That First-Last Hot February

It's been a heat-seeking kind of day.

Winter is roaring outside and the cold is seeping in.  Frugality prompts the continuation of the furnace set-back long practiced when no one was in the house Tuesday to Friday,  The only-heat-the-room you're-in contingencies are struggling to keep up in wind chills of -21 C.  I can hear it, the wind.  And the sound makes me tuck into my fleece blanket more snugly, here now in front of the fire I've just lit in the family room.

January is howling into February.
And actually, I don't mind.
I'm just about to swing back over to Thai life.

I just checked.  In Chiang Mai the projected high for Tuesday, January 29 is 32 C.  That's without the humidex.  That means in just over a week I'll be making something like a 55 degree adjustment in temperature.  Yup.

Back to the heat of Thailand I go, there for the second time this winter.  This has been the shortest turn around ever.  Only two months in between.  Two exceptionally full, strategically important, and robustly challenging months for me personally, and in the story of this like-family partnership that Highview stepped into with Hot Springs eleven years ago. 

February is significant.

It was a hot February when we first ventured out to see what God was doing in Southeast Asia.  It was a hot February when we first met two remarkable people who were risking their own well-being and livelihood in order to feed and clothe and love desperate children.  It was a hot February when God gripped my heart, and the hearts of others who went, and the hearts of those who even just heard about it after we got back.   And we signed up and signed on.  That was when we all - Suradet and Yupa, all the children, and every Sponsor, every person who's support this - stepped into something that none of us could have imagined would turn out this way.

And here we are, so many trips later.  And I'm pretty sure that this will be my first trip there in February since that first-last one.

I'm smiling at myself right now.

Strewn in systematic chaos across the pool table downstairs are supplies for twenty seven Bible lessons, random ESL materials, twenty five surprise Valentine's creations for Sponsors, beads and books and badges, random Canadian trinkets from the Dollar Store, printouts for four sermons, and various and sundry bring-next-time items from my list made in November.  The planning is intense, because now I have at least some idea of what I'm supposed to do when I get there.

Back then, that first time?  Not so much.

And what's sobering me right now, as I remember not just the first trip, but many, many trips in those first early years, is how very patient and respectful they all have been with me as I have stumbled my way into having any meaningful contribution at all.   The mistakes I've made!  The grace I've been offered!  So many good and wretched lessons in humility.

The reason for such a quick turn around this time, is to be there when New Family Foundation takes on the responsibility of the children officially.    More strategically important and robustly challenging meetings are in the works for sure.  And there are moments to mark, people to thank, and some brave servants of God to encourage and cheer.  And of course, there's the children.

I seek the heat today, but soon I will be in heat-avoidance mode.  I'll be glad of the AC in my room and ice cold bottles of water and the fan that I can set up if I want to sit outside.  I'll be careful not to catch a cold in the bone chilling 19 C temperatures that can happen overnight.  And the only howling I'll hear is the pack of wild dogs that run through the neighbourhood when everyone else is in bed.

February will howl into March.
I will swing back again into Canadian life.
Two book-end Februarys in between.

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Some dates fyi:

Sunday, February 3 - Speaking at Highview Community Church for the first of the "Go and See" series.
Wednesday, February 6 - On my way.  Flight leaves 11:40 a.m.
Sunday, February 10 - Haiti Team Report at Highview, second of the "Go and See" series.

Wednesday, March 6 - Arrive home at 9:15 a.m.

Stay tuned for more stories and adventures from Thailand.

Scorpion on the Threshold

It's the first night of our visit last November.

I've just settled Evangeline into her guest house next door, making sure that, as a first time visitor, for her first ever night in Thailand, she has everything she needs.   Now I'm back in my own room trying to think.

It's always a tricky bit of time, this arrival-and-straight-to-bed-thing.  It's approximately 30 hours door to door; 30 hours since we left our own beds; 30 hours since we had a place to stretch right out and lay down.  Jet lag is definitely in play and for us it's really only lunch time.  But the fatigue and general sense of disorientation makes it hard to unpack the barest of things we'll need for the morning, before collapsing into a desperately needed sleep.

Maybe that's why I don't see it on my way out to put something in the garbage can on the porch.

With bare feet - of course, it's Thailand - I open my door to the warm night outside to get rid of the plastic wrap around the toilet paper.  I do have a garbage indoors, but it's small and I'd rather not fill it up with this one thing.

Only on the way back do I see a mostly-legs, small-plum-sized spider poised smack in the middle of the threshold I had just crossed.  In bare feet.  At least I think it's a spider.  And I think it's alive.  Not really sure because it's not moving, and it's a little dark in the doorway.  Never mind.  It's big enough that I'd rather be certain of its demise before I climb into bed.

No one else is around.  Suradet and Yupa have gone back to Hot Springs.  And I'm certainly not calling them back to squish a spider, even the size that it is.  I do not see any tell-tale bright colours to warn me that it's particularly poisonous.  So I take my flip flop and smack it dead.

It takes two smacks.

And then.

It's not squished down as a spider.  In its eviscerated state, it's all spread out and elongated and not a spider at all.

It's a scorpion.

I've seen four scorpions, total, in all my visits to Thailand.  One in the shower just as I was finishing.  One running out from between my feet as I sat on the bench under the dining shelter.  One very large and very dead, being devoured by about 7 million fire ants.  And this one.

So, yeah.  There are scorpions here.  Not an every day occurrence, but still.  And this one.  This one I should have stepped on.  In my bare feet.

The reason I thought it was a spider was because it was actually curled up over itself in striking pose.  Clearly I had come close.  Did I mention I was in bare feet?

A deep breath-sigh escapes from me involuntarily.  I pause for some somber reflection.  And then a thank You.  Again, thank You.

I mention to God that this was a rather disconcerting thing to happen on the very first night, flick away the remains of my close encounter using my flip flop, roll up a towel under the door, and go to bed.

There's a song we sing at Highview by the Robbie Seay Band.  It's titled "Rise" and it's a call to give ourselves away for love.  The song itself is full of contrasts, starting with an invitation to just be in the moment, be still, be here, be now.  But it builds to this reckless declaration that takes the worshiper to a defiant statement of truth for anyone who dares to give themselves away like this.

"We're not safe!  We're not safe!  But we will rise!"

Before the scorpion on my threshold, almost a year before, for some insane reason, I chose Perpetua as the subject of a research assignment in my History of Christianity course.  It was insane because Perpetua was a martyr, a nursing mother who chose to be gored and torn to pieces by a mad bull rather than disown her Jesus.

Researching martyrs is a grim business.  When I was finished the assignment I knew I was done with the subject for some time.  Let's talk about the something happier pa-lease!  But I also took away a new respect for the fact that those who first called themselves Christians did so in the face of certain persecution, the likes of which make a scorpion encounter just an interesting story.

Even so, we all face the dangers, those determined enough to follow wherever God would lead us.  Whether to a far away place with dangerous vermin, or into virus-infected epidemic zones, or the classroom of  a violence-prone school, or a group therapy gathering of sexual offenders, or the bedside of a dying friend, or behind the pulpit of a trusting congregation, or into the lives of teenagers with chaotic homes, or alongside the darkness of depression, or around the table of hostile family, or within the circle of warriors brave enough to pray against the enemy.

We subject our bare feet and bare hearts to no end of harm.

We do.  Or else we just stay home.

We're not safe.  Safety is an illusion.  That is, if we're willing to rise and give ourselves away in any capacity whatsoever.

I head back to the scarce-but-still-there scorpions on February 6th.  But I also head back to 26 incredible children and their heroic parents and caregivers, to rise with them and give and receive the love that makes it all make sense.

Of course I'll be careful.  I'll make sure all my vaccinations are up to date, take my Dukoral, travel with my ID and wallet close to my body.  When I get there I will wear copious amounts of insect repellent, put on my seat belt, only drink bottled water, keep my eyes out for the vermin, and listen to the cautions of Yupa when she tells me the coffee is dangerous (that's another, lighter-side story though).

But climbing into bed that night that the scorpion was on my threshold, I knew again without question, safe or not, this is what God has called me to do for this time of my life.

I don't think that I'm particularly brave.  I just know there's no other place I'd rather be than where God has compelled me to go.