Last post from Southeast Asia

*Written on Feb 23*

Well, our time here in SE Asia is almost over- we have only 3 days left. We have had a truly amazing experience here with many doors having opened to serve.  We were able to serve in the local public school teaching English, soccer, and leading after school dances and games. This was an amazing opportunity since the schools here are pretty opposed to western influence and the kids are often taught that foreigners are bad. The kids were a little scared of us at first, but they warmed up fast. This was a very special experience for me because as a teacher myself, it is hard to see the conditions that students learn in around the world. We are so so so blessed to have the resources, supplies, and overall excellent schools that we have in Canada. The schools here are incredibly basic- just a wooden frame with a roof. There are chickens and pigs running around outside that cause quite a lot of distraction (maybe the kids are used to it though!). There are no text books stacked at the back of the classroom, no manipulatives for math time, and certainly no computers. The kids only have a notebook and a pen or pencil. But they are sooooo filled with joy. I had an amazing time teaching them and playing some English games. By the end of the classes we felt like good friends :)


Our team also had the opportunity to lead some after school activities and during this time we were able to teach the kids dances to Christian songs. Although the students and teachers didn’t understand the music, we felt so blessed to be able to blast worship music over the grounds of this communist school, declaring that God is sovereign over this place. We were also able to bless the school with new custom made soccer uniforms as well and this was a big way of gaining favour for our long-term missionary that we are working with. He and another Christian friend have now been asked to coach the soccer team at the school which is going to be an amazing opportunity to reach these staff and students with the gospel.


In our last week here we were able to travel to a more remote area of the country where a long term missionary is preparing to move with his family. They have rented a nice big property with the intent to build an artificial turf soccer field to rent out as a business which is a very popular thing to do in Southeast Asia. The soccer field business is really just a front to allow their family access to the region and to help them make connections with the locals. Their long term plan is to share the gospel with the local community and plant churches. This is true trailblazing because this community of about 10,000 people has several un-reached minority groups and has never had a white person live among them. Most of the local people have never even heard of the name of Jesus and when asked if they know of him it is not uncommon for them to respond “he doesn’t live here, try the next village over.”

We were able to help our friends paint several rooms of their house and tear down some old structures on the property. Although this doesn’t seem spiritual in and of itself, I know that we were able to greatly bless this family and help them to get into their house and begin their work much faster. I wish we could have stayed longer to see all of the projects to completion! Please pray for this family and that the Holy Spirit continue to make a way for them among these unreached people. What they are doing is an amazing part of fulfilling The Great Commission.


¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

           -Matthew 28:18-20

After a long day of painting and cleaning we were able to go down to the local river for a swim. As we walked through the village, we drew quite the crowd and a large group of village kids followed us and swam with us. There were at least 25 children from age 4-15 swimming with us. They would often just congregate around us and stare and when our friend who speaks the language asked them what they were looking at, they said they had never seen white kids before! I think it is pretty cool that my kids can say they have been to a place where they are the first white kids anyone has seen!

To sum up my time here, I will say this: I love this nation and its people and have been deeply impacted by it. I don’t know if I experienced “culture shock” here (maybe I will know when I get home!), but I have definitely been hit pretty hard with the reality that life here is vastly different than my Canadian life.  Many people here are very poor, have very little access to medical care, and live in very dirty and basic conditions. But none of that breaks my heart as much as the spiritual poverty that you find here. In Mark 14:7 Jesus says “The poor you will always have among you, but you will not always have me.” This verse becomes so real in this place, because although these people are materially poor, they have a rich culture and community that in many ways gives them something that us Canadians desire; however they lack the hope of Jesus.

Imagine with me: you grew up in an animistic culture and your grandparents and great grandparents have all carried out the same rituals, animal sacrifices and idol worship for as long as anyone can remember. Now you have a sick sibling and instead of taking this child to the doctor your parents sacrifice a goat in hopes that the spirits will have mercy on the child. But your sibling keeps getting worse and no one seeks a doctor because this must have been the will of the spirits or the bad karma of the family. This is the belief of millions of people throughout this nation who are either Buddhist or animist.

Now imagine this- you meet a missionary who has moved into you village. You have never talked to a farang (foreigner) before and you are surprised to find out that they speak your language. You begin to build a relationship and over time they share several stories with you about a whole different picture of God. First they tell you about the God who created all things, the Most High Spirit- all you’ve ever known is the worship of multiple spirits and deities and you’ve never been told anything about the origin of all things. They tell you about the fall of man, how evil, and sin, and shame, and bad karma entered the world. They continue to tell you stories until you finally have enough understanding to hear about God’s son Jesus who came into the world to reconcile all things, to take away our bad karma and our shame, our need for animal sacrifices, and has the power to overcome any evil spirits. They tell you that Jesus has made a way to overcome suffering and to have eternal life free of the endless cycles of building good merit, never being good enough and being reincarnated over and over again. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice once and for all, doing away with animal sacrifices and giving us a way to have a relationship with the God who created all things.

After hearing all these stories you encounter the Holy Spirit who opens your heart to these truths. You sense the love of God and true peace for the first time and you tell the missionary you want to have a relationship with this Jesus and this God who created all things. But then you realize that if you decide to follow Jesus you will no longer be able to participate in spirit worship and animal sacrifices that have been done in your village for centuries. Your family may disown you and they may withhold your government documents which means you can no longer leave the country, and will make it difficult to get a job. You count the cost, yet you know that what you have heard is life changing truth so you decide to follow Jesus anyways. There are only a few other people in your village who have made this decision, but the missionary tells you about God’s plan for the church and the fellowship of believers so you join together and being to learn what it means to follow Jesus. There are many challenges ahead of you as you face family and community pressure as well as the struggle to transform your way of thinking from an animistic world view to that of Christianity.

These are the real struggles that new believers face in this nation. And this doesn’t include the fact that openly sharing your faith is against the law and the government in general is not favourable to Christianity and could potentially imprison you if anything you do becomes too public or causes too much of a wave. We are so blessed to live in a place that has freedom of religion, and freedom of expression. Please join with me in praying for this nation and these people. God is really on the move here, but we need to pray for the strengthening of the local church and for courage and great faith in the midst of trial for the national believers.

Oh, ya know, just a bowl of live frogs for sale at the local market :)

The local teachers love Jonah!

Here are the cool new soccer uniforms we were able to buy for the kids.

Here are a few pics of the river we were able to swim at.

Onto Another Country- February 7, 2016

This post was written on February 7, but I wasn't able to post it until we were out of the country. We are now back in Kona, and soon back home to Canada. I have written another post about this nation that I will be posting in a few days :) 

We made it to our next country! I am not going to name to country online just to be extra sure to guard the identities of the missionaries we met there. If you are curious, feel free to send me an email or PM and I will tell you, but if you know, please don't mention it in the comments :) This is a beautiful country, but very different from Thailand. The first things that you notice right away when you cross the boarder is that the landscape is much more sparse.  There are not nearly as many buildings as in Thailand and there are very few western brands and labels (such as 7eleven which is all over Thailand!).  You can also tell that  there is much more poverty here and that life in general is a lot simpler for the majority of people. If Thailand is a land of dogs (they are EVERYWHERE) then this nation is a land of cows! As we were driving to our destination city we saw so many wild cows roaming the streets- the kids loved it!

The border crossing

Since arriving we have been blessed by the amazing hospitality of our host and translator. We didn’t quite know what to expect since it can sometimes be difficult to work with local people due to security issues, but it seems like the city we are in is more open than many so we are getting to have amazing experiences here with our local hosts.

So far we have done prayer walks of the city and of the university campus. The campus here is very basic- a bunch of buildings spread out over a large property (with many roaming cows!)- very different from our western university campuses!

Jonah allowed us to have another interesting cultural experience when he came down with a crazy blistery rash that covered his face, arms and legs. We decided we needed to take him to the doctor because it seemed to be getting worse, although he didn’t have a fever and was acting like his happy, normal self. Our local friends took us to a clinic and when we arrived there was no one else waiting in line and the doctor was lying on a mat doing something on her phone. She sat up when we arrived and took us into a side room where she very quickly looked at Jonah’s welts. Our translator then told us that the doctor believed it was an allergic reaction to some sort of bug bite and then prescribed us a few different medicines. She gave us a few pills of prednisone, split in half (apparently a child’s dose?), and a bottle of antibiotic. The bottle was only a quarter full so she proceeded to take her open water bottle that was on the counter and pour some water into it to dilute it! She then charged us $15 and sent us on our merry way. Our hosts were surprised that the visit was so expensive, and said that if we had gone to a public hospital it would have been much cheaper.

This whole experience definitely left me so thankful for our Canadian health care system. It also hit me in the face how scary traveling with little kids can be and how much I need to trust God and remember that He is the one who called us to do this. Praise God, I never let fear take over, but I realized that my thoughts were going that direction and that I needed to call on the Lord for protection for Jonah and wisdom for me as his mother to know what to do.  After having a detailed consultation with a friend’s friend who is a western paediatrician on the phone, we discovered that the doctor’s diagnosis was likely accurate and she had actually given us good medicine, despite using an open water bottle to dilute the medicine without carefully measuring it! Jonah is doing much better and the rash is clearing up well.

Today we had the amazing experience of going to a local church in a small village. The Tuk Tuk ride took about an hour and we got a flat tire along the way, but it was well worth it! Jonah had fallen asleep when the flat tire hit, so when we all got out while the driver fixed it, I was just holding him in my arms. We happened to break down in front of a family’s home. Some of the members were just hanging out and a few of the women were laying out some sort of root vegetable on mats so they could dry in the sun. There were many children, middle aged adults and elderly people all just hanging out and working as a family. The father was also holding a baby about the same age as Jonah. I said hi to them and they all smiled and kind of stared at our spectacle of a flat tire! But as I held sleeping Jonah and watched the other father holding his sleeping baby, it was a good reminder that God made ALL people in his image and that everyone is precious in his sight, worthy of respect and dignity. I live a vastly different life than these people live day in and day out, but we both hold our babies when they are sleeping and enjoy how precious they are at that age.

When we finally made it to the church we were greeted by such a warm welcome! The service had already begun and people were singing at the front, but we were greeted with such lovely smiles. Our team was able to sing a few worship songs, and then I shared a testimony of God’s ability to restore relationships through the story of my marriage to Jody. I really felt the Lord saying that this was something the congregation needed to hear. It was a privilege to be among Christians who are counting the cost to follow Jesus in a nation where being a Christian is not looked upon fondly.

At the end of the service I was able to spend time and chat with some of the ladies with the help of our translator- one who was nursing a two year old. Her daughter would walk up to her, lift up her shirt and have her fill of as much milk as she wanted. No one around was phased by this even though the woman’s breasts were completely exposed. She was asking me if I fed my baby with my breasts and I said of course! All the ladies laughed and were very happy to hear that. I think they assume that western women only use formula. The more we talked the woman let me know that she had 9 children, two of whom had died as infants. This was another stark reminder of how different my western life is. This nation has a high infant mortality rate and you could tell it was almost a normal occurrence among these woman to have an infant or two die. Yet still, we both nurse our babies, and struggle with the challenges of raising little ones. I wish you could have been in the village with me to experience the sight of piglets running around, the scent of hot sticky rice cooking, and the sounds of local Christians praising our great and awesome God, but here are some pictures to give you a bit of a better idea:

Chickens at the market

Adventurous little eater

Amazing village church. Everyone takes their shoes off everywhere in Southeast Asia so there are piles of shoes wherever you go!

The boys checking out a village pig while a village lady checks them out ;)

LOVED these sweet ladies, my sisters in Christ.

This is a Tuk Tuk and how we got around most of the time. Its basically a motorcycle with an attached trailer.