The long and winding road

This afternoon after clinic i joined up with a group that was going to make a trip into a mountain village to visit the Hmong people group. they are fascinating. we have a lot of Hmong people come to our clinic. they seem to trust the western doctor more than thai ones b/c the Hmong people and thai people traditionally don't get a long. the Hmong actually descend from the minority in China. they look chinese.

i have a prayer request for me and for the thais, too. a lot of us get really car sick and it makes it hard for us when we need to go on these village visits. today, i didn't take dramamine, b/c i wanted to be a little bit more coherent. instead, i wore the magnet bracelets. i don't think anything was working. i was holding on to my stomach with one hand and holding on to the car with the other hand. i sat in the back, b/c i wanted others who get car sick, too, to be able to sit up front. can i tell you that i timed the curves? yes, every three seconds, we made a curve or switchback. how is anyone proned to carsickness supposed to do that? every three seconds, i was holding on for dear life to keep my body from moving side to side to stay in some type of equilibrium. all i could pray was, Lord, get me up this mountain. then afterwards, all i could pray was, Lord, get me off this mountain. it was hard to not be able to take in the scenery. in fact, everyone in my car knew why i couldn't talk. i had to literally sit there and concentrate on breathing. how sad is this? this is a bad thing inherited. oh well.

the Hmong people at the top of the mountain made it rewarding. we were making home visits to people in the village who have become christians and to pray with them and ask them if everything was going okay. they go weekly to disciple them. well, most of the men were out working in the corn or rice fields so we talked with two elderly women. one of them was a christian and the other one wasn't. now, this was going to the unreached parts of the earth. these people live alone in the mountains and have hardly anything. dirt floors. kids were everywhere, children don't wear any diapers. actually, thai people in general don't wear diapers, i hear. i don't know how that logistically works. :) we sat outside the home of one of the women. there were pieces of aluminun tin as the roof lying loosely on top of the wooden structure or house. everything inside the house that i was able to glimpse at had dirt for the floor. i even saw a child stirring a pot with leaves in it, that looked like their dinner. these ladies didn't know exactly how old they were, but they claimed to be around 70. i really doubt it. they looked late 80's or 90's, but maybe that was just the aged look from working so hard all of their life.

i was really surprised that the three christians they knew in the town were older. after sitting outside with the ladies for a while, and after getting through two different translations, one from Hmong to thai and then the second from thai to english, i found out some disheartening news. one lady's son is deciding to go back to animism or worshiping spirits. that is what most of the mountain tribes claim to believe in. so now this woman is saying that if her son believes this, she may decide to not be a christian and go back to believing in spirits. this brought up an interesting conversation at dinner, about once saved always saved unless the person was never saved in the beginning. sad and interesting. please pray for them. that village needs believers and it doesn't need it's believers to waver from the truth and go back to their previous ways. i totally saw paul writing the different churches when we were there. i thought of how his heart burned passionately for all of the beginning churches to stay with the truth and not go back to their former ways of life. start up churches, especially like this small community in the remote mountains of thailand, need encouragement. the thais i work with are willing to go every week and nurture them and help them grow. what amazing servants and workers they are in spite of some of them getting car sick on the long and winding road up the mountain. i realized the real long and winding road is the road to spiritual growth for these people. i pray they will be persistant and continue despite the ups and downs and the rights and lefts every three seconds that life can offer. it still is not worth it to go back to believing in false spirits. talk about pressing on. i pray that's what they do. they need fellowship and teachers. that's why missionaries like the ones i work with are here. thank you, Lord for that.