Lighthouse Shirts

It was months in the making as the team discussed the finer details of the shirt design, but our Lighthouse shirts have been printed and they look great. We are already planning a second printing only 2 weeks after the first one. There will be some minor modifications on the second printing. We’re going have a small Lighthouse logo on the front of the polo shirt (but not the T-shirt). In Australia I’ve been involved in making a shirt, logos, signs but here the team has had to do it all. Great experience. Our students have asked for the shirts too.

In Thailand you have special colours for each day of the week. Last Saturday I happened to wear by purple Lighthouse Shirt (I have a navy blue one as well). And the colour for Saturday - purple! I matched. Now I intend to buy a yellow (Monday), pink (Tuesday), green (green) ,orange (Thursday) shirts and red (Sunday) for the second printing to add to my blue (Friday) and Purple (Saturday) ones. Unfortunately, the rest of my team mates don’t share my enthusiasm to fit in culturally with Thais in wearing the right coloured shirts on the appropriate days.

On the back is the Bible verse from John chapter 8 verse 12.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Our Girl with Curls

We don’t know where our daughter got her curls from as both Lisa and I have straight hair (though it must be from Lisa’s side of the family as Asians don’t have curly hair right? I think Lisa’s brother had curly hair as a child). But it is definitely a point of interest and conversation with Thai people we meet. Is it natural they ask? (Yes, it is. I don’t think she’d be patient enough anyway to sit while having curls put in).

Having children can definitely make things harder living cross culturally. You take longer to learn the language as you have less time. They get sick. They can be very tiring.

However, (apart from being a great blessing) people usually are more open to talking to you if you have a child with you. Thai people generally love children. We had a young workman at our house when it was being fixed up and he loved just playing with our daughter. I can’t imagine that she’d have the same reaction back in Australia.

Also, our children have opened up new relationships with parents at school and at Taekwondo. They are great at breaking down barriers.

So there’s some of the bad and good of having children on the field.

Water Tank & Pump installed

For the last two years we’ve endured varying levels of low water pressure in our house, especially upstairs where during the evening when we want to bath the kids, the water pressure is too low for the water heater to work. So this has meant using the downstairs bathroom (which is smaller) and going upstairs to get the kids clothes. Somedays, the water only trickles during the day throughout the house (during the dry season).

Now that we’ve decided not to move house, it was time to get a water tank and pump installed.
On Monday the installers came in the early afternoon and at 5pm they said that they’ll be back tomorrow to finish the job. They hadn’t finishing installing the pipes or connecting the pump with electricity. I told them to come at the same time as I was busy in the afternoon. So the next day I’m waiting at home for them to come but they still haven’t come at 3:20pm so I give the store a call. “Sorry, the installers are busy with another job. They can’t come today”. I thought “you could have at least called me” though I didn’t say it.

The next afternoon they came (late) and when they had finished the job, the pump kept turning on every 10 seconds even though none of the taps were on. “There’s a leak in the pipes under the ground somewhere”, the installer said. So they would need to come back tomorrow to install new pipes.
Anyway, by the end of the week, everything was done and now we don’t have to wake up and go downstairs to have a shower which is nice. The water pressure is greeaaaat!

As a point of interest, the installers had this bag full of joints for the pipes. They dumped them on the ground and whenever they needed a particular joint they would search for it. I didn’t think it was a very efficient way of doing it really. What if they use up a couple of the joints and then forget to replace that particular size. They would need to go back all the way to the store to get another one.

Son's Birthday Party

Just before our son’s 4th birthday party was due to begin it started to rain which is not good news. Thais don’t like to go out in the rain for the fear that they will get sick. At 4:15pm (the party was schedule to start at 4:00pm) there was only our team mates there and I was starting to get worried as we’d bought quite a bit of food already. Soon after that people started to trickle in. By the end we had a decent turnout, with about 4 of our son’s friends from school, our neighbours and English students.

The dinosaur cake was a hit, so much so it was hard to get the kids away to take a picture.

We had fun games such as pin the horn on the dinosaur and carry the the dinosaur egg on a spoon. Thai children have never played such games so they had great fun.
Birthday parties take up a lot time and effort so we’re relived the next one in our family isn’t until November. They are a great way though to meet the parents of your children’s classmates.

Aidan's Dinosaur Birthday Cake

Lisa spent most of last night making this magnificent dinosaur birthday cake for our son’s 4th birthday party today. It has been raining most of the morning. Hope it stops or not many people may come as Thai don’t like traveling in the rain. We’ve invited the teachers and our son’s classmates from school, the English students at the Lighthouse, our neighbors and other friends.

 I think we should enter this cake into a competition or something!

Weekly Routine

 Birthday Invitation for our son's upcoming party

Since coming back to Thailand in mid-May, after 3 months our family has established a routine of sorts.

I take the boys to school usually in the mornings with our daughter in toe. Our daughter is at the very cute age and draws lots of giggles from the students as she waves to them goodbye each morning.

Then on Monday and Friday mornings I have 2 hours of Thai study with my language helper. I’m so glad to have finally found a language helper, and have these two sessions locked in.  When things get busy language study can be the first thing which gets left undone. I try to have at least another 1 or 2 sessions of language study by myself during the week if possible.

Thursday mornings we have a team meeting. Friday afternoon I prepare my English lesson for my Saturday morning English class. Sunday mornings we are at church. Once or twice a month I’ll get up before dawn to play golf with a group to doctors and my friends Kawano finishing before 9am to leave plenty of time to get back for church. Sunday afternoons we alternate between a team BBQ and an open BBQ for all our Thai friends.

Three afternoons a week I take our eldest son to Taekwondo during which I have an hour to chat with the other parents many of who have children in the same class as our son. If we can we try to get to the park once a week to meet new people though lately this has not been possible.

Any spare time, we will try to meet up with our Thai friends or try to keep up with the back log of admin. This is a typical week when we don’t have any special activities on. Next Sunday we will have our middle son’s 4th Birthday so we’ll be busy preparing for that this week.

It doesn’t sound like much but somehow we find ourselves up until 11pm most nights trying to get things done. I’m looking forward to finishing my formal language in the next year or so the possibilities this will open up to do other things which we don’t have time for now.

What one thing you would change about seminary

This is an extract from "The Gospel Coalition Blog" where they asked some key professors of American Seminaries the question "What one thing you would change about seminary".

"I was recently in China, talking with the president of a house church network of more than 1 million people. He asked me for advice on preparing the next generation of pastors. I looked at him and said, “The only thing I know is what you should not do.” He smiled and asked, “What’s that?” My reply surprised him. “You should not do what we have done in the West. The results of that approach have become clear.”

The agenda of evangelical seminaries is set primarily by scholars. Professors decide how students will spend their time; they determine students’ priorities; they set the pace. And guess what. Scholars’ agenda seldom match the needs of the church.

Can you imagine what kind of soldiers our nation would have if basic training amounted to reading books, listening to lectures, writing papers, and taking exams? We’d have dead soldiers. The first time a bullet wizzed past their heads on the battlefield, they’d panic. The first explosion they saw would send them running. So, what is basic training for the military? Recruits learn the information they need to know, but this is a relatively small part of their preparation. Most of basic training is devoted to supervised battle simulation. Recruits are put through harrowing emotional and physical stress. They crawl under live bullet fire. They practice hand to hand combat.

If I could wave a magic scepter and change seminary today, I’d turn it into a grueling physical and spiritual experience. I’d find ways to reach academic goals more quickly and effectively and then devote most of the curriculum to supervised battle simulation. I’d put students through endless hours of hands-on service to the sick and dying, physically dangerous evangelism, frequent preaching and teaching the Scriptures, and days on end of fasting and prayer. Seminary would either make them or break them.

Do you know what would happen? Very few young men would want to attend. Only those who had been called by God would subject themselves to this kind of seminary. Yet they would be recruits for kingdom service, not mere students. They would be ready for the battle of gospel ministry."

Richard Pratt, founder and president, Third Millennium Ministries; former chair of Old Testament, Reformed Theological Seminary:

Soularium

I was introduced to this recent resource (by Dr Larry Dinkins) to help talk to people about spiritual matters, especially people you’ve never met before. It is called Soularium and it consists of 50 different photos of people, places and situations in life.
A person is given all 50 photos and asked these questions:-


1.a. Which 3 images would you choose to describe your life right now?
1.b. What do each of these images represent about your life?


2.a. Which 3 images represent what you WISH were a part of your life right now?
2.b. Why? What desire (ความปรารถนา) does each image represent?


3.a. Which image would you choose to describe God? (If they say “I’m an atheist” ask: which image describes that?”)
3.b. Why? What does it say about God to you?


4.Think about your life so far. Which image best describes what you’ve experienced spiritually?
4.b.Why? What does that image represent?

5. When you think about your spiritual life or journey, which image best represents what you wish were true?
5.b.Why? What does that image represent?


This resource was developed by Campus crusade and is being used on university campuses in the states.


You can see the responses of people to the above questions at the My Soularium website.


You can purchase the Soularium set from Campus Crusade here.


Dr Larry Dinkins whose been using it says that it’s the best resource he’s come across in getting someone you don’t know talking about spiritual matters. I’m about to use it in my English class this Saturday. Unfortunately, the photos are more suited to a western context, but Dr Dinkins is organising a more Asian set to be produced.

Recent Activities at the Lighthouse & Lampang

It has been a busy time at the Lighthouse and in Lampang. We recently had our son’s birthday party combined with kidsclub at the Lighthouse. It was chaotic with nearly 40 children. This was the beautiful rocket ice cream made by Lisa.

The next day we had our fortnightly Sunday afternoon BBQ to which we invite all our Thai friends and those coming to the Lighthouse. We had the most people ever with 11 adults and 4 children (not including our team). We were having some great discussions too.

Finally we enrolled our eldest son in a Taekwondo school. At first he didn’t want to go but I persuaded him to just have a look. If he didn’t like it he didn’t have to go. We’ll from instant he stepped into the door he was wrestling with another boy and he couldn’t get enough. He wanted to go everyday after that. Many of the other parents send their children 5 days a weeks, but we can’t send our son more than 3 times a week. It has been a good chance to speak to the other parents for an hour many of whom are parents of children in our son’s class at school.

How social class can alienate people from church

I was reflecting on this quote this afternoon which I think has huge implications for how we do church.

“People are often unaware of how much the culture of their church is shaped by their social class. Someone on the door of a church, for example, may hand a newcomer a hymn book, Bible, service guide and bulletin with a smile and greeting without realizing how intimidating these can be to someone from a non-literate culture. The social activities to which the poor are invited, the decision-making processes of the church, the unwritten dress codes, the style of teaching, all can be alien to the marginalized. As a result, however warm the welcome, the poor can feel marginalized within the church just as they are outside...

If our congregations are full of respectable people, then it may be that we have not truly grasped the radical grace of God.”

P. 79 Total Church: A radical reshaping around gospel and community (Tim Chester and Steve Timmis)

If we are preaching sermons that only those with a university degree could appreciate, with references to the “Greek” or how “the NIV gets it wrong here”, are we surprised that the majority of the people in the congregation are from the middle or upper class and there are hardly any working class or poor people? Can we really think that just by preaching the truth that everything else will somehow fall into place?

How a church treats (or mistreats) the marginalized is an important measure of a church.