An eye-opening experience

We didn’t really know where we were going or what we would be doing. Our teammates told us to show up at their house on Sunday afternoon, and we would leave from there together to go to a “gathering.”
We knew from CJ’s visit last year, that many times the “gathering groups” here will hold some type of English language-learning activity prior to their “service” that draw people to the place for attendance. Everyone here seems to want to learn English, and the gathering groups offer the education for free unlike the special school where CJ will be teaching on a regular basis where interested students must pay tuition.
So it was no surprise to us when they told us we would be teaching English before the gathering on this particular Sunday.
After driving only a short distance in the city, we pulled into an empty parking lot hidden from the main road by tall trees. There stood a plain, two-story, beige cement building that from outside appearance looked vacant. Walking through a set of darkly stained wooden doors, we discovered inside what appeared to be an empty warehouse. The interior had partitions set up to separate the open space into two halves with a hall of sorts in between. It was a little dark because there was no electricity in the building with the only light coming from windows in the exterior walls. There was an odd assortment of wooden wardrobes with padlocks on them filling the half of the room on the right where we first entered. In the room to the left-hand side of the building were rows of pastel-colored plastic chairs with some tables and a whiteboard in front. We figured this was where we must be meeting.
When we walked into the room, students (around the ages of 20 to 25) started filling in from other open doors leading into the building in the back and sides. There were about 20 students in all who greeted us with smiles on their faces. They seemed excited to meet us and hear about where we came from.
We taught English that morning using favorite verses in the Good Book. They were amazed when Zoë and Miá recited their favorite lines from memory, cheering and clapping for them when they were done. After about hour when our time was over, they asked to have a group picture made with us. For some reason, people in this part of the world don’t like to smile when they have their picture made, so we had to encourage them to smile for the camera by saying, “Say cheese!” which made them laugh uncontrollably.
They all walked us out to the car, hugging us and shaking our hands repeatedly before we were actually able to load the vehicle and leave. It was very sweet, and we felt our hearts connect to these students who seemed so anxious to want to be discipled and learn more about our Father.
Leaving the parking lot, we set out for our next adventure driving a few minutes through the city until the driver pulled over to the curb and parked the car.
“Grab some umbrellas!” our team leader instructed us.
It didn’t look like rain to me on this beautiful, sunny day, but I did what I was told.
We crossed a busy street and walked down a little path that led to a river. At the riverbank, our guide instructed our entourage including our family, our team leader, and a few others from the group we had just left, to board some boats. The students going with us on the journey were very protective of our girls putting their arms around them to shield and guard them as we crossed the street and boarded the boats. Before I realized it, the girls had walked onto a boat with the students when the boat driver said, “Too many. Only five.” And they pushed away from the dock. We were to get on another boat behind them.
I knew the girls were in good hands, and that the students would not let anything happen to the sweet angels they were protecting. I was more worried that the girls would not like being separated from their parents for their first time in this environment, but what was done, was done, and I kept my eyes glued to their boat from ours only a short distance away. I definitely did not want to have any part of me touch the dirty, brown water in the river, but if I had to, I was within swimming distance of my girls the whole five minutes it took to cross the river.
The boats we boarded were flat wooden vessels that reminded me of the ones I’ve seen in movies like the ones in Italy guided down small inlets with a driver standing on the back, pushing and steering with a long pole.
The driver of the boats we were on also stood on the back, and there were two long poles that he could use for assistance. However, these boats also had little motor engines to power us to the other side of the river, probably 200 yards or so away. There were a couple of 2x4 wooden planks that crossed the width of the boat for passengers to sit on. I felt as if the boat might topple over if I so much as leaned a little in any direction, so I tried to sit very still, while wielding my camera to catch every sight.
This is also when I discovered the need for umbrellas. The hot sun was beating down, even more so on the water, so the colorful umbrellas were let up to protect us from the penetrating rays.
As I took in the landscape around us, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes at where we were. On one side of the river, the side we had just departed from, was a bustling city. On the west side to where we were heading, I could see yellow, bamboo houses with thatched roofs on stilts. There were tall palm trees rising high above the modest structures, swaying in the breeze. The boats on the water wafting in front of the village while they waited for paying passengers were originally painted various shades of blue and green although they were faded and streaked from the sun and years of use. Protruding from all the boats on the water were the red, yellow and pink wooden umbrellas hiding the people underneath. The sun was lazily drifting downward in the afternoon sky casting a golden haze around the edges of the background.
The scene before me looked like an oil painting in an art gallery, but it was real life that I was seeing with my very eyes!
Still the most amazing views were yet to come…

We arrived on the other side and I was glad to have my girls back by my side.
“Are you ok?” I asked.
“Sure! Why wouldn’t we be?” they said.
“Uh… how did you like the boat ride?” I quizzed them, trying to change the subject.
“It was AH-mazing!!” they chirped in reply.
What exactly was I worried about???

We had arrived in the middle of a thriving village. We walked down a wide dirt path through the middle of the hand-made houses. The people were going about their regular life, washing clothes in buckets, chopping vegetables and fruit, chatting with their neighbors. Of the multitude of things they were doing, they stopped frozen in their tracks the moment we passed by. The little children were making mud pies and playing with sticks in their little worn-out clothes, but they stopped playing and looked at us like aliens from a distant planet.
At first it was just a couple of ladies who approached us and said hello in their language, but then as we walked the path, everyone wanted to say hello and shake our hands.
They were smiling at us, but I was the one who felt so honored to be able to meet them. I wished more than anything that I could communicate with them so I could tell them so many things. In time, I know…
After we walked through the little town, we crossed a dried up and dusty rice field and over some grassy terrain. There were logs that we had to walk on to cross deep creek banks that will be nearly overflowing during the rainy season, but at the present were completely dry. Eventually we cleared a path and some trees to find a small one-room schoolhouse looking structure. There were no doors on the building and there were open window cutouts with chicken wire covering them on the outside.
Inside the clay and brick structure were two sections filled with rows of wooden pews for people to sit in. The cement floor was dusty and it was the first place we had been to since arriving in this country where people left their shoes on inside. The roof was tin, but there were sheets of covered plywood underneath the tin that provided a nice ceiling.
From my seat at the front of the room, I looked out the windows to view lines of fat banana trees all around us. I could also see other little village homes in the distance, with dots of people coming and going from the dwellings.
It felt almost like a dream, and all of a sudden I felt so thankful to be in this place with these people.
The people of this village who had all come for this gathering were humble by nature, yet they were filled with love and humor.
I couldn’t get over the words from their leader declaring that they had nearly 75 believers amongst their ranks with many more waiting to be discipled and dunked.
A middle-age man came forward with a small green guitar. He strummed the tune to a song that we had never heard, yet we knew immediately what the song was about by the way the people closed their eyes tightly and raised their hands high toward the heavens. They were singing with as much volume and passion as they could muster out of their thin bodies, and I began to cry.
I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks, dirty from the dust of traveling there. The sight of these like-minded believers giving their whole heart in praise of Him who had saved them was more beautiful than any landscape or artist’s rendering I had ever seen.
When their leader asked if CJ and I would each share a few words with the congregation, I wracked my brain for words of encouragement. All I knew was to read from the Good Book, because there are no better words to be shared.
Our team leader translated the rest of the service to us that day, but it wasn’t really necessary because we could tell what was going on just by the looks on the people’s faces. Like dry lands thirsting for rain, the people were desperate for Good Book teachings, and you could see them being watered spirit and soul.
“Oh, how much we take for granted…” was all that I could think. In our hometown there are nearly 30 gathering places of like-minded believers, and we don’t hunger for the words of the Father as if our lives depended on them, ignorant of how much they really do.
The experience that day changed me. I’ve seen gatherings in other cities throughout Southeast Asia, but maybe it was because He has burdened my heart for THESE people, that it was as if I were seeing colors I’ve never been exposed to before. I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to take it all in. I wanted to swallow the experience and savor it so that it would provide some holy nutrition by the Spirit in times when I felt down or challenged or weak. Maybe it still will…
Before the day concluded, two silver trays were brought out to be distributed to the people. One tray had chunks of bread; the other had clear, tiny glasses filled with a generic cola.
About the time I understood what we were about to do, it dawned on me that this would be Miá’s first time to experience communion since she was only recently washed in the blood and went swimming thereafter.
My mind drifted back to recall our usual habit in our hometown gathering where new believers who have been recently dunked are allowed to sit on stage for their first experience taking communion. I imagined Miá sitting on that stage in our home gathering place being served the bread and drink by her daddy.
There was no pomp and circumstance for this day’s special communion, but in my mind I realized, there could have been no better place and circumstance for her to have this experience than in this rural village in Southeast Asia on a hot February Sunday, surrounded by foreigners who were yet brothers and sisters.
These people risk everything to come to this gathering – they could lose their homes, be imprisoned, possibly even killed – for standing in their newfound faith.
Yet, here they are with hands raised high and smiles on their faces.
Despite circumstances and hardships, sacrifices and sufferings, triumphs and blessings, life with purpose is a life worth living, and He is worth it all.
That day for that moment, they got it. They lived it, and so did I.
The best part is, I get to do it all over again next week!

Will you remember these village people in your petitions to Dad? Even though you don’t know their names or their location, would you ask for strength, courage and blessing for these people? Ask that their numbers multiply and for leaders to rise up amongst them. Also please lift up the students who came for English learning, that they would come to know Him personally.