Thailand Journal 2010 #20

I just landed in Portland and I’m on my way back home to Walla Walla. On the last day in Thailand I visited Chiang Mai Adventist Academy. In 2005 I took a team there to assist in building the dorm for the Elementary School, to do the Week of Prayer, and to conduct Continuing Education classes for the teachers. Students, faculty, staff, and alumni fell so much in love with the students that we pledged to sponsor a number of them. This we have been doing for 5 years. Each year I visit them, encourage them, and take them out to eat and shop. For the first time the 2 that I took out spoke to me in English! Wow! I’m still working with Walla Walla University’s School of Education and Psychology on having a repeat performance of their very successful Continuing Education workshop during the 2005 trip. They still talk about it.

This was a great trip with one of the best teams (of the 10 Mission teams) that I have led. As you might have read in my philosophy statement from last year, this outreach to Thailand fits into my wholistic evangelism which I have been championing for the past couple decades. The team is crucial to its success. It is the lives lived, the actions taken, the relationships developed, that is at the foundation of the outreach. Baptisms can’t be the primary measure of success in this “10-40 window” region. Our paradigm can’t be the one I have successfully used in Africa, Jamaica, and the Philippines. There we baptized thousands of persons. Those are countries and continents comprised of mostly Christians. Thailand is 90%+ Buddhist. The paradigm is different. Therefore the measurement of success will be different. I give God thanks for what he has done through us again this year.

Blessings

pedrito