Hello from Southeast Asia! Or, should I say sabaidii! We are currently in our rainy season which brings lots of breeze and a break from the heat every now and then. I am currently chilling on my friends couch feeling the storm breeze blow in and enjoying every second of it. ARDA (the language school) is also about to start a new school term. I won’t be a part of it until January though, as I am mainly trying to focus on Lao learning right now.
So recently I had an incident where I hurt my knee. I was playing football (soccer in the States but we have that so wrong!) and my knee bent really bad. A few weeks later I felt like I was pretty much back to normal, so I decided to try football again. Five minutes into it my knee gave way. It didn’t hurt like it did the first time, but afterwards I PAID FOR IT. My friends tried the hopping technique as they guided my arms, but it hurt too much so they ended up carrying me. A day later we went to the hospital, as I still could not and still cannot bend my knee. The doctor could not take a proper xray because of not being able to bend the knee, so we have to drive over to Thailand, an hour away to get it further examined.
My old temptations of letting my feelings creep in to tell God off came back. I had one emotional break down, as I was sick and tired of having stuff like this happen to me. I wanted to challenge God’s reason for sending me here. I also wanted to just go home and get away from all of the hard things. Not only injury, but cultural and language barriers. Feeling like I was and still am a burden to the family I had to move back in with, etc.
But, before I got to far into telling God off I remembered that He is helping me to become an adult Christian. I also came across a movie about Christian persecution in China and God reminded me that He is more interested in saving my soul, than my body that will fade. So many times we as Christians are going around asking God for healing. But when was the last time you have been in a church setting that was praying for trials to produce more faith? I don’t think I have ever been in that church setting.
So, as I finish up my writing I leave one final thought for you. When you give your life to Christ are you willing to give up everything? Even though you are blessing others and your life seems like it is so difficult, are you desiring faith over blessing? What is more important to
