3 July 2008
New Lahu Believers in Ban Poi
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Our Lahu team returned yesterday afternoon. It was so good to see our Lahu friends again. We stayed most of the week in Mida and Cha Ti’s house in Hui Kau Lam which also serves as the church in that village. We spent time with the people in the village, playing games with the kids, talking, and praying. We taught in their church service on Sunday morning and walked to several nearby villages, teaching about Jesus, praying for people, and encouraging the small groups of Christians living there.
We visited many villages we had been to in the past and one new village which had recently been relocated to the area. The head of the new village who is also the spiritual leader or shaman of the village has invited our friend Eleh to teach reading and writing and also about Jesus in his house on Sunday afternoons. It was very exciting for us to get to share the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection with them and to pray for people there including the wife of the village leader. We had a strong sense of God’s Spirit wanting to move into the village.
Natalie also did simple medical training like how to care for wounds and what to do in case of fever. The people were very excited about the medical training and the kits we left behind with local pastors and village heads. They asked a lot of questions. Usually there were people at the training with recent injuries Natalie could demonstrate on. One little boy had recently cut his ankle playing with a machete (machetes are common toys for little boys in the villages) and could have used stitches. I’m glad his mother now knows how to keep his wound clean until it heals.
We spent the last two days in Hui Ba Rai, another village where we have friends, teaching, praying, and hanging out with the people there and walking to more nearby villages. In that area, many people are turning to drug dealing and prostitution for income. Many families will send a daughter to the city to become a prostitute and live off the income she sends. We prayed for the villages and for Mong Koon and Na Ha, who have a small church in Hui Ba Rai.
The last night of our time there, we did an outreach program in Bon Poi, one of the neighboring villages with the most trouble with drugs and prostitution. We taught about the enemy’s plan to keep people in captivity, God’s plan to rescue them and the Holy Spirit’s power to keep us safe from oppression (Luke 11:21-26) and asked the Holy Spirit to come. Two men from the village gave their lives to Jesus that night, and we were so excited! One of them was an alcoholic who wanted to be free from his addiction. After seeing our skit in which we physically tied people up with yarn and cut the bonds off of them to symbolize freedom from sin and demonic oppression, he wanted to use our scissors to cut off of himself the strings the people wear around their wrists for protection. We had never thought of those strings when we planned our skit, but he had understood that if he came to Jesus he could not hold on other Gods or special charms. That was a night we knew we were really making a difference.
It is also especially exciting for us to see adult men come to Jesus in these villages where so many of the believers are children and the majority of the people who come to our outreaches are women and children.
The hardest part was leaving so soon all over again. One week is such a short time to spend with such good friends and there is so much more we would like to do. Everyone’s eyes were wet as we waved goodbye to Mida and Cha Ti and to Enoch, our guide and translator who gives his life day after day to share Jesus with the Lahu and got on the bus for Chiang Mai.
