As promised, the audio recordings from Pastor Jack Hayford's teaching "Anointed to Serve" to the Eastern Council of Foursquare Churches are now available for download. Special thanks to our Foursquare family at Mustard Seed Fellowship in Australia for originally recording and casting the audio. (For those of you using iTunes, please download the audio from the here)

In total, six recordings are available, one for each of the talks Pastor Jack gave.

We hope these are a blessing to all of you!

Through October and the beginning of November we were in villages attending Akha new-rice festivals, celebrating the harvest and remembering in thanks all of our blessings. So, when the American thanksgiving rolled around Lori and I smiled at each other and said Happy Thanksgiving and then enjoyed our staple city lunch of khao mun gai (Thai style chicken, soup and rice).


Tomorrow, however, we are going to do the "real thing" with a big American-style Thanksgiving (just a few days late) with our American friends here in Chiang Rai. Like last year, this means lots of work for the ladies as they prepare the turkey and mashed potatoes and casseroles and pies. Unlike last year, however, this year Lori has a can of pumpkin pie filling, so she won't have to mince a pumpkin by hand again.

The thanksgiving season reminds us of two things: first, how thankful we are to live in Thailand and work with the Akha mountain people and second, how thankful we are for all of you, our friends and family and partners in our ministry.

We hope you all have had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Pastors, leaders missionaries and delegates from countries all over Asia and the Pacific gathered to Bangkok for the Eastern Council of Foursquare Churches conference last week. Nearly 700 men and women came to fellowship and join in a community of faith.Pastor Jack was there.
Our supervisors were there.
Our supervisor's supervisors were there.
National church leaders from around the world were there.
This was a big deal - and I started the conference off wearing nothing but a sheet tied around my waist.

I didn't plan it that way.

We took an early flight from Chiang Rai with Pastor Timothy and his wife and arrived to find out that the conference didn't begin until 7:00 that evening. After a nice lunch and a little exploring of the area around the hotel we decided to take an afternoon nap to get ready for the conference that night.

Around 4:00 I found myself waking up halfway through a telephone conversation... I can answer the phone while sleeping and sound awake and coherent. Do any of you have this skill? I learned it in college and it has gotten me in so much trouble. I've had entire conversations while sleeping where I have committed to things I don't remember when I actually wake up... anyway, I slowly realized that I had just committed to do something to help the Bangkok team for the opening ceremony of the ECFC conference.
A few minutes later I was in a room full of the young leaders from Bangkok dressing up in very ornate traditional Thai dress - and discovered that I was going to be dressed as a traditional Thai slave who carried royalty on a litter. Apparently they couldn't get many volunteers for that role. So, while everyone else was dressing up in ornate costumes and jewelery and while the dignitaries from around Asia were dressing for dinner and the evening conference, I was having a sheet tied around my waist and a turban tied around my head. Finally with a slap on the back and an admonition of "Don't drop her" I was off to attend my first Foursquare conference.

Lori, of course, got a kick out of the whole thing, merrily snapping pictures of the scene. All joking aside, the Thai staff in Bangkok were incredible. They worked long hours, entertaining and helping everyone around the conference and Bangkok with great care. It was an honor to help them in even the smallest of ways.

The conference (and the subsequent meeting of missionaries from throughout Asia) was an incredible blessing and a rousing success. We met amazing men and women, heard insightful teaching (in English!) and received ministry where we are hurting. We will continue to share more about the entire experience through this next week and will hopefully have some links to Pastor Jack's talks from the conference.

We had hoped to share updates last week but did not have internet access while at the hotel (which was as much blessing as inconvenience), but are now back in Chiang Rai. We will be sharing at the Akha Bible Institute tomorrow and will spend the rest of this week in the city to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends here.

Pastor Jack Hayford, President of the ICFG and more commonly known as "Pastor Jack" will be coming to Bangkok this Tuesday to share at the Eastern Council of Foursquare Churches (ECFC) conference. This conference will host pastors, leaders and missionaries from all over East Asia. We are very excited to have a chance to meet and hear from these church leaders and learn more about the ministries throughout Asia, and this will be Lori's first time hearing Pastor Jack share (he has shared at Faith a number of times in the past). After the conference, the missionaries who attend will treated by FMI to a time of fellowship and teaching for two additional nights.We have been busy these last few months. Lori's parents were here last month and we were traveling to Rice Festivals and around the North with them. This past week a team of sponsors has been in from Colorado and we have spent some time with them, including a long day yesterday helping and learning from Dr. Wesley as he diagnosed, treated and cared for 200 Akha villagers. We will try to get some pictures of that trip up in the next week or so for you to see.

While in Bangkok we should have internet access and are hoping to share with you some of our experiences, lessons and maybe even some media from the conference - so stay tuned!

I remember an elementary school teacher explaining the difference between sympathy and empathy to our class. She said that sympathy is feeling compassion for someone in a difficult condition, such as poverty or sickness or loss, whereas empathy is the ability to feel compassion and personally relate to the same condition.The capacity to vicariously experience. Sympathy with memory. It is a powerful ability. It is why we chose to live in an Akha village.
We experience the lives we sympathize with.
We experience the pains we minister to.
We experience first-hand the Akha experience.

Now, we know this experience, this empathy, will never be complete. We will never fully understand all their hardships. They will always be Akha and we will always be American, there will always be a difference in backgrounds and experiences. But we desire, for better and for worse, to relate as best as we can.

Today, I'm relating for worse.

Last week, one of the leaders of our village came to me and said "You need to come down and pray for Mi Shui's dad." So, off we went to see what was the matter. It was early evening and as we walked into their home, Ado Pa was in terrible discomfort, itching his thighs and behind his shoulders. It was scabies, and one of the worst cases we had seen.

We have seen many cases of scabies in our mobile Akha clinic. Sarcoptes scabiei, that dastardly little mite, burrows into the skin and lays more little mites causing inflammation and horrible itching, especially at night. It can easily be passed by blankets, mattresses and contact in an Akha village.

We prayed for Mi Shui's dad and gave him Benzyl Benzoate cream for the mites in his skin, gave him instructions to lay out his bedding in the sun to kill the mites in his blankets and gave him our sympathy for his discomfort. Then, two nights ago, little red welts began to appear on my skin and when the evening came these little welts began to itch like mosquito bites on chicken pox.

Now I really feel compassion for Mi Shui's dad. I understand firsthand how miserable it is, and when I think of all those nights he was in such discomfort because he doesn't speak enough Thai to go to a local clinic, or read enough Thai to purchase the medicine himself, or make enough money to purchase medicine if he could.

We will always have medicine available for the Akha we meet with scabies. They shouldn't have to endure that discomfort.

Empathy truly is stronger than sympathy.

We are in the city for a little while as we try to work out some of the details for our home. Since we have the time (and the computer access) we wanted to give a few updates on our recent activities. In Asian cultures you have to spend a lot of time just visiting, and that was on the agenda for us last week as we had a chance to get out of the village and visit two of the Foursquare pastors in Northern Thailand.

We first went down to Fang to visit our old friend Pastor Timothy and his wife (Expanding our Map, June 2005). Pastor Timothy is from Singapore, but they have been living in Thailand so long now that they are basically Thai. Pastor Timothy is the point-man for Foursquare Northern Thailand and has the heart of an evangelist and the vision of a leader and it is always great to spend time with him.

As soon as we got to Fang we got to work clearing land near a Lahu Village. The Lahu are another hilltribe in Northern Thailand whose language has some similarities to Akha. This village had asked Pastor Timothy to come up and share for a week and then will decide if it will become a Christian village (such a different world from America!). We didn't last long, it was really hot and by noon we were all ready to call it a day. We set fire to the fields (another thing that is difficult for us Americans) and went off to lunch.
The next few hours were spent just talking vision and the direction of churches and orphanage (there is a small orphanage of Lahu children run by the Foursquare church in Fang). They are building a new church next to the orphanage and need finances and prayer to see that project completed.

Next we went back towards Mae Salong to visit an Akha Foursquare pastor who just had a baby boy. It was the first time we had been to the home of Pastor Noah and we met his wife (who was shocked that we spoke some Akha) and his 10-day old baby boy Solomon. No one had visited them yet, so it was wonderful to just sit down, eat some fruit and visit with this Akha family.

Please remember each of these Pastors and the Foursquare and AOF churches in the North as they continue to minister to all the different people groups living in Northern Thailand.

An interesting change is occurring among the Akha as the younger generation is learning how to read and write the Akha language. While we were in the city last weekend our old pastor and housemate was up in Mae Salong. Now, whenever someone visits our village they usually sleep in our house (which is really the village's home), we are then told dozens of times by various neighbors all about who stayed in our house while we were away.

This last time, however, the pastor left us a note (in Akha) on our door. Everyone in the village saw him do it, but just didn't understand what he was doing. When we came back to the village one of the little girls and one of our Akha grandmas, who we affectionately call Mrs. Santa Claus, took us to the note and said "The pastor did this".

We then proceeded to read (out loud) what the note said: "Paul and Lori, I came and stayed at your home, slept on your mats, ate your rice and food, and drank your tea. Thank you very much, God bless you."

They really enjoyed hearing us read this message in Akha, and insisted that we do it multiple times - and we were happy that we understood the whole message so we were glad to read it over and over again. They were especially tickled to hear this message passed over time and distance in this fashion and in their language. It certainly did not replace the oral tradition of passing news (everyone in our village still told us about the pastor coming to visit), but added to the story by sharing about how a 'written conversation' was left on our door.