The View From Here

God Will Make A Way 

 พระเจ้าจะทำให้ถนน

Somewhere in that first week of our visit last month, I think it was the Thursday, Suradet and Yupa returned from a meeting with the leader of the village nearby.  This was a meeting where it was deemed better I NOT attend due to the ‘complicating factors’ that sometimes come up when a ‘farang’ is present.  Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't.

We knew already what the meeting was about, and I was keen to know what news they were bringing.   Getting out of the car, they were trying to be all nonchalant, but they were smiling so much I thought their faces would fall off.

And finally, Suradet couldn’t keep it in any more, and he said with a shout, in English  “Seven!”

And he slapped down on the table a document.  

That might look like a confusing collection of official squiggles to you, but it represents over four years of patient pursuit of the official documentation that will allow us to being to develop a new property for our kids.



Four years!

For a wide variety of reasons, one being that our current facilities have been 'retrofitted' to house the children, it is becoming more urgent that we relocate from the property owned by the Korean Methodist Church to property and facilities that belong directly to New Family  Foundation.

Everything is legally registered and ready.  We've just needed property.  

And that's been a tricky thing in itself.

The significant population shift in Thailand from the south to the north has driven land prices up disproportionately to normal inflation.  (insert link here).  The reality of trying to 'out-fundraise' the rate of increase in order to purchase property was dim at best.  

Yet God makes a way.

The generosity and support of Yupa's parents has compelled them to 'hold' a parcel of land for our use.  It's about 6 acres (3 rai) and is ideally located between the church where Suradet and Yupa are pastors, and the schools our kids attend.  All good.

Except we have been stalled out for the past for years trying to secure the necessary land deed that would allow us to develop the property for the purpose of a children's home.  Attempt after attempt, some of them coming very close, but then falling through at the last minute, has yeilded nothing but frusrtation and a chance to practice the patience we all say we'd like more of.

Until now.


That night we had cake!!

And we asked for the number 7 to be on it because that's the new number of our address!

Much celebration and delicious messiness.

This is no small deal.

And now?

The real fun begins.

It’s a big project that will ultimately see us with a brand new set of right-sized buildings that will be dorms and a kitchen and a school work room, plus accommodation for staff, in order to house 30 children.

We can begin incrementally with hooking up electricity to the property, drilling a well and getting the water system installed, building a protective (and legally required) fence around the property, and laying down a basic road.  

All these projects are doable in chunks, and we are extending the invitation to other churches and others outside Highview to partner with us.  

To be honest, I can clearly see where we're going, like a mountain in the distance, I can sort of see where we need to go for our very next steps, but the way in between?  Not so much.

At this point in my ministry in Thailand, I am starting to realize that I have a growing sense of two realities within my heart; two realities that are increasing; two realities that sit at opposite ends of this experience.

One a surprisingly significant increase in a sense of weight and responsibility for what I do now.    This new project makes it more obvious, but it's more than just that.  It's the whole weight and ramifications of the beautiful duty and glad obligation of it.  It feels heavy.  Heavier than any responsibility I've felt in my ministry life, or even personal life before.  And I've carried big things before, for sure.  Just, not like this.  

That's the one thing.

The other thing is just as strong, just as real.

I also feel that I have grown so much in that basic element of life with Jesus called faith.  There's just such an increase in the calm reassurance that, even though I can't see the whole way, God's making the way.

I give Suradet and Yupa all the credit for shaping my spiritual formation in this so profoundly.   Their constant example to me, in the face of so much more hardship and opposition and prolonged frustration than I have ever known in my white privileged life thus far, their solid sense that God will come through as we are faithful together....they inspire me to be more full of the faith I've always wanted to know richly.  

So big project. 

I’m just not intimidated by this.  I probably should be, but I’m not.

We will put together the plans and appeals and strategies and all those important human elements of moving forward on a vision.  There’s lots to do, no question.

But the view from here is breath-taking.  
There is no question in my mind that God is going to come through for this.

On Sunday, February 23, 2020 our Team was able to bring a report of our trip in January.  We ended with a strong song that reflects this faith. Way Maker by Leeland.  Can't get it out of my head now.  

"Way Maker, Miracle Worker, Promise Keeper, Light in the Darkness.
That is who You are!!"

Wait For It

“Let us not become weary in doing good. 

For at the proper time we will reap a harvest,

if we do not give up.” 

Galatians 6:9

Rice.  

I was embarrassed to realize a few years back, that if you had asked me to describe a rice plant I would have been at a loss.  Wheat, corn, common garden vegetables, melons and berries….I knew where all these came from.   But rice?  I actually had no idea.



Not now. 



In glorious green, the rice stocks blanket the flat paddies, their heavy heads bowing low under the intensity of the sun.   There’s something beautiful and orderly in the square-upon-bermed-square that checker the flat fields, with the wild, random mountains keeping watch all around.



I’ve seen the harvesting too.  Strong backs bent to the task under pointed straw hats, that same intense sun, relentless and penetrating and hot, bearing down without mercy!  I drive by in the comfort of an air conditioned car and know without hesitation, I wouldn’t last ten minutes.   Doing this by manual labour is still the most common way rice is gathered.   Tradition, the mush of the wet earth that rice requires, and the lack of access to more modern machinery all play a factor.   The bottom line is that the majority of all the rice that comes to our tables is the result of some brutal work.



Some things are like that.



A lot of things are like that.



Hot, long, hard, brutal work.



Raising a family, building a ‘real’ home, staying true to the vision for the future when the work is long and slow and often at the cost of personal comfort.  Yes, it’s like that too.



Especially the staying true to the vision for the future part.  The part where we need to build, specifically.



To recap just a little.





Our kids need to move.  The rooms and property where we are now has been ‘retrofitted’ to house them, back when all this began and the need was desperate and the basic space available.  Suradet and Yupa opened up their home – a new church plant with a brand new two-story building – to eleven children who were either orphaned or otherwise at-risk due to the penetrating poverty that is prevalent throughout the tribal villages all across Southeast Asia.   In those beginning days, two rooms with dirt floors and cement walls were equipped with thin vinyl flooring and fold-up mats.  Each child’s possessions were kept in a plastic shopping bag on top of their beds.  A few things hung on bamboo poles in the corner of the room.    And all of this was an upgrade from where they had come.



Over the years the generous sponsorship of so many, most, but not all, folks at Highview, has provided for bunk beds and mattresses, wardrobes and safer modes of transportation, plus of course the daily provision of nutritious meals, the chance to go to school, and the gift of being raised in a loving, faith-filled family.   As far as the accommodations go, a newer kitchen recently replaced the earthquake heaved dining shelter, at the expense of the church, and will be useful to the church once we’ve moved.  But the sleeping and bathroom areas are not up to regulations.



We are glad for the regulations.  The 2014 military take over in Thailand brought a next level of accountability to children’s welfare and education.  Children’s Homes such as ours are now required to be on registered, deeded property.  The church property is not.  Nor do we have the required infirmary or even square meter per child capacity.  Because the children were established here before the new rules were put into place, there is an understanding of a grace period.  But the threat remains that, under the current situation, we could be audited and, if found wanting, shut down. 



That’s why we’ve put a plan into place.

It involves family property owned by Yupa’s parents that has been set aside for our use.  With consideration for the property’s worth, and to be fair to other family members who hold a share, a moderate buy out fee, plus four initial projects will get this underway.  And it’s time.



But.  It’s taken time.  Sometimes there have been huge set backs.  Sometimes there have been long stretches of months that turn into years before we see any progress at all.



Watching Suradet and Yupa lead this process has been a study in the biblical patience of trust.  From the first initial conversations with Suradet eight years ago now, where he is tenatively risking to share his heart for a bigger vision, throught the stumbling together over the language thing and the culture thing and the getting to know each other’s ministry values and heart thing, to the organizational politics that were in place at the time.  All of that.  And his amazing, gentle patience with me while I gradually figured it out.  All the way through to their decision to form a foundation of their own, and our heart as a supporting chuch to go there with them.  And then praying, and praying and praying for the land deed, a process that should have taken six months that lasted four years, with hopes raised and dashed on the civic politics front more times now that I can remember. 



Until just last month, when the whole Team was still there, and Suradet and Yupa came back from a meeting with the village leader, bearing the document in hand!  What?  Yes!!! Now we can build!  We can move forward!



New energy.  New momentum.  Dreaming good dreams again.



But.  It’s taken time.

I watch them persist in life and ministry with a gentle, gritty tenacity I hope to emulate in my own life.  They live a Galatians 6:9 life; not complacent, doing their homework, seeking out creative solutions, but waiting with confidence until God makes it clear. 



If we do not give up.



I’m home less than 48 hours as I write this.  I miss rice (something I once thought I’d never say, but that’s another story).  



And I’m ever so grateful for and inspired by the harvesters

who don’t give up.

An Unlikely Likely Friend

The face is stern and the beard perhaps imposing.  But it's not these features that bring me here this day.

The gate is close but unlocked, which is a good thing, because there's actually no bell despite what the sign instructs.

There's no caretaker in sight either, although a simple house does sit just inside the wall.  We have to call out and walk all the way to the back of the building before we see a woman hanging out her wash to dry in the sun on bamboo poles in the yard.  "Chai.  Chai.  Poochai farang tee nee," she assures us. "Yes, Yes. That white man is here."  And smiling, she gestures vaguely in a general direction, leaving us to search him out for ourselves.

It won't be a problem.  The cemetery is small, simply kept but not unattended.  The sparse grass is short, and the grounds are free of litter and leaves.   Some headstones are quite new with shiny plaques and recent dates.  One grave is a brown mound of just-buried.

But it's the older markers that have our attention.

Yupa finds him first.

"IN LOVING MEMORY OF

REV. DANIEL McGILVARY, D.D. LLD,

Founder of Christian Missions 

in North Siam.

Born in North Carolina, U.S.A. May 14, 1828

Died in Chiengmai, August 22, 1911

I approach to get a picture, then stand again.  And quite suddenly I am overcome.

This man!

Half A Century Among the Siamese and the Lao was something of a last minute reading selection for my current course of study on 'Paul the Missionary Pastor'.  When considering the weight limits for all I needed to pack for school, it truly was only because I'd purchased a kindle version that the book even came along.   I wasn't sure an autobiography would yield as much academically as the assignment required, and it was after all, printed in 1912.  Hardly cutting edge.  

Except.  No.

Not satisfied to have made the one hundred day journey from America to Bangkok (Lord forgive my complaints about my 24 hours of air travel!), he and his wife got in a boat and navigated no end of dangers, not the least was the river itself, to end up in Chiang Mai.  They were the first Christians ever to do so.  From there, despite isolation, primitive living conditions, sickness and even at one point the threat of execution, Daniel McGilvary would travel by elephant, literally hacking his way through the jungle (hardly cutting edge?), to reach the outlying regions of Chiang Rai, Wiang Pa Pao and other places I've been.  [On a personal note, it's interesting how often he refers to these as "regions beyond", since this was the phrase we adopted at Highview very soon after my return from that first trip here, now twelve years ago.]

A skilled Christian theologian, his respect for all people, and particularly for the Buddhist mind, is stunning, and no doubt factored heavily into why he was so well received by royalty and village folk alike.  He learned their language and taught them to read it.  He became knowledgeable in basic medicine to alleviate the unnecessary suffering he encountered almost everywhere.  He was a favoured guest in royal Siamese palaces.  He was a favourite of the children.   Noticing that boys were educated in the Buddhist monasteries, but girls were not, he and his wife began a Girls School that evolved eventually into a sought after university.  It's hard not to find some hospital, school or church in old downtown Chiang Mai that doesn't have some connection with the McGilvaries and the Presbyterian mission they represented.

As I immerse myself in his nineteenth century prosaic style, writing with all the statesmanship of a Princeton Seminarian, even with all that and about 170 years between us, I shyly find myself making a new friend.  I recognize place names.  His descriptions of culture and climate I completely understand.  And the matter of fact way he propels himself forward in courage and faith, I find inspire me onward too.

He loved my people.  My people were his people.  More accurately, his people have become my people. 

This is why my heart is now all caught up in my throat, standing here beside his grave.  Just to be this close to this brilliant, passionate, hard core servant of God ---

I ask if we could stop for a prayer so we do.  And midst the sound of the softly murmured prayers of my Thai beloveds, and the background noise of a city so different than what first met the McGilvarys, it occurs to me that likely I would not be here and Suradet and Yupa would not be here and Hot Springs Church and the many beautiful Thai Christians in the north would not be here had it not been for this man and his brave-beyond-imagining wife who came and lived out their best lives to the end, in the name of Jesus.  

So now I'm just crying. 

Thank You Jesus for bringing this incredible couple here more than a century ago.

Thank You Jesus for bringing me here now.
Thank You for taking the faithfulness of Your servants and turning it into something beyond what any of us can hope or imagine.

It's time to go.  But as we do I try to imagine the procession coming through the gate on the day Daniel McGilvary was laid to rest.  It is described by Arthur J. Brown, friend and co-labourer, in the forward of the book.

"The Lao country had never seen such a funereal as that which marked the close of this memorable life.  Princes, Governors, and High Commissioners of State sorrowed with multitudes of common people.  The business of  Chiengmai was suspended, offices were closed, and flags hung at half-mast as the silent form of the great missionary was borne to its last resting place in the land to which he was the first bringer of enlightenment, and whose history can never be truly written without large recognition of his achievements."

Of all his words, this one quote stands out to reveal his heart.

"How near of kin is all the world."  

Daniel McGilvary