, again, for reading what I thought was going to be short. Another installation with life-changing news by Valentine's Day!

January Oh-nine

Hello avid readers!

It's hard for me to believe that January's practically 2/3 over, and that only 2 weekends ago, I was braving -40°C weather. There was a bit of a story with my return flight, but in order to read that, you're going to have to check out the post before this one.

Since I've been back to Thailand, there have been a few developments:

• The church that I've been asked to partner with began its first service on 1 January. I have yet been able to go due to my other service obligations at the ex-pat church where I attend (I mix sound once every three weeks). I've heard reports, though, from my friends (a couple from the states—the guy who's teaching high school math in my lieu) that seem optimistic and at the same time, concerned about the sheer volume of activities that the Thai leadership has expressed a desire to undertake. Owing to my absence at the beginning of January, I won't be able to check out this church next week either (sound mixing duty), but I hope that the opportunity arises sooner than later.


• I had a chance to go to a Thai wedding on the day that I landed in Thailand. The wedding saw a couple of my friends—Dominic and Sherri—tie the knot on the 6th of January. It was a pretty cool experience, notwithstanding my severe jetlag, and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to celebrate with them. Sherri's parents are in North Carolina, and they couldn't make the trip out to Thailand for the wedding. Perhaps they'll have another celebration when the new couple moves across the pond later this year?


• Last week saw my teaching career at GES all but cease & my library duties redouble their temporal allotments. After the typical Tuesday staff meeting that I sat through a few short hours after I had landed back in the BKK, I was called into the administrator's office along with the grades 1 & 2 teachers for a second, smaller meeting. In that meeting, we were told that the school thought it best if my classes were delegated to others & my efforts in cataloguing & organising the library become the primary focus of my weekly activity. It was sad to leave the students last week although I still do teach one class (grade 7). On the upside, however, there has been a huge increase in my library productivity since this shift. Because the computers classes are always scheduled 30 minutes (or less) after my last library check-out session, it becomes very difficult to get into a rhythm for the short "free time" that used to exist between my services. Cutting out my teaching hours has effectively doubled my productivity in cataloguing & data entry. It's great. Great, though, might still not be enough to cut it: there are thousands of library books that need to be catalogued & which need new shelf tags (the old ones have since faded, and the typical letter classification for book type: 'E' 'JE' 'F' 'JF' etc. Confuses the kids who try to do their best to keep the library in alphabetical order, so I’ve devised a new classification system for the fiction collection). With the few weeks that are left, I'm not sure if the records will be completed—not to mention creating "accounts" for all staff & students who will be using the system too...


• This past Monday, I received a new helper! Her name's Ann & she hails from Taber. It's a huge blessing & relief to have someone with a strong command of the English language work alongside me in the library. She's been instrumental in helping with the cataloguing process, and we're coming up to the point where our combined productivity will double my throughput alone. She's a quick learner & is good, not only in finding the fine details, but also in understanding systems & the importance thereof. It's like she's been a God-send (which, perhaps she is, seeing that she came to volunteer with the school in December). Combined, we're getting close to reaching 80 completed title records a day for the non-fiction section. That's pretty good, considering that half of the library's operating time is filled with students running around & checking out books, with the mundane upkeep of re-shelving books and, lest we forget, checking in books also.


• Along with Ann, my other helper, Mrs. Lorena, a Filipino mother/missionary has continued to help me, but now the school has given her more working hours toward the library project which is also a huge blessing. She's been a trooper in labelling & covering the books that Ann & I have been cataloguing. We're working a veritable assembly line in the library these days. It's awesome.


• We were asked two weeks ago by the school to fill out forms of intent for the upcoming year. These forms are supposed to help the school plan & decide how to staff the next couple of terms after this one expires. The word on the street (and from our administrator) is that we should be hearing from the owners regarding job offers by the 1st of February. It's a huge time of transition right now as all the staff members are weighing the options & trying to decide what 2009 will have in store for them.


• My bent on 2009 goes somewhat like this: While in Canada over Christmas, during one of my prayer sessions with God, we were talking about what my future portends. I expressed my anxiety and uncertainty with pretty much everything, telling Him that I didn't know how long He wanted me to stay in Thailand (How long is "indefinitely" anyways?), and if I were to stay for longer than June / July this year, how I would find lodging & finances required for living, what exactly He wanted me to do with the church plant, how far to take it, and on & on & on... Instead of answering my questions the way that I was hoping He would (which seems typical for God), He said this, an excerpt from my prayer journal:

[Holy Spirit:] Trust in the Lord and He will give you the desires of Your heart
Do not let your heart be troubled Trust in God; trust also in me. In My Father's house there are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you.


[Me:] You go ahead of me to prepare a place for me.

[HS:] "It doesn't matter if you know what I want you to do. All I require of you is that you walk in faith the path that I have laid before you. Trust in Me; trust that I know where I am taking you. Do not fear, for I am with you and I will make you great & prosperous. Only, be sure to walk in the way that I have set before you: walk in it and do not tread to the left or the right. Let me worry about where you are going. You, be mindful of where you put your next step. I have called you to help with this church plant, now be faithful in my call. Do not worry about how long you will be there: just be there as long as I have ordained you to be there."

[Me:] What, then, do I do about May, Father? What is the step after this one?

[HS:] "That will be revealed to you in due time. Only be mindful of what I have set before you at this current time. Let me worry about where I am taking You."

Make no plans until February. Proceed as normal. Plan as if you are returning in May, but make no solid commitment to any plan until after January ends. Who knows? Maybe something will surface that you are not currently aware of.

And that, my friends & family, is what I'm working with. It strikes me as a bit providential that this prayer was written on 28 December, and when I arrive back in Thailand, I'm told that job offerings will be on Feb 1. Who knows? Maybe God will have me here another year? All I know is that He wants me to be serving Him in this time—and that "this time" is in His hands.

Things that you could pray for:

• Pray for the staff @ GES as all of us are considering the future. Pray that we be mindful of what God wants us to do & that we need only be responsible for following the step that He immediately lays before us—that the rest is in His hands until He goads us otherwise.


• Pray for my G. 11 student, Kitty, who's leaving on Monday (ish) to live Brooklyn until August (or thereabouts). She's a professing Christian, but one of the difficulties of being a Thai Christian is that spiritual growth / discipleship is scant at best. Pray that she would get connected to a good, solid Christian community while she lives in NY.


• Pray for this new church plant that God wants me working in/with. Pray that wisdom would be granted to the leadership & that above all things, the Lord would be followed. Pray for unity & harmony above believers.


• Pray that we, as a Christian staff, wouldn't slip into the "game over" mentality with our 8 remaining weeks of school. Pray for our unity, for our fervour & for our lives to blaze bright as living examples of Christ, not merely resounding gongs or clanging cymbals.


• Pray that the Lord's direction for my 2009 would be blatantly evident in February: if He desires for me to stay in Thailand for 2009 or beyond, that all those intimidating hurdles would be jumped / all those imposing doors would be opened. Conversely, if He wants me to return to Canada (or elsewhere), pray that that step would also be illuminated clear as day in a desert.

Thanks, all, for your interest & prayers. They're greatly appreciated!

A January Tidbit

This officially is the first adventure of 2009. Missed flight! First class! Rerouted to LA! Free hotel (please may that happen)! It is pretty exciting to think that all this happened because of a small flame failing to ignite in an engine on the tarmac of Edmonton's International Airport in the wee hours of this morning. Something about it being -40°C or other… And on top of this, the clock in the room where I was staying got re-set with a different time, throwing me off my schedule be an hour! That was odd... Thank you, Lord, that my mom woke me up because I'd be willing to bet that even if my own alarms had woken me, I'd be poking around, biding my time during that hour before my plane was supposed to take off completely unaware that I was 60 minutes behind schedule. The great irony is that it didn't really matter in the end, seeing as the airplane only left YEG a full two hours after it was scheduled to depart.

And here I am, in seat 2A on Northwest Airlines flight 315 to Los Angeles for a 17ish hour layover before I fly out—a day later—to Tokyo for my connecting flight into Bangkok. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of this delay is in the grand scheme of things, but there usually tends to be a reason that floats to the surface sometime later in this progression of time called life. I have never been to LA before, so it will be an experience to say the least. Is my rerouting a need to fill a gap or to interact with someone while I layover in Los Angeles? Was there something that was going to happen on my other schedule that I wasn't supposed to experience? Is there something that I am supposed to be missing in Bangkok? Not sure. Yet. Maybe one day I'll find out, but at this juncture, all I know is that I know that God is doing His thing: and when He works, ain't nothing gonna stand in his way.

I am going to be crazy tired for my friends’—Dominic and Sherri—wedding on Tuesday. Sheesh! I mean, talk about a busy day: first I get in at 12:30—all things going to schedule—then I struggle through customs & return to GES probably by 2 at the earliest, 3 at the latest. That morning, we have staff meeting at 7:30 am. My two computers classes plus library stuff. Maybe Thai class? The wedding at 6 & the party until who knows when? It's going to be a full day, especially when there's a games day on Friday which may or may not interfere with my classes... And then Teachers' Day the following Friday! The Grade 7 & 9 classes will be sooooo far behind if the time allotted in class is for instruction. Methinks we're going to have to hash out something—some sort of monthly plan of attack—to see if these classes can stay in line with each other (parity or something... Or not. I mean, who says that each class must have the same level of instruction? I know that it's kinda gay for those students who get less [or for those who get more, depending on your perspective. Ha!] instruction, but the way that the schedules have worked out this year really doesn't lend itself very well to instructional parity. Oh well.).

It's going to be an interesting year back, Lord, and You've decided to start it off with a bang :). I'm not 100% sure why my brain is screaming & throbbing at this point in time, but I trust that You've got it looked after & that it may merely be a result of fatigue or dehydration or both.

Father, I pray that you help me to be faithful with the resources that you've given me & the relationships that you've afforded me. Let me not squander them, but give me the wisdom & the direction to take these things and develop them for your glory. I pray for reconciliation between Sparky & I; for an open & curious spirit to overwhelm Oom; for opportunities to lead & develop the staff & the students that wouldn't become nullified due to lack of interest or lack of priority. Father, I ask you emphatically for wisdom with how to proceed in this church plant ordeal. I'm going to wait on you, as you've instructed, but in this time of waiting, let your wisdom steep my brain & pickle my thoughts so that all of the information that comes at me (and has already done so) can be processed through the distinct flavour of your loving wisdom & discernment. Jesus, I ask that you bring reconciliation & cooperation & understanding & restitution in the relationships surrounding this church plant project & NBC. I pray that William turns out to be an excellent resource & willing servant in the advancement of Your Kingdom. May his excitement / passion and vision not be swallowed up, but Lord, may you be so gracious as to use him as a catalyst to enliven those Christians around him.

My brain is sore—as are my legs—and I'm tired (not to mention that the battery on this contraption has sunk below 70% & I don't have access to my charger until further notice). So, that being said, Lord, I pray that you take my life & take my will & take my all and make it Yours. Give me the grace & strength to live in subjugation to Your will.

I's loves ya's.