Bothered by Evil Spirits

A fellow missionary friend here in Thailand recently shared the following story about the influence of evil spirits on Thai people and I think that those of you who pray for us and for the Thai people will find his story insightful. He writes:

"In the west, we often don't think much of what it would be like to be under the domination of spirits. Fear and manipulation of spirits is a constant theme for many Thai.

Late yesterday afternoon, I got a phone call from one of the church members. He was at the church with a high ranking military officer and his wife, who were asking for prayer [although neither of them are Christians]. She claimed that someone had hired various spirit doctors to possess and attack her. She reported having various visions that I'd rather not go into, and that the spirits were taunting her and telling her she was going to die. There was a look in her eye of emptiness and fear, and her husband had a deep look of concern in his face. As we prepared to pray for her, he asked if he should take off his amulets, and we said yes. He proceeded to take off 4 or 5 necklaces filled with amulets and talismans - one necklace with about 15 small amulets, another with 3 or 4 large amulets, and so on. Some of these amulets are no doubt very expensive - but they are only the tip of the iceberg of spirit involvement of Thai people, not just in the military, but from every walk of life (including many teachers). This military officer may have more amulets than the average person, but most Thai have at least one, and they are almost all involved in spirit rituals and paraphenalia.

A recent craze in Thailand illustrates this: A temple in Southern Thailand issued a special release of a particular talisman that is common in that city. Thousands of people crushed in trying to 'rent' these amulets at a 'bargain' price; several people died in the crush. "In one day alone ... the amulet trade produced no less than 100 million baht [over 2.8 million dollars] throughout Nakhon Si Thammarat province [primarily featuring this one amulet]" (Matichon Weekend, cover story, 13-19 April 2007).

I could go on and on about the grip that Satan has on the hearts of Thai people through the spirits. Please pray for us as we preach the freedom found only in Jesus Christ. Please pray for the Thai church as they stand against the lies and attacks of the enemy. Please pray for the Thai people who are under the bondage of spirits, many trying to manipulate the spirits. Please pray for this couple, that they may relinquish all ties to the spirit world and come under the one true Lord, Jesus Christ. "

Prayer and Winning the Lottery

I was talking this evening with our neighbor across the street and he asked if I could thank my wife for praying for him because he felt that those prayers because he had won the lottery. Lest that you think that we prayed for a winning lottery ticket, I'll provide a little background here. About a week ago, we sat with him for a number of hours in front of his home chatting about this and that. Sun wanted to ask him some questions for an cultural research assignment from our language school but we also talked a lot about various topics, including spiritual ones.

Our neighbor's perspective on religion is not that uncommon among Thais, namely that all religions are good and in order to be a good person, you basically need to set your mind to it and you can be a good person, which is the end goal of religion. All Thai people are familiar with the Buddhist saying, "The only thing that you can depend upon is yourself." He is not into amulets or going to the temple because he says that he counts those as sacred in his heart, so he doesn't need to buy something to hang around his neck or go to a certain place. I've had many conversations with him over the months that we've been here and I often stop and chat with him at his roadside fruit cart when I pass by on the way to the market. Whenever I talk about the Gospel, he always has basically the same response - something along the lines of "We're pretty much the same, you and I. But we're just from different countries and have different ways of being faithful. But we're both intentional in thinking and doing good as we understand it."

Coming back to the lottery, when Sun and I visited with him last week, Sun asked if we could pray for him, which we did. Even though he is Buddhist and we are Christian, he was okay to have us pray for him, as many Thai people would be. The general feeling among Thai is that prayer or asking for blessing from above in any variety is a good thing and certainly can't hurt. And it might even help since who knows what spiritual beings are out there who might be able to help me? So our neighbor friend was happy for us to pray for him. And he even said some kind of benediction for us in response - that we would be happy, wealthy, healthy, and so forth. I couldn't quite say that he was praying or chanting but he was certainly wish us well, wherever he believed the power to bring such things to pass was coming from. In any case, when I saw him tonight he thanked me for our prayers because he had just won 13,000 Baht ($371 USD) in the lottery. That's not megabucks but compared to the income of many Thai, it's nothing to shake a stick at. For example, the monthly salary of a beginning school teacher is about 6000 Baht ($171 USD). When he told us that he won the lottery because of our prayers, I couldn't really say "Praise God" since playing the lottery isn't a good or wise thing to do, so I said, "Wow, that's a lot of money". We pray that someday he will come to understand, like King David in Psalm 67, that we ask God to bless us for our own gain, but so that God name will be known and exalted in all the earth.

Language Progress

Both of us are still plugging along at the language school, making plans to finish up the current units we are working on before moving to our new ministry location in the next month or two. We still are not quite sure where that will be but hopefully will know soon.

In the meantime though, I (Karl) am working on a module where I develop interview questions on a particular topic (in this case, I picked the violence in Southern Thailand) and then go out and interview some people. I record the conversations and then transcribe them in order to learn about on-the-street conversational Thai and see what I can garner for my own speaking ability.

Sun is working on a module called "Christian Communications" which helps in understanding and using language for church and ministry. For example, she is learning the language for praying, for sharing her testimony, for asking people to open to a particular passage, and so on. Of her own initiative, she is also trying to work her way through the Gospel of John in Thai and likes to keep me close by to explain various words that she encounters. Not that I know it all, but for what I do know, Sun prefers asking me than going to the dictionary. Once she finishes up with this module, she will take her first year Thai language exam.

After we finish up our time at the language school in the next month or so, we'll move on to our new ministry location, which is currently TBD. May God grant wisdom and discernment to us and OMF leadership in determining where that will be.

How Hot is It?

In my last entry about the heat here, I neglected to mention exactly how hot it has been in degrees. Lest anyone think we are exagerrating or just wimping out, at one point it hit a high of 113 F (45 C) but there were many days when it was somewhere around 110 F (43 C). They do it in celesius here so initially it took some backwards conversion to figure out how hot it was in numbers that we can feel the emotional weight of. Praise God that it has started to rain more this past week and with that some cooler temperatures. It is still in the 80s and 90s with lots of humidity but it sure feels better than 110.