Thanksgiving Tree

At the beginning of February we started our stewardship series. It was a good time to remember, as a congregation, to give thanks to God for all that he has done in the past year. We had a bare tree at the front of the church and during the service and put a flower shaped card on all the chairs. I hadn't told people what the bare tree was doing at the front of the church until I invited people to write prayers and words of thanksgiving on the cards and to place them on the tree. It was amazing how the cards transformed the tree! There was much to give God thanks for. At the end of the service the children brought their cards in that they had made in Sunday school and also placed them on the tree.

After the night service we put the tree in the foyer and now everytime I pass it through my week I see how pretty it is and am reminded to give thanks. It literally brings a smile to my face.

Thailand

My excuse for not blogging for awhile is that I was on a mission trip to Thailand!!

This was my first 'real' mission trip. I have been overseas before and I have been overseas as a representative of the church but I have never been to such remote areas before. I have to admit that although I enjoy learning about other cultures and trying new foods I still like the comforts of my own bed! I am not a fan of 'roughing it' or camping....

We started the trip in comfort. Our team of 8 flew from Adelaide on Singapore airlines; which is my favourite airline. We spent two nights in Singapore, getting to know each other and enjoying the sights of Singapore, and then flew to Chiang Mai.

That was where the 'rubber hit the road'. We learned quickly that seat belts aren't as important in Thailand, and that sitting in the back of a ute was part of everyday life. We had to get used to the dogs, chickens and ducks that wandered around the village and the roosters that formed an impromptu choir at 4am every morning. Squat toilets, rice at every meal and the daily community announcements at 6am were reminders that home was a long flight away.

However, as we started to make friends with the people we stayed with and the people in the villages we visited the culture shock diminished. We were amazed by the hospitality of people and their willingness to invite complete strangers into their homes. When we visited a village of "yellow leaf people" we realised how different we were as some the children were visibly shaking when we entered their homes. Even with uncertainty, they still welcomed us.

This trip helped me to realise something about mission that I hadn't thought of before. Mission trips aren't about building things. Often I hear about mission trips where schools or churches or houses are built and there is almost an expectation that a mission team will report back with an accomplishment of a finished building. In Thailand we helped to build a church but, it turned out, that wasn't the main point of the trip. I felt the most important thing we did while in Thailand was to continue to build relationships with our partners in Thailand and to offer encouragement and support to the Pastors and leaders of those partnerships.

Relationship building isn't a tangible outcome like building a church so it's harder to report back to the church what the team has done while in Thailand. What I saw in Thailand were leaders and Pastors doing their best to respond to the call that God had placed on their lives. They encouraged other leaders and people in remote villages with very little support and encouragement for themselves. They faithfully serve God and serve people but it is lonely to be in ministry in Northern Thailand where there aren't many Christians and there are many varied religious beliefs. As a team we were able to worship with the leaders and Pastors as well as the people in the villages. We gave them words of encouragement and listened to their ministry experiences. We laughed and cried, we sang songs of praise to God and we prayed. I think this is where our partnership really makes a difference.

It's amazing how quickly friendships are formed while on a mission trip. When you take into consideration language barriers, comfort zone barriers and cultural barriers you might assume friendships are hard to form. However, when your barriers are down and you are open to God's leading then what would normally seem a block to friendships forming actually help form friendships. One morning I was with a woman who didn't speak English and being from a small village, didn't speak fluent central Thai.(not that I can speak Thai) She was reading her bible and through a variety of motions asked me to sit with her and join her bible study. She would show me what she was reading then I would try to recognise the book in her index and then try to find the correlating book in my bible. When I found the book I thought was the one she was reading I would then double check by looking at how many verses were in the chapter she was reading. If they matched I hoped we were reading the same verses!

This may not be as practical as building a church but the memories and the friendships formed are exciting. It is the partnership we have between our church in Adelaide and the churches and home church in Thailand and the people in the villages that will have a Kingdom impact. We came home changed people. We learned things about ourselves we didn't know, we found inner strength we didn't know we had and we learned to trust in God, perhaps more than we had before. We went there thinking we would bless others and yet we found we were the ones being constantly blessed.