Mahk!!!!!

Mahk! It means very or much and if you say it with an exclamation mark, you've probably got the tone right.

It's also the best Thai word I know so far to describe the abundance of everything my soul is gorging on this visit. Like rice every-meal, only I like it!!!! (I've been healed of my rice aversion, by the way. Sangseun Prajo - Praise God!!)

Our mountaintop sunrise worship this morning, complete with the exotic sound of very strange (and probably very large - but never mind) insects....I am already overwhelmed and the day is hardly begun. The voices of the children are practically a guaranteed gateway for me into the breathless presence of a bigger-than-I-ever knew God.

Worshipping later with the sweet people of Hot Springs, whose faces, if not names yet, I readily recognize, being wai'd with HUGE smiles and some hugs, brings a joy I can hardly describe. Suradet, when excited in worship leading, does this bouncy joyful thing that reminds me so much of Derek and reminds me that in the fellowship of other believers I am never far from home.

Slept solid for two hours this afternoon. That in itself is a gift, such a filling up gift. And then spent the rest of the afternoon making bracelets with the kids with a cool enough breeze making it very, very pleasant and -- filling me more.

And now I am having a sleepover with the girls who are continuing the bracelets and helping me with my Thai. Their young and beautiful faces fill me more...... and I'm not sure how much I can take.

A friend in a email just the other day suggested that God has used this place to accomplish much healing for me from wounds life has inflicted over the past years. She's right. Sometimes I wonder if I am robbing Highview in order to be here this long. The Elders, the people, even my family, are so generous to release me into this time.

But I've come to understand that there is enormous benefit to this for anyone I desire to serve. I always return a better soul, a better follower and, I trust, a better leader. This time I am being filled in fiercely gentle ways, big ways.

"Im lao". I am full.
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