Day of meetings

I think the travel and losing a night’s rest while flying here caught up with me. fortunately, it was a low energy day as my sister and BIL had several meetings they had to go to, and I tagged along. We went across the city to meet with the Jesus Film project people. I will attach a picture of the JF kit (I had never seen one). It has a solar panel to charge the battery that charges the tablet, the tablet, and a speaker- all in a nice little backpack as most of the workers are lucky if they have a motorcycle to travel with. On the tablet are a multitude of resources to be used in the various languages here in Southeast Asia. It is pretty cool. Today they met to talk about how to keep track of where the equipment goes and how it is being used. It made me think about the “spiritual side” of things- handing out these resources to get the Gospel out to as many people as possible, and then the stewardship or “practical side” of things that makes needing some metrics to measure what is happening. In this case, they have developed a way to set up a profile on each tablet that indicates who or where it is being used, and then whenever they have “events” they can enter how many people participated and what the response was. People have given so much to allow for these kits to be given generously, and so the JF team is trying to work towards having some idea of how effective it is, and perhaps also learn how to enhance its effectivity. My sister and BIL were pleased with what they learned and think they can better train their folks how to use the equipment going forward. It was a good investment of meeting time.

The other cool thing is one of my friends from CRC worked on the JF Project years ago, which I mentioned during our meeting. Turned out one of the men had worked with Jason! It is a small world indeed!!

We then went on to a Hmong village outside the city to meet with one of their national partners, to encourage him and pray for the upcoming year. It was great to meet him, to see his heart to work to make the Gospel known, and meet his family. He has an Elephant Sanctuary that he runs which is how he supports his family and his ministry. Hearing his story is quite touching- he was left at age 7 as a “poverty kid” or orphan at a Buddhist temple. He then was offered a chance to go to a Christian school, but it wasn’t until much later he came to believe in Christ and now is passionate about ministering to people in Jesus’ name. Hearing stories like that makes me reflect on what an incredible blessing and advantage it was to be brought up in a Christian home, with parents who worked hard to provide for our needs and way beyond. We who have received so much shouldn’t be any less zealous to share the goodness of God’s blessings.

And then back to the Old City for another incredible meal- we went to a REALLY good restaurant, ordered 3 plates which we shared, 2 appetizers and specialty drinks (smoothies)- all for US$5 each. It is crazy here! I. managed to capture an image of one of the “delivery trucks” for propane gas tanks. (We had just weaved our way through a school pickup on our scooters- you parents can only imagine- small narrow city streets, a zillion scooters weaving in and out, long line of cars… I have to admit, it was kind of fun! After dinner, on the way home we stopped to look around one of the many Buddhist temples here in the Old City.