J.O Fraser

“James Fraser (well known as J.O. Fraser) was only 22 years old when he left his engineering career and went to China. From the very first time he saw the Lisu tribespeople of Yunnan Province, he was filled with God’s love for them. He spent the rest of his life laboring to bring them the gospel. Breakthrough came only after his partners back home took up the challenge to pray. “I am not asking you just to give ‘help’ in prayer as a sort of sideline, but I am trying to roll the main responsibility of this prayer-warfare on you. I want you to take the burden of these people upon your shoulders. I want you to wrestle with God for them.” The Lisu now have a strong body of believers who are also sending out workers to other groups around them.”

http://www.omf.org/omf/breakthrough/fraser_the_lisu

Wow. Only 22 when J.O Fraser went to China. These days by the time you’ve finished uni, some work experience, Bible College, then ministry experience, most people are in their 30s before they leave for overseas missionary work. I was 32 when we left. In hindsight I wished I’d studied less and gone left sooner.

Guidance, calling and the will of God

Our eldest son following the conductor in his school band

It’s 2am in the morning and I can’t sleep so what better to do than update the blog.

The issues of guidance, calling and the will of God have been at the forefront of our minds as we start making plans t return to Thailand before the end of the year. These are bigs issues and Christians have very differing views.

How does a missionary end up working where they do and what ministry they are involved in. Is it just a matter of seeking/finding/receiving “God’s call”? What’s that anyway? It’s common to hear pastors and missionaries talk about being “called to full time ministry”. But what if you didn’t get a specific call to ministry or a place or people? Does that mean you are off the hook and you can do what you want? Some argue that every single believer is called to do ministry (A Better Way: Make Disciples Wherever Life Happens, p.15 Dale Losch).

And how do we determine God’s guidance? A feeling, verses of Scripture which give you a electric feeling down your spine, changes in circumstance, open and closed doors, the advice of friends, the direction from your Church or mission society? Do you need all of them to line up or is 4 out of 5 o.k?

And as a missionary whose authority are you under? Ultimately God’s (yes) but if your mission wants you to go one direction and your Church another and you another whose authority prevails? Is it then your “call” which decides?

Is the individual call given to you by God, more important than the direction given to you by your Church or mission agency?

What do you think?  

(While you think about that I'll go clear out my inbox and try to make my sleeplessness a bit more productive)

City Thai Fellowship Sydney

I was asked to speak at the Thai City Fellowship in Sydney just over a month ago. This group meets every Monday at 5pm with a Thai meal, then singing and a talk. If you are Thai and live in Sydney, it’s worth a visit (www.facebook.com/ctcf).

Following God's Leading

Lisa at our sharing at Cornerstone Concord this morning

Today I was asked a question about how we ascertain God’s leading. It was in response to our sharing about how I felt God leading us to move house to The Lighthouse (in the shower!) even though Lisa and I had decided initially that we would not move as we’d just spent quite a bit of money on renovations on our old house. Answering off the top of my head I talked about how I’d discussed what I felt was God’s leading with my wife and we talked and prayed about it and both felt it was the right decision. Also, our team leader’s wife thought along the same lines on the same night. If the decision was not against the clear teaching of the Bible and God hasn’t directed us otherwise, then God has given us human wisdom to use to go ahead with a decision.

As I was reflecting on my answer this afternoon and if I had my chance to answer that question again, I would add that if God’s leading leads us to die to ourselves and to glorify God, then it is more likely to be God’s leading that an opposing decision which would make things easier for us or lift us up in our standing in society.

So regarding our decision to move to The Lighthouse, it caused us a lot of hassle in moving again and wasted the money we spent on renovations - it required a dying to ourselves. The opposing decision to remain in our old house would have been a lot easier and didn’t require any sacrifice. So using this measure, the decision to move was more likely to be God leading than the decision to stay.

This is not an absolute rule of course and I’m sure there would be exceptions when a dying to ourselves might not be God’s leading. Yet, I think this measure of dying to ourselves and the glorification of God is a good one and helpful for ascertaining God’s leading (this idea was not my own by the way. I think I heard it first from a talk by Frank Viola).

Quick trip back to Lampang

Dinner with Lampang friends at the Lampang Resort

Last week I made a quick trip back to Thailand to renew my visa and work permit. You might think that it is a long way to go to just renew my visa (from Australia to Thailand) but it took me 6 months to get my visa. If I didn’t renew it then I would have to start the whole application process again. Unfortunately, I can only renew my visa in Thailand. However, this gave me an opportunity to make a quick visit to Lampang and visit our friends there. It was a whirlwind visit with lots of meeting up with people and eating. It was great to be back in Lampang and catch up with people and our friends in Lampang want The Lighthouse to open again as soon as possible.

Home Assignment

@ Cornerstone Presbyterian Eastwood

We are onour second home assignment now and it is intended to provide opportunity for:

* Reporting to churches concerning the ministry/work.

* Participation in the mobilization work of the OMF Homeside.

* Rest and renewal.

* Reunion with family, friends, and supporting churches.

* Re-equipping for a more effective ministry.

We have mainly been at our main two supporting churches so far and their various congregations but his Sunday we are head off to Pittwater Presbyterian where we will be doing a presentation and Rich will be preaching.

We are already half way through our 7 month home assignment. The time is flying.

Start of another new school

Our Second Son’s first day at school

We’ve had to move house 9 times in the last 7 years. With that has come changing school. For our oldest son, he has gone to 5 different schools and he is only in year 3! Our oldest son adapts pretty well so we didn’t expect much trouble. He has a gift of making new friends quickly too. We had concerns about our middle son most. And he didn’t want to go to school for a couple of days, but was soon enjoying and there were no complaints of going to school. His frequent awards from school helped a lot. He’s received about 8 rewards in the first 4 weeks of school with his brother only getting one. So overall this school transition was pretty smooth. Some of them have not and even after months and months our son still didn’t want to school and that’s always hard.

There were tears today as mum was trying to help our middle son with his spelling. He said he didn’t get any words right in his spelling test this week.

On home assignment we have to move around between different Churches and that can be difficult for the kids too. They get used to one Sunday school program and then they have to try to fit in to another one. So our middle son didn’t cope last Sunday at another new Church (though our eldest loved it as they played great games).

So we are thankful that all 3 of our kids have settled into school. They cannot have the stability of being in place for long but we hope our family and God provides enough support for them not only to cope but thrive.

Losing my cool

Yes, it’s not the best photo, but we were on the run trying to make our plane back to Australia and we didn’t have time to take a nice photo.

But before we get to that, in Thai culture it is not cool to lose your cool. Rarely do Thai people show their anger, especially in public. It is a sign that the person is so angry that he or she has lost their self-control and this happen rarely and when it does watch out. So we’ve tried to not get angry, at least in public.

There have only been two times that I’ve been angry to the point of shouting in Thailand and this day was the second time. The first time was when our old neighbour’s pitbull got out (again) and nearly bit our children (but that is another story).

Back to nearly missing our flight home. It was going to be a long day. In the morning we frantically finished packing up the house and the van came at 11am to take us to Chiang Mai airport for a 2:15pm flight to Bangkok with Bangkok Air. We would then have 6 hours of transit before taking a Qantas flight back to Australia at 9:30pm (we had booked an earlier Bangkok Air flight which would have meant only 3 hours of transit but then Bangkok Air cancelled that flight). When we landed at Bangkok airport we stayed in the Bangkok Air lounge near the gate where we landed as they had nice lounges, free food and a kids play area. About 3 hours before the Qantas flight was due to leave we started to find our way to the Qantas transit desk and we made it to the closet transit area which was Transit Area A. However the Qantas transit area was Transit D, which was about 1km walk with no travellators. My wife was 28 weeks pregnant and was fine with walking short distances but walking 1km was a long way and would be quite painful so we went to the Bangkok Airways Transit desk and asked for a wheelchair to take us to Qantas transit area. They asked us whether we had booked the wheelchair in advance and I said no, because we had no idea that we would have to walk over 1km to get to next transit area.

They said that the wheelchair attendants were busy and it might take some time to get a wheelchair but we said we’d wait. We still had 3 hours before our flight was due to leave so I thought there would surely be enough time. After waiting 1 and half hours I was starting to get a little worried. I went to the Bangkok Air transit desk and asked them how much longer we would have to wait and they contacted the wheelchair attendants again and we were told they still had no one available yet. I was now worried enough to ask at the information desk what we could do. They told us to try Thai Airways. Thai airways said they couldn’t help. After waiting for nearly 2 hours and only 55 minutes before our flight was due to leave, the Bankgok Air staff came and told us that they would not be able to get us a wheelchair. There was no one available.

It was then I started to lose my cool. I explained again that tt was over 1 km to get to boarding gate and my wife was walking painfully and slowly and there was no way we would make it to the boarding gate in time as we still had to check in at the Qantas transit desk. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier”, I demanded angrily, “Now what are we going to do. How can we catch our flight in time” (in Thai mind you). Then the Bangkok Air staff member said in an annoyed tone, “You had 6 hours since you landed” (implying that it was our fault). “Well, how were we to know that we had over 1km to walk to the next transit area” I retorted.

Anyway, I walked away from the counter in disgust wondering what we would do now. Our family started walking towards Transit Area D knowing that we couldn’t possibly get get there in time. We had walked about 50metres when a Bangkok Air wheelchair attendant came toward us with a wheelchair. I couldn’t believe that this wheelchair was for us as the Bangkok Air staff had told us only 5 minutes ago that they had no wheelchair available to take us to our flight in time. I still don’t know how this person became available but there was no time to ask questions. My wife got in the chair and we raced to the Transit Area D. We were one of the last passengers on board but we got there in time. Without that wheelchair we definitely would not have made it. The wheelchair attendant received the biggest tip I’ve ever given in Thailand. We were so relieved.

We were thankful to God that he provided the wheelchair for us when we had lost all hope. Of course we can’t prove that God was the one who provided the wheelchair for us. But over the last couple of years we’ve seen God meet our needs even before we new about it (like us moving 3 days before our old house flooded, or short-termers coming just when we needed them). So we are looking to trust God in the midst of our unexpected early home assignment and the plans he has for us in the year ahead.

Kid's settling into Life in Thailand

Our daughter with one her good friends. They are in the same class at school and we used to live quite close to each other.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a missionary is that we move around a lot and that can be quite unsettling for young children (and adds to the stress of the parents). They are called “Third Culture Kids” because although they may be born into one culture and live in another, they feel home in neither. They are stuck in a “third” culture never truly fitting into their parent’s home culture or the one they are living in now.

We have been thankful to God that our children have settled in to life in Thailand really well. They have friends, they can speak Thai (and English) and in general don’t have any serious problems with living here. They are pretty happy being here. Yesterday I couldn’t stop smiling as my middle son was taking turns having bites from his friend’s ice block at school and eventually taking it from him and giving a bite to his little sister.

Sadly some kids never get to this level of integration into the culture they are living in and it’s so hard for the kids and their parents.

Lunch with Boy

Lunch at Kawano's Korean Buffet resturant

For the last couple of months Boy and I have been having lunch together after our bi-weekly Biblestudies. We’ve visited almost all the noodle restaurants within the city (we prefer noodles to other types of restaurants). It is good that Boy is a chef because he knows which places are good and which places to avoid. You can see on facebook the many different types of noodles there are on offer in Lampang.