Thailand. Where to begin!? This month has been one of the best and one of the hardest months of the Race so far. We are living in pairs of two with Thai families in a rice village called Mae-Ai. My Thai family = my bossy, LOVING mom named Malee and her 11 year old chubby, happy son, Pi. Basically we live lives with these people and do manual labor in the rice field during the day. It’s so beautiful and we have gotten to participate in numerous New Year celebrations (including the week-long, nation-wide water fight SONGKRAN). My Thai mom is obsessively clean and makes us bucket shower multiple times a day, we talk to each other a lot even though neither of us has a clue what the other is saying, and she eats bugs for breakfast. I love her!

With 1% Christians in the entire nation of Thailand, there are no churches anywhere in this area. Everyone is Buddhist. The idea of this ministry (which is through YWAM) is to build relationships of love with these families, and to share with them our hearts for the Gospel on our final few nights with them. Groups continue to come here, live and work alongside these people, share Christ’s love, and the families continue to invite more and more back!

Experiencing Buddhist culture has been part of the uniqueness of our month here, but part of what has made it tough. I’ve never lived somewhere that Christianity was not present, or where people literally bow before shrines in their homes and offer food to spirits daily. I know that God’s heart is breaking over this. Thai people are some of the most beautiful, loving, and honorable people! God gave them all of this beauty as a blessing, and He loves them as His creation and children. But they devote themselves to statues and spirits, and deny God by doing so. I know Jesus cries over this! I want to tell them the Truth! But I don’t have the Thai words. I want to show them that the one true God loves them no matter what, not because of actions or offerings. My heart drops when I see them buy a fleck of gold to put on the temple statue as a prayer. I want to say, God listens because He LOVES you! He sent His son as an atoning sacrifice because he LOVES you!
 
Sometimes I think that I miss America where so many people are Christians. But are we really? Are we Christ-followers, or do we say we love God because we were raised that way, or for the cool holidays, or because going to church on Sundays ‘makes you a good person’? There is just as much idolatry in America among Christians, as there is idolatry among the Buddhists of Thailand. Maybe we don’t bow before  a physical statue, but we idolize so much above our God (success, looks, materialism, sex, fun, money). We confess Christianity with our mouths but not with our lives; mixing the heat from the power of those holy words (Christ), with the coldness of our hearts, making so many lukewarm Christians. God hates this! He does. He says so:

So because you are lukewarm- neither hot, nor cold- I am about to spit you out of my mouth!
Rev 3:16

God cries to the Thai people:
‘Please, say my name!
Please worship MY name and turn from your false idols!‘

And then to America He says:
‘You say my name, but you don’t live it, you don’t mean it.
Please worship MY name and turn from your false idols.’
 
Neither is worse. In the battle of lukewarm America vs. spirit worshiping Thailand, neither wins because God’s heart is still BROKEN for His people. I pray so much for my Thai mom to know Jesus, she loves and serves selflessly. And to me that character sounds a lot like Christ. Maybe she doesn’t know His name as Lord yet, but I think He is still the king of her heart. Afterall, God is much more interested in the purity of our hearts than what box we check for ‘religious prefrence’ and how we decorate our house for the holidays.

Kathryn Chinn