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Interest in Jesus has been growing in my slum.  Right now there is one full family and a handful of women who seem very interested in Jesus and who would likely want to learn more if we had some kind of meeting.  But how should that look here?  How do we as foreigners help Buddhists connect to the true God?  How do we facilitate an experience and relationship with Jesus that makes sense to Thais and not just Americans?

Over the 2 years I’ve lived in the community (not counting the 5 months I was on furlough) I’ve definitely seen changes in the spiritual environment of that place.  Not that there haven’t been moments when I’ve really wondered if anything was happening– I’ve definitely prayed many prayers of pleading and sometimes frustration with the slowness of seeing any fruit.  But when I step back and look at the big picture, the longer-term trends, I can definitely see God’s work.

When I first arrived it was sometimes hard to even get people to smile at me.  There were a few women who were friendly from the beginning, but I would say the majority seemed fairly cold.  Their experience with outsiders was one of either pushy Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness evangelists, or else child-sponsorship program workers who gave money handouts but remained distant and only came around when their budget was in the green.  They didn’t know what to think of me.

After months of smiling and wai-ing and repeating daily that no, I was not going home now because this slum is my home, people finally began seeing me as a neighbor.  They initially called me “kru” or “teacher” since I helped run a kids’ program in my house, but now I’m just “nong”, “pii” or “nuu”– little sister, older sister, child (an affectionate term used by the older generation that literally means “mouse”).

When I would share about Jesus I generally got smiles– “oh yes, he was a good teacher, like Buddha was a good teacher”, or, “Christianity is good like all religions are good because it teaches us to be good.”  It was still often referred to as the foreigner’s religion, or as part of the Western culture and identity while to be Thai is to be Buddhist.

But in the past year or so I’ve had increasingly frequent chances to talk on a deeper level with folks about spirituality and Jesus.  People have shared with me some of their longings and fears– their desire for close relationships but how everyone is marred by selfishness and greed, their feelings of instability in this economy and how they seek their idols for properity, their fears of death and ghosts.

Lately our language partner Gop, a very practical and strong woman, has been asking me deeper questions– “Why are you here?  I get that it’s nice to help poor people, but what do you GET out of it?”  As I’ve tried to explain what it’s like to follow Jesus who loves the poor, to desire to be more like him and receive from him, she stares at me with an intensity I haven’t seen from her before.  I mentioned the possibility of starting a group for people to learn about Jesus, and while at first she didn’t seem too interested, she later asked “so… if someone wanted to come to one of those meetings, would they HAVE to convert?”  I assured her that she could come and just listen if she wanted.  More intense staring.  I think some of her assumptions and fears about faith in Jesus are breaking down.

Our team leader Kevin recently moved into the slum and has been reconnecting with a family he had invested in previously.  I once had dinner with them and Kevin and watched them listen intently to Kevin’s story of the Gospel for over an hour.  These days they still seem hungry to know more.

So Kevin, Christy and I are talking about starting some kind of “seeker-friendly” group in our slum.  We’re starting completely from scratch.  We know what doesn’t work: debating about doctrine, simple spiritual laws, trying to argue them into the Kingdom.  What seems to connect with folks is experience, community, love.  They seek their idols as a way to connect with a higher power that can offer security and peace.  How can we help Thais connect to their Creator, their wealthy and generous Father?

We are thinking about building off of the Thai practice of meditation.  Rather than try to explain Jesus, how much more powerful if he would show himself to them personally.  We will still use Scripture and prayer, but will focus more on meditating on the words, and asking for signs and wonders, healings, for an experience with the living God, that they may see for themselves the difference between him and their idols.

Pray for us as we discuss how to best do this.  Pray for God’s mercy on us as we have no Thai Christian partnership in this slum and we are well aware of our limitations in connecting to the hearts of our neighbors.  Pray that God would bring people and most importantly that his Spirit would be present.  Praise God that he is the one pursuing these people and that he knows exactly what they need in order to believe and trust him.  What an awesome privilege to be a part of this mystery!

photo credit: mekong_virus

Her name is Mae. She’s maybe 20 years old and lives in a one-room shack with her husband and her six-month old daughter (nick-named “Je t’aime”). They are assuming the little girl is his but they really don’t know given how she spends her evenings. But he is fine with that, and even the neighbors keep quiet when they see her leave in the evenings, powdered white with painted-on lips, because she’s bringing home money. At least she’s found a way, they think. At least her doll-like face and porcelain skin have granted her a little bit of power. Maybe it’s a sacrifice, but it puts food on the plate. And she shares with us, so who are we to judge?

There are only a few whispers now, as neighbors feel her absence. She has been in Singapore for a few days so far. A hefty profit to be had in the red-light districts there, they say. Oh, no, she could never afford to travel there on her own. Her co-workers and boss all pitched in. It’s like a business investment. And they’re expecting huge returns– a plane ticket and enough cash for two weeks, and she’ll bring back over $10,000. Then it will be divided between the shareholders, see? And of course she’ll see some of that profit as well.

Neighbors say she doesn’t feel ashamed. That she’s proud, even. But I have a feeling that under the painted-on exterior and the armor around her heart, there are wounds nobody sees. Or maybe they just don’t want to see. But there is still someone who knows.

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.” –Isaiah 55:1-3

A few days ago I went to a nearby mall and saw, I am not kidding you, a woman feeding her dog an ice cream cone.  It was sitting in her lap on a mall bench, was immaculately groomed and I’m  pretty sure it was wearing clothes.  And lapping at a McDonald’s ice cream come.

In my slum, the dogs are malnourished and nasty.  Even their owners (if they have one) won’t touch them.  They are skin and bones, often missing an eye, limb, or part of their tail.  And they are constantly trying to scratch their skin off (and sometimes succeeding) because of their mange and fleas.

Yet in nearby neighborhoods women are dressing and feeding their animals better than the children around me are dressed and fed.

Also, within a 5-minute walk from my slum a new Walmart-like store is being built.  In the complex will be a Starbucks.  I will now live closer to a Starbucks than I ever did in the States.  I could leave my mosquito-infested shack over a garbage-slash-sewage swamp, walk a few blocks and be inside the air-conditioned, coffee-scented, sterilized comfort of Starbucks.

This is the world of contrasts my neighbors live in.  Their slums are neatly hidden away from the middle and upper class eyes, but the wealth of their fellow city-dwellers is right in front of their faces.  They leave their slum and wait for their bus to arrive, amidst shiny new luxury cars and motorcycles.  They might spend 75 cents for a street-stall meal while across the street others are paying $10 for practically the same food.

And now there will be a coffee shop they’ll pass by, selling a drink for an amount that could feed their whole family. 

I, too, feel this contrast.  I sometimes think it would be easier to be a missionary to the poor somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where just about everyone is poor and there is not the temptation of upper class comfort in my backyard.  Not that these things are evil (I’m sure I’ll visit the Starbucks once in a while), but they do make it more of a challenge to choose the world of my slum-dwelling friends over the one I left behind.  Like Jesus refusing those who would make him an earthly king, I have to refuse some of these things for the sake of identifying with those I am called to, those who Jesus says are blessed, those who receive the Kingdom in ways that I need to learn from.

And I want to partner with Jesus in sharing good news to the poor, news that makes the most impoverished believer richer than the wealthiest in this city.  And I believe that as God’s kingdom comes he will heal this gap between the rich and poor, a product of the fall.  This is what I want to spend my life on, and it feels well worth the things I leave behind.

Tonight is the first night that I will be leading the Permsup youth Bible study. The girls who have been coming asked that we study the birth of Jesus, as some of them have never read it. So for the past couple of days I have been reflecting on just how God decided to become man.

I realized that the beauty and even craziness of the story have lost their impact on me, over the years of hearing the verses read and not really pondering them. At first I wondered how to lead a study on Jesus’ birth and have it be very interesting. But God has been making the story new to me all over again, and it has been such a blessing preparing to share this with the girls.

First of all, God– the king of Heaven and earth, who deserves all glory, honor and praise; who holds the power of life and death in his hands; was given a feeding trough as his first bed. He was born in the middle of the night to a couple who could not only find no room in a local motel (was it full or were they unwelcomed?), but who also knew no one in their home town who would welcome them in for the night. So Mary gave lonely birth to the Savior of the world among animals.

Jesus was born in poverty, in the middle of nowhere, to parents not of royalty or power, nor of blonde hair and blue eyes. He came to the ordinary, the obscure, the humble. To ones the world would not commend or idealize, but who God alone lifts up. He came not as political leader or king, forsaking the appeal of human power, but came as a servant and friend to the poor.

And who did God send the hosts of heaven to, announcing this miracle of deity made flesh? Not to the religious of the day, those who memorized every Jewish law and spent their days in the temple. But to shepherds. To one of the lowest classes of society. Interestingly, to the men who cared for sheep offered as temple sacrifices. To these God introduced the Lamb of God, come to take away the sins of the world.

Obscurity in his birth, rejection in his death. What kind of Savior is this? One who is familiar with our sufferings, who has carried our infirmities especially those of the “least of these.” By his wounds the poor of Bangkok can be healed.

If Jesus were to be born in Bangkok, I’m convinced it would be in a slum. I hope that as the girls in the study consider the birth of Jesus tonight that they will receive in a new way the depth of Jesus love and care for them and their community.

I feel a strange mix of emotions when I am in Permsup. I thankfully have not grown numb to the darkness of the place, I have not been fooled by the seemingly carefree demeanors and laughter, often alcohol-induced or a mask to hide pain. I still see the garbage and mangy dogs who have scratched off most of their hair; I still smell the sewage; I still see fathers and husbands incoherently drunk at 5 p.m.; I still feel the heat that fans cannot relieve; I still see the dirty and neglected children; I still sense the shame of the Isan people for their dark skin and imperfect Thai.

It could be easy to slip into hopelessness. After all, nearly everyone here has. Who am I to believe anything different?

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” –Luke 4:18-21

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they say the Lord.
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” –John 20:20-21