Welcome to PlaaPlaaPlaa!

So you may be wondering why PlaaPlaaPlaa? What are those strange fish symbols above? What is ปลา and what does it mean? In short, this is a blog site, so surely there's going to be plenty of rambling. Unfortunately BlahBlahBlah was already taken, so I had to settle for the 'Plaa'. But there's actually more to it then just ramblings. The first fish symbol is actually a Christian symbol meaning ICTHUS - a greek acronymn which means "Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour". The other strange letters you see in the last fish is actually the thai word for fish which funnily enough is pronounced "Plaa". So when you put it all together, this site is going to be my ramblings in telling people about how Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour in Thailand (with plenty of good stories about food in between). Happy reading.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Baan Tawai

Just wanted to quickly share about an awesome night that we just had at Baan Tawai tonight. Tonight was the first night back at Baan Tawai after a few weeks break as we went on holiday and during the school holidays over here when lots of people went back to the home towns etc. It was also the first time that we started a 'special' time at the end of our english lesson and english bible time to also have a short talk in Thai about Jesus given by a couple of our Thai christian friends from church since the best people to be reaching thai's are thai's themselves. So we started our time together as usual, at dinner together, then had some english time, then taught a story from the Bible in simple english, then handed the time over to Maggie and Ice. They started by singing a song, which everyone wanted to learn. Then Maggie did a short talk about how we need to be 'cleaned' on the inside and the only way is through Jesus. Afterwards we had a time for people to be able to ask questions, then an opportunity for them to share anything that they might want us to pray for them. We had NO IDEA how they'd respond to any of the stuff that we wanted to do tonight as none of these guys are christians at all. Would they feel obligated to stay and listen, would they just want to make the bolt the minute we finished? would they be scared to come back again next week?

It turned into an amazing night where everyone was having a ball from the time we started teaching english, til after we finished, and after that! We had an opportunity for people to ask questions and there was a really good question about can anyone pray to God or not? We then broke up into 2 groups, guys and girls for prayer time. It was the first time that we've every prayed with these guys, and we had no idea what was going to happen when we asked if anyone had anything that they wanted us to pray for. So when we posed the question, it took all of 1/2 sec for the first hand to go up and the prayer points to start flowing. after about 3 seconds of the first person sharing, everyone else decided they couldn't wait their turn, so it turned into EVERYONE (barr me) talking at once. I had no idea who to try and listen to and as a result any idea of what was being said. I'm so thankful that 3 of our Thai friends from church came too and could help me. So finally, i got Kim to pray for us all (since i wasn't sure how they'd feel praying if it was potentially the first time that some of them had ever prayed in a group, or even prayed. I think many of them really appreciated the prayer and after the prayer finished, no one wanted to go home. they all wanted to keep talking, and the guys group ended up singing and learning a heap of christian songs. Usually we finish at like 8-8.30. 10pm, we were still there!! Some of them were talking about friends that they want to bring along next week. It was just awesome!! HEAPS to give praise to God for for tonight.

For those who are praying, please keep on praying for everything that's happening down at Baan Tawai, that God will be opening hearts, they will be interested and want to find out more and come to know God. Please also pray for our thai christian brothers and sisters who are also coming to help us down there. That they too will really have a huge fire in their heart to want to help these people know God more and more. Please thank God for them - for Maggie, Ice, Kim and Gun.

In the next few weeks, i hope to introduce you to a few of the people who go to the Monday nights at Baan Tawai. There are some people there who really do need some huge prayer and are doing it really tough, but especially, don't yet know God. It'd be great if you could be praying for individuals in the future down there too :)