This is what it’s all about

Today was a particularly exciting and satisfying day. When Sam told me the news at morning tea I felt a shiver run up my spine.

We have been steadily working here with the students on all aspects of the learning program and of course focussing on Bible studies. One of our longer term students today confessed his need and desire for baptism and this will happen, God willing, on April 29 or 30.

Somchai is a lovely young man and has been steadily growing in his faith and understanding. Many others before me have spent time with Somchai and I have had a couple of sessions with him (including our 4 hour marathon a few afternoons ago). Sam had a one on one session again with Somchai this morning.

You might remember from my previous post that although I felt Somchai was ready for baptism, he wasn’t quite sure himself. Today Sam (among other things) went through the Ethiopian Eunuch story with him and Somchai confessed his belief and quoted Acts 8: 37 - ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God’ (see the screenshot of Sam’s WhatsApp post to us all here this morning).
Although Loss and I will have returned home before Somchai’s baptism, we hope to join in via Zoom - as I’m sure will others who have been here before us.

Well nothing was really going to top that for news today but there are a few other things to report.

Sessions went well this morning and after back to back solo teaching sessions Loss and I were ready for a brief respite.
We jumped on the scooter and headed off 5 minutes up the road to another local cafe - DB Slot - for an excellent pre-lunch iced coffee in air conditioned comfort. It was very tempting to sit there and keep working through emails and other stuff in the comfort - in fact I deliberately delayed our departure by ordering a second coffee - but we had to be back by lunchtime as I was scheduled to do a test Zoom call with Ric Steel and the I.T. team at Rathmines in preparation for our linkup during tonight’s preaching night at Bible School.
This all worked perfectly well. The internet and Wifi is surprisingly quick and robust here; probably better than we enjoy at home.

After lunch Loss and Sam were doing ‘computers’ with the students. As I headed up to take a photo, I noted they were learning about ‘What is a USB drive?’ and learning to type in English on a QWERTY keyboard. All very basic stuff for us, but for most of the students the laptops they are using is the very first time they have laid their hands on a computer. Having said that, they are not without some knowledge of technology as smart phones are ubiquitous.

This afternoon I spent a little time booking a couple of activities for tomorrow, as it is our scheduled day off. It will be our last opportunity to have a bit of an explore around this part of Thailand as Friday morning they are working us hard here at the TLC before we leave for home just after lunch.

The live Zoom cross to Bible School just before dinner seemed to work really well. I must confess to being a little nervous as we were waiting for the connection as there are so many aspects of it that are outside your control. A little bit of ‘lag’ made it a bit challenging when responding to questions and we accidentally found ourselves talking over the top of Ric at the other end.
Hopefully it might spark a little interest in the continuing work here.

Tonight was a ‘Bible Art’ session with Abi upstairs. While all the other students seemed to be engaging with this it was also so encouraging to see Somchai (who had finished this project a while ago) using this time to pore over his baptism notes and lessons with Ebenezer :) Czytaj więcej