We are living in a house without windows. Well, at least partially: our kitchen and home and living room do not have walls. So we are always outside. We don’t see walls, we see the world. We enjoy the nature around us. Birds and insects fly through our house. We see the woodpecker in the tree at the other side of the road and hear its pecking. The scent of jasmine is everywhere.

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“I do not remember my father. Not long after I was born, he left the family. My mother tried to take care of me as good as possible. She had some land, that she sold bit by bit. But her debts kept growing.

Much of her debt was with one lady in the village. In that family they needed someone to help in the house and in the shop. My mother took me to her to pay her debt. She told me: “She will make sure you have enough to eat.

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How do you work yourself out of a job as missionary? By making sure local Christians can lead the church as soon as possible, and are taking responsibility for further church planting. But how do you do that? It is one of the big questions almost all missionaries struggle with.  Daniel McGilvary, the apostle of Thailand, has the following suggestions in his almost 100 year old autobiography.

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Thai people have beautiful names. Only they are seldomly used. They are written in documents and said at official occasions. But in everyday life, only the nickname is used.

To outsiders, the nicknames can have a funny ring. ‘Bird’ is the most common name, followed by ‘Small one’. From a western perspective, that is quite accurate to describe most Thai, yet something doesn’t seem quite all right when a sturdy guy with a beer belly is called ‘Small one’. Yet it is as common as hearing a teeny-weeny woman being addressed as ‘Fatty’.

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For six years I lived among the Thai, and now since 3 years I am living among the Isaan. Isaan is a region of Thailand, the northeast, but it is much more than that. The Isaan have an identity that can clearly be distinguised from the Thai.
Of course, the first question is: Should you write about Thai and Isaan as two different ethnic groups? Or are the Isaan a subgroup of the Thai? The Isaan themselves are clearly talking about it as two groups. They are talking about the Thai (so not the Central-Thai) language and the Isaan language. And you can hear things like: “My mother will not allow me to marry a Thai.”

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A while ago I did research on how Protestant churches in Thailand grow. I wrote about this in Conversion Growth of Protestant Churches in Thailand (printed version, online version). In the coming weeks I am going to give a summary of some of my findings.

1. Buddhists are less likely to become Christians than adherents of traditional religions. Everywhere in the world, adherents of traditional religions are becoming Christians in greater numbers than adherents of world religions. The same is seen in Thailand. Christianity grows very fast among the tribes (8% a year), and only moderately fast among the ethnic Thai (4% a year).

2. There is no difference in openness for the Gospel between

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There has been a time that I wanted nothing else but pack my suitcases and hop on a plane back to the Netherlands. That was when we were still living in Bangkok. I hated everything there, from the oppressive weather to the narrow

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In the middle of Isaan is a university. It is located in the provincial town of Mahasarakham, and it still is a young university. It was only founded in 1994. Yet by now there are 42,000 students, almost as many as the official number of inhabitants of the town.

A while ago I walked around on the campus of the university.

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I have an extra free evening. That’s not a reason to be glad, by the way. Since a few months I was teaching the Bible in a neighbouring village. It was a nice group. Often around 10 people showed up to hear the Bible stories. We had our meetings in the village shop, a corrugated iron shed. All passers-by could see what we were doing, and could easily join in.

But it’s over now. Why? Because I’m rumoured to have bought votes in the village head election.

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A team member asked me: what are the most common mistakes starting church planters make? It wasn’t totally clear to me why he considered me a particularly good source for information of that sort. However, here is my recipe to fail as a missionary church planter:

1. Start ministry in an area where you know nobody, where your friends don’t know anybody, and where there is no opening for the Gospel that you know of. Then you can start with absolutely nothing, and do ministry exactly the way you like. It is also nicely slowly paced, so you won’t be too busy.
2. Make sure your friends are mainly in your home country. Because of Skype, your weblog, and Twitter there is no need at all to know your neighbours.

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During the first year in Lopburi every student has to complete 9 modules. Eight of these modules are studied within the OMF Language School. One module…your 8th or your 9th is studied with an outside language helper.

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Do you still remember our friend the Tailor?

This group (pii Faay and friends) started to get more body and more and more children were coming to listen to the bible stories and do a craft. They really liked it and were always full

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Yesterday we wanted to buy a little three-wheel bicycle for our 1 year old son. We went over to one of the shops selling those kind of things and saw some of the little bikes standing outside. While we were looking at them, two girls that worked in the shop were looking from a distance. We heard them talk to each other about ‘the foreigners’. We could

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Mong lies on a tiny bamboo bed for 24 hours a day. His head has a normal size, but for the rest he has a miniature body that he can hardly use.  So it is not miraculous that for years on end Mong was depressed. But the miracle is that this is no longer the case! Mong lives in Kaeng Khro, an Isaan district with over 90.000 people. A Thai YwaM team shared the Gospel with him, and he came to the Lord. Recently during an evangelistic outreach in his village some other people also expressed interest in the Gospel.

This week I visited Mong and his relatives. I explored whether

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After you learn reading and writing in Module 4 there’s another module to wrap up all you’ve learned so far. Module 5 is all about having conversations on different subjects. It’s quite a range of subjects: Meeting people at the market, booking a hotel room, applying for a library card, ordering gas, renting a house etc.

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A few months ago, we were at Bible college. One of the advantages of this Bible college  is an Asian lector who has been a Buddhist for 20 years. At University he became a Christian, served the Lord in different countries and is now teaching at an English Bible college. One of the modules he is teaching is Buddhism….we were eager to learn as much as possible.

I will never forget his first lecture. He said that we can learn a lot about Buddism from books, absorb the theory and fill us with every detail. But if you talk with Buddhists never pretend that you know what they believe. The theory,  beliefs and practice of this in daily life seem not always to match with each other. Knowledge is very good, but you have to relate to the people if you really want to know how the theory worked out in their lives. Then you will know how to connect to them in telling the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Waaniet is a joyful man who lives in a small village just outside our little bit bigger village. His wife is a Christian and I think he is as well. I study the chronological bible study with him. He understands lost of things in is own simple way.

Last week we talked about the snake who told Eva to eat the fruit. After the lesson he explained to me that that was the problem of today as well. He said it feels like Satan is constantly talking in my ear and that of the people in the world. But when he has this feeling he prays to God that he can do his will.

I went back home and this time I was the one that learned a lesson!

Remember the tailor who was interested in the gospel? Last week my wife went there again but this time she had bad news. She can not become a Christian because then she is not allowed to go to the Buddhist temple anymore, but my wife was still allowed to come and teach the bible.

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“The church building is half-full, we’re not doing too bad”, pessimists say. Optimists think: “The building is half-empty, so there’s lots of room to grow!” At the beginning of this year there were conflicts in the church we planted in Bangkok. About half of the members left. “It’s like a tsunami”, one of the remaining members told me. “You look around, and all of a sudden this one is gone and that one is gone.” Experiences like these in a church are always sad and dishonour God’s name. Yet after half a year I also see the other side of the medal.

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A few weeks ago I went to a local tailor to have some trousers made. She took my measurements and said that it would be ready in two days. When I came to collect the trousers,

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foto: partsnpieces

We always limited ourselves to proclaiming the Gospel. So far we’ve done little in the way of social work. In a rather prosperous country like Thailand social work is possible, but certainly not always necessary. Now we have found something that helps people, is easy to do, does not create dependency and directly suppports evangelism:

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Would you ever have thought it would be possible for a cow to drown in a drum? Neither would I. But it happened. Outside the stable at the farm of a friend’s are a few drums with water for the cows. A young cow enthusiastically put both her  forelegs and her head in the drum- and never got them out again! She drowned while her entire body was out of the water.

So what happened?

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Last week an Isaan Christian I baptized last year died. Until his death he was sharing the Gospel with his relatives. They were listening with interest. He also clearly said he wanted a Christian funeral, and no Buddhist monks present. But after he died, his relatives immediately arranged for a Buddhist funeral. At the same time, they were very happy for the church to take part in the ceremonies as well. After the monks finished their chanting, and just before the body was cremated, a brother of the deceased invited me to the front. “My brother was a Buddhist. But in the last few years, he added a religion. He also believed in Jesus. And therefore we invite a leader of the church to come and share with us.” Right in front of the monks with their sign ‘There is no resurrection’ I shared the Christian hope of eternal life and resurrection. At the end, everybody applauded.

What happened here?

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After talking about the ideal language student I read some quotes about doing language study. Just want to share some of them with you:

• To learn a foreign language is to take on a new identity. This involves being willing to become vulnerable to a degree not normally requiered in other areas of life.

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Do we have to do a psychological test as well? A dental check-up again? A blood test too….? Another meeting to talk through possible fields? 

We have started the preparations for our new life overseas full of enthusiasm. But our to-do-list became bigger and bigger. We felt overwhelmed and sometimes discouraged: are these tests and checks really necessary? Closing doors to go overseas? Do people doubt about us going overseas?

There are probably all kind of situations to ask these questions. Two things we would like to say about it at this moment: when you’re finally on the plane with all these tests behind you, you know that there are people and tests results that encourage you to go – you look suitable for living and working overseas (but you’re still not perfect J). The other thing is that this process teaches patience, perseverance, faith and trust in God – disciplines you definitely need (in life and) on the mission field.