Thoughts from BYT
- I forgot to tell you that I taught Blet Jaw to drive the truck. This is one of the best things I ever did! He now feels more useful and I feel more rested! He has become an excellent driver on these most horrible roads.
- We pray with the patients. Sometimes in the isolated villages they do not know anything about prayer. They sit there awkwardly and watch us fold our hands together and kneel up. Their expression tells they are trying very hard to understand what is going on. They study our interwoven fingers and then look at their fingers and with concentration push one finger at a time in between the fingers of the other hand. I cannot explain the pangs of longing to help these people know and love God. We tell them many things about God. Next time we will bring a picture roll and routinely tell the Bible stories. What a joy to introduce a communication with God in heaven to these people. Later as we spend more time in other villages we will have short worships with them and tell the wonderful gospel story.
- The weather has turned cold. It is hard to get used to winter months in the mountains. For two mornings in a row, frost was covering the ground in the morning. The weather reports for SE Asia say that the weather will be all mixed up this coming year. The hot and cold will mix with the wet and dry. The people are concerned for their rice crops which take 4 months of steady rain in order to bring a harvest. Already the price of food has gone up because of the flooding in the Bangkok area.
- When there are no emergencies, we try to follow a schedule. This helps the other villages around us know what days to walk out to our house and what days we will be gone. On Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday we walk to 2 villages each day. That covers 6 villages, but there are 4 more, so we rotate them through the next week. We keep adding more to the list as our radius increases. Some villages we can drive the truck to, but it is costly and awkward on these roads. Many can be accessed by motorbike and many can be entered only on foot. We have felt the urgent need for a motorbike, not only would we get to the villages faster, but we could carry more supplies. This is important because we are ready to bring the picture roll and tell Bible stories in each village. Praise the Lord your donations have reached a point where we are able to purchase a motorcycle!!! Thank you so much!! Bikes are harder to find now and more expensive because of the flooding, plus the new Motorcycle president promised to pay the employees more if he was elected. It seems we will order one, then wait 2 weeks for it to arrive. More later.
- Different villages have different characteristics. NehLahGwee village, for example is full of hypertension! I have hardly ever seen hypertension among the Karen people. They are too poor to even afford salt, consequently nobody has high blood pressure. NLG village however, from the 20 year olds to the grandmothers and grandfathers, it is a big problem.
Another village is full of children! Out of about 20 houses there are 30 small children!! What an opportunity for the picture roll! Yet another village, (Dee-A-Day) has bad eyes. From 30 years old and up the eyes are suffering from lack of vitamin A and cataracts and night river blindness. Two people are already blind. However, of all the villages I have ever been to, all have one thing in common – NONE of them drink water! They believe that one or two SMALL cups a day is plenty, even when working all day long in their gardens. This one thing is the cause of most all of their sicknesses. We “preach and preach and preach,” about this and show them how much we drink every day, but it does no good for most of them, they really believe that if they drink more, they will get headaches and dizziness! That is what they already have because of the lack of water! Please pray for them to drink water! Thank you.
We are working on a map to present to you, showing you Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai province and our isolated section to the far south end of the province. It will show the circle of villages that we already go to. Also the larger towns to the East and West of us.
Please continue your earnest prayers for God's work in this entire country, as people are so unaware of God and His beauty.