Conclusion

"Christmas isn't just about Santa. It's about how Jesus came". This is a line from a song that we sang a few times over our time in Thailand. It may sound obvious to you as you read it but the folk around you may not see Christmas this way and people in Thailand certainly wouldn't think that Christmas is about Jesus. So it has been an exciting, humbling, challenging and enjoyable privilege to spend three and a half weeks telling students in central Thailand how Christmas is really about Jesus.

Whilst we have been here we have used all sorts of methods for getting the true message of Christmas out from carol singing, to tracting, to an evangelistic camp on the true meaning of Christmas and other traditions and stories associated with it.

There was a foriegn exchange program operating at one of the universities we were working with so it was really exciting to be able to share the true story of Christmas with many Thai students (often for the first time) but also with Asian students from countries that are at present closed to Christian missionaries. Many took bibles and some signed up for bible studies for the rest of the time that they are in Thailand.

At the evangelistic camp we were asked to a short presentation on Christmas in New Zealand. Some of the folk in the team came up with the idea of using the song Te Harinui and how Samuel Marsden first preached the gospel at the bay of islands on Christmas day in 1814. This gave us the opportunity to reinforce what Christmas was really all about and went down very well with the Thai students. It also introduced them to the Haka (which they were all fascinated by and insisted that we perform repeatedly and also teach them how to do it).

We also took the time to visit a Bhuddist temple. This was an uncomfortable and disturbing experience for us and rightly so. For some on the team it was the first time they had seen people bowing down and offering sacrifices to stone statues. It was hard to stand and watch people who have been decieved by a lie put their faith in a piece of rock. We spent some time praying for the people that we had seen and reflecting on how Paul was grieved by the idolatry he saw in Athens in Acts 17 and how this spurred him on in his evangelism.

I was greatly humbled by the evangelistic focus that Thailand has around Christmas. Christian unions, Churches and other groups were all engaged in evangelistic activity. As I reflect upon how I have spent the Christmas period in previous years I realised how we can all too easily get too focused on the celebrating and enjoying of Christmas and not use it for the evangelistic opportunity that it is. I have much to learn from the Thai Christians in this area.

The students and staff of Thai Christian students were encouraged by our serving alongside them and I think we learnt much from them. They are very keen for us to return next year and ask that more people come!

In conclusion I would like to thank you for myself and on behalf of the rest of the team for your support and prayers for us during our time in Thailand. God through His grace and your prayers sustained us through difficult times, sickness, opposition as well as fun, and the excitement of seeing people hear about Jesus for the first time.

Tuesday 19th December

We went carolling on the campus as well as giving our invites for christmas party on thursday 21st. 7 of us wandering around campus , once we've found a spot full of students silent night, O come all ye faithful , joy to the world , Hark the herald and we wish u a merry christmas can be heard from afar along with dave playing his trombone.All the invites that we brought along have been given out. We prayed that the student in the campus will come to the christmas party and find out the true meaning of christmas.

After lunch the six of us had english teaching at Ahjan Leeann's class. We started that class with a small skit about the birth of Jesus. Then we were splitted into 4 small groups doing different things- christmas bingo etc. At the end of the class we invited the students to christmas party.It was very cool that phil got to have soccer later on with the students from the class n had dinner at one of the student's house.

we had fellowship with the thai students later on at night. About 14 of us went to the night market together. We had a great time singing grace, sharing food n buying gifts. It's been very amazing seeing how our relationship with each other was build. We have language barrrier between each other but yet because of God we formed a very close relationship within a few weeks.

Thursday 14th

Today, we again went out onto campus to try and have informal conversations with people, and advertising the upcoming programs at the Youth House. It was a bit tougher going for the whole team, as it is always a bit of a lottery being able to find people who are confident enough in their English to engage in conversation! In the evening, from 5:30 till 7 we helped out with English lessons, and then from 7:30 till 9 we helped out with an evangelistic Bible study. It's always such a joy to be in a room with people who are learning truth for the first time, and seeing the Holy Spirit work in their lives through his word who have not yet accepted Jesus, or are very young Christians. Our team came away seeing the truth of Jesus' words when He said that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Pray that God sends more workers to Thailand to reap the harvest that God has sowed.

Wednesday 13th

Today we went out on campus during lunchtime to try and strike up informal conversations with anyone we met there, ecspecially focusing on people we met at camp on the weekend. I (Phil) went with Dave and we met Nam, Pom, and An, and had lunch with them. It was really cool just to hang out, and become better friends with these guys and pick up some more Thai. In the evening we ran Cool Cafe, where we invite anyone to come to the Youth House and hang out, play games, and hear a short gospel message. It was really exciting as the room was packed out with about 30 people, many of whom were non-Chrstians, and great to see some guys coming along to! It was so encouraging for the whole team to see people we had invited, coming along and hearing the truth of God's love for them. Pray that these guys come back.

Christmas Fun Camp

Camp was a great success. We had lots of Thais, a bunch of Chinese, a group of Singaporeans, a handful of Kiwis, a few UKians, two Aussies and a Brazilian. Definitely merited its title as an “international” camp.

We had… lots of silly games… skits and studies about the true meaning of Christmas… coconut palms by the lakeside… crazy games… salty, sticky, ricey “porridge” for brekkie… little thatched-roof huts to sit in and eat the salty, sticky, ricey stuff… energetic games… a whole bunch of people learning about Jesus’ birth for perhaps the first time in their lives… carols… ice-breaking games… nice hard marble floors to sleep on, with rather thin “mattresses”… crafts… ba-ba-bo-bo games… punishment dances: the chicken dance and the cockroach dance… “secret Santas”… and a “creative” - and possibly very historically inaccurate - re-enactment of Samuel Marsden’s preaching of the gospel to the Maori people on Christmas Day, complete with Te Harinui and the haka, which people loved. Oh, and did I mention games?

“Why so many games?” you ask. Thai love sanuuk – fun – and it’s a great cross-cultural, cross-language, cross-any-other-differences way of building relationships.

On a deeper note, God was really at work: in the relationships which developed between students, as Christian students were built up in their faith and as non-Christians came to know more about our Saviour. It was really encouraging to see the number of non-Christian students who had been brought along by their Christian friends. The incredible campsite God provided at almost the last minute was a huge answer to prayer too. And one final highlight for me was seeing a Chinese student thank God for his first ever bible.

Alice

Wednesday 6th

Today we ran English club at the university. It's a group that meets about once a month to do random activities that involve speaking in English. It was all Christmas themed so we started by teaching them 'The Twelve Days ofChristmas' and playing some games. The main part of it was doing different activities with them. Esther taught them to make doves out of doilies, Phil taught them to make origami Christmas trees and I did a spot the difference and word find with them. It was a good opportunity to talk to students who don't come to the youth house events. I don't think any of us got into deep conversations but I was able to talk to them a bit about the meaning of the words in the word find (allChristmas things) and we got to invite them all to the camp.

In the evening we had our second cool cafe. I gave my testimony and P'Johnny gave a talk which I couldn't understand (coz it was in Thai) but it was really cool coz he did this origami thing as he told a story and in the end he opened the paper up and it was in the shape of a cross. Stuff like that is really effective with Thai students and everyone thought that it was really cool. I think cool cafe is one of the best things that they run at the youth house, it's really awesome to just be able to hang out with the students and get to know them. A lot of the people that come aren't Christians but in general they're really open to hearing about Jesus, and no one gets put off by the testimonies and gospel talks.

We would really appreciate prayer that we would continue to develop relationships with students and be able to communicate with them enough to share the gospel with them or help bring them to a point where they want to hear the gospel from someone who can explain it in their own language.

Carissa

Tuesday 5th

This Tuesday was our day off. We got to pretend to be tourists and I spent a hundred baht on feeding an elephant. That's only like four dollars, but after paying twenty baht for a nice plate of fried rice with pork, it definitely felt like tourist prices.

The most significant thing we did on Tuesday was visiting a Buddhist temple.

Buddhist practice in this country seems quite different to how it is viewed in the west. It seems to be all about performing rituals to gain merit. You do things like polish the floor in front of the statue of the old king, or put little bits of gold onto a statue of buddha, or put small coins into bowls in front of lots of little buddhas to gain "merit", which I think is some mixture of respect, good luck and doing what they can to come back as something better in your next life. It was kinda disturbing seeing all these people bowing down to motionless statues.

We went and saw the big buddha statue inside some sort of sanctuary where people get ordained as monks. Again, there were people bowing down. They were also these cups containing lots of sticks with numbers on them. People shook the cup until a stick came out, and the number on your stick was your lucky number. Once they had their number, some people would step outside and buy a lotto ticket from one of the many lotto sellers conveniently placed insid the temple. They also had a big plaque listing the people and businesses that had given money to the temple, ranked in order of how much they had given - the most was over a million baht (about $20,000 NZ, but effectively more in spending power).

We were all slightly troubled after visiting the temple, and some of us were in tears. Overall though, I think it has really strengthened our resolve to preach Christ to these people - because our God is a living God, not a statue, not a good luck charm.

David

The weekend

Hey all, this is Dave

This Saturday we had our Party in the Park thing. It was our first big evangelistic event. We had about 34 people crammed in a songthao(kind of a army van with benches in the back) who came from Phitsanulok (including James, Jonny, Alice & I) and maybe another 20 peeps from Nakhon Sawan (including the rest of the team).

It was a really cool event. About half of the people weren't Christian, which was great. We started with lots of random games, including a treasure hunt where they had to find where we were hiding in the park. We were all doing random things, so Carissa was an angel, Alica was an old lady, Phil was Santa, Johnny was something I can't remember, Esther & James were parents and I was a trombone busker :) Esther gave her testimony of how she became Christian after being a Buddhist in Malaysia. I remember one particular Chinese guy who through this event has gone from not really knowing about Christianity to being keen to read the Bible.

Sunday we all split up and went to various churches. They couldn't translate for us at the church that Jonny, James & I went to, but it was great to participate on celebrating the Lord's suuper with them which was something we could understand regardless of language. It all looked pretty much like a western church service though. Because it was father's day they had all the fathers go up the front and put on some Thai surrong type thing. The Thai's really do enjoy having fun. Also, because it's the king's birthday on tuesday, they had a picture of the king up the front. It seems kinda weird for us, because there is no equivalent person in our culture, but everybody here just really respects the king. Of course, being Christians they are absolutely sure that while they give the king their respect, they worship God alone.

After having lunch at church (which I reckon is a cool idea), we led CU in the evening. There about 20 people in the CU, but there were a few non-Christians who were very interested and were asking questions (mostly to the people who actually speak Thai) along the lines of "so... how does someone change a religion" so it's all very cool.