Block Party

Yesterday turned out to be both encouraging and saddening for me. We made our way to church Sunday morning, I brought a book this week to finished up during the service (the service is in Thai). I've been reading Forgotten God by Francis Chan, author of Crazy Love. It has definitely been an interesting read; it's all about the Holy Spirit and how the American Church has really forgotten all about him.

Most of the things that Francis said resonated true for me, and reading more about the Holy Spirit, just what he is capable of, and what his purpose is, well, it made me realize how absent he has been in my life.

I was finishing up the last chapter during the service, and it was just particularly hard for me to finish without getting sad. Francis describes a church that is made up of members filled by the Holy Spirit, and what that would look like. It sounds like an amazing thing; an amazing thing that I don't think I've ever really experienced. I don't have much time to go into it now, and so I'll come back to this topic later, but suffice it to say that as Christians we are supposed to be so different than the lost that they can't help but see that we know God. We should rely on God so much that people can't help but praise God for what he does through our lives. We are to have all of the fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness, and self-control, and in fullness, not just a small measure. People should see me and recognize that there is no way I could do what I am doing on my own, and that God must be praised for it.

Anyway, after church the short-term team basically put on an English service, and then we setup for the block party that took place that night.

The blockparty was great, and a good amount of people from the community came out to the party. We had games setup for the kids, music, and a grill setup with tons of food (rice of course). It was a nice night to just relax a little bit, and spend time with people from the community.

As the blockpart began to wind down, Nike, one of our Thai friends, arrived. We don't really know Nike that well, David got him involved with the Coffee House last week, and he sang a John Denver song with Fon and David. We've only really seen Nike twice I believe. I say all that because Nike had just spent 2 hours on a bus to come to our cookout because he wanted to bring us all gifts that he and his mom had picked up at the market.

We were all pretty blown away. It was just awesome to see how even though we felt like we weren't really accomplishing very much through singing those songs, it brought this guy back to the church, and now he wants to spend more time with us; all because we included him in a song. His generosity was incredible, and we all agreed that none of our best friends back home would ever go half that out of the way for us.

We took Nike to the market and bought him dinner and hung out with him for a while, and then sent him on his way back home by bus. We all took cabs to the BFL and crawled into bed after a very long day.

Please be praying for Nike, that he would continue to hang out with us, and that we would be good friends to him, and that he would somehow see Christ through us, and desire a saving relationship with Christ.

Selfishly, please be praying for me. I don't know if I am allergic to something I am eating or what, but I've been having a lot of skin problems over the last 2 weeks, and they're just really annoying.