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The rainy season in South Thailand has just finished and I’m spending time in the mountains again. With the enormous amount of rainfall in the past 3-4 months, the greenery in in the local jungle has grown amazingly. Tree branches and shrubbery have been growing out into the usual pathways, making passage difficult. In places the paths are completely blocked, requiring circuitous “off-path” diversions or just wading through the foliage at great effort in order to get where one is going.

The answer to all this is to bring out my trusty machete and start hacking away at the overgrowth. Even better – I found some long-handled branch trimmers (sort of like secateurs on steroids) and have been gaily snipping the bushes and tree-branches invading the pathways so that unimpeded travel can occur once again. It’s been quite an effort, but the result is worth it – now I can get to the cliff faces or lookouts quickly once again to get on with what I really want to do.

As I was snipping some long vines the other day, it made me think about the “overgrowth” in our lives. It seems to me that it’s very easy to let some things in life get out of control, things that impede our progress to the things that are important to us. Some things even end up sucking the life out of us, so that we don’t even want to aim for anything better.

What things would you consider overgrowth in life?...

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Category: Personal Reflections
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As our family reflected on the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, we realized that it felt different because of the Covid pandemic. For example in this past Christmas, there were no outreach parties with lots of people. No long tables with plentiful food. And no gifts to hand out and Christmas skits to perform. This would be typical of a Thai Christmas Sunday service or outreach. Yet, we are thankful that the Thai churches are starting to open up again and that people are gathering for worship.

This past Christmas one of the main themes for our family was that great joy comes from the Good News (Luke 2:10) – a joy that does not depend on our circumstances and what we can do, but depends on the power of God and what He has already done! This is a life lesson that our family has been learning, even our youngest son (age 7) who shared the following:

“This year it felt hard because of Covid. I couldn’t go anywhere so I felt bored. But God helped me with making a new friend in the neighborhood, and his name is JJ. I ride around on my scooter with him a lot, and pretend we are in a Minecraft world. I thank God for my new friend, and I hope JJ and his family will learn about Jesus. Then they can have joy like me, too!”

C3 and JJ

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Category: Personal Reflections
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Recently Trish was speaking to a friend at her shop in the market. Piw was commenting on how much she liked the mask that Trish was wearing. A few days later Trish passed by the shop where she had bought her mask and bought Piw one as a gift. On giving this mask to Piw, Piw insisted that she had to pay for the mask. After some skillful communication, Trish was able to leave without receiving payment. However, the next day as I walked past Piw’s I was given a container of salad. Piw could not accept the free gift, she had to give something back of roughly equal value.

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Category: Serving in Mission
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james killedActs 12 tells us the story of two apostles - James and Peter – who both had run-ins with King Herod. “He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.” (Acts 12:2-3) Acts 12 goes on to tell how an angel appeared to Peter in prison, removed his chains and led him onto the street. Peter makes his way to the house of Mary, the mother of James and John to tell them the good news. Peter is left on the street for another couple of minutes while the occupants (who had been praying for Peter) argue whether it’s really Peter waiting at the door. Once they let him in, Peter gets to tell everyone about how the Lord saved him.

The normal question that might be asked is, “Why was Peter saved and not James?” But this is the wrong question. The question that needs to be asked here is, “Who was saved?”...

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Category: Personal Reflections
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resetAfter being away for 10 days with team retreat and holiday, we came back to do Easter outreaches but had to cancel because Steve ended up in hospital with a heavy case of the flu. Thai New Year and 2 family funerals back to back took us away from Phrom Khiri for 2 more weeks; Covid outbreaks then came to Phrom Khiri, causing local people to be afraid of us coming to visit during the month of May. All of the sudden, we found that there were a number of people we hadn’t seen for over 2 months! Was this all just coincidence or was God saying something to us in all this?

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Category: Personal Reflections
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Fireflies

Over the last few weeks each evening, we have had a handful of fireflies flying around outside our front door. Each evening I would be captivated by them and I would watch them intently as they fluttered around outside and occasionally tried to get in. Even though there were only a few, their light would get my attention and I would get a sense of contentment watching them.

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Category: Serving in Mission
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One Wednesday as I was walking through the market I heard my name being called. I looked left and right, but all I could see along the pathway was a sea of faces wearing masks. As I looked more closely at peoples eyes I was able to make the transition from merely seeing people wearing masks to recognizing each person individually as they came closer to me.

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Category: Serving in Mission
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