jim larson's thoughts
Odds and ends
27-Aug-08 16:08I went A.W.O.L. from blogging again. I sort of meant to this time--lots of changes both in the U.S. and Thailand. Plus the Glaziers, our wonderful co-workers, were gone for 6 or 7 weeks. I find that to keep up I'm often writing late at night (as I am now), so I thought I should let it go for a while.
I have to say it again. Prang rocks. She plugs away, always up to something new. Now she has set up a Saturday work/activity program for some kids in her neighborhood.
What human hearts can do. Tik is incredibly pretty and just as sweet, with an adorable baby daughter. Her husband got into drugs and stopped caring for her, then finally got arrested. Despite her hurt, Tik has faithfully visited him in jail. Yet her husband's mother has kicked her out of the house, saying she doesn't help out, something we know from neighbors is not true. She moved into Center 1 today.
Monday we went to visit Da, Mae's 17 year-old sister. We found her asleep in her tiny, windowless room that she rents for $20 a month. She said she had been sleeping since 2am. Mae and Da are opposites-white and black sheep if you will. While 14 year-old Mae left bar work and hasn't looked back, now in school full time sponsored by The Well, Da has been stuck in strung-out mode since we've known her. She works at a small bar for drink commissions only, averaging maybe $6/day. She would earn more as a student at The Well, but doesn't want to give up her "freedom", as she calls her various addictions. Tattooed and drug-like spacey, she is a pitiful sight. But cases like this are in a way my favorite. I want her as a daughter.
Gai called me on Saturday, his voice shaking. "Uh oh," I thought. "He and Miaw are having a big fight." Not at all. He was very upset about a couple at the Bible school where Gai and Miaw attend that have been asked to leave because of major marital problems, and he's trying his hardest to help them. I'm so proud of Gai and Miaw I could bust. They're organizing a team from their school to do outreach in Buriram a month from now.
Wan came back again after a 9-month absence with minimal phone contact. It's her 4th stint at The Well. She is unhappy, in the same codependent relationship she has been in since we met her 3 1/2 years ago. The fact that she keeps coming back however says that she's going to make it. When your own mom pimps you as a teenager, it takes a while to get over it.
June came back after a few months away as well. She came out of her drug relapse in June, spent a few weeks with us and then a few more with a friend in a southern province. While she was with us she was not in a good place at all--very negative and self-centered. While away in the south however she began talking differently with me on the phone, and started accepting her need to repent and really deal with issues that have held her back. She came back humble, with a commitment to really give her whole life to Jesus, without reservation, and so far she seems to be doing that, despite remaining weak areas of course.
Pear is still lost out there, not ready to come back. She called a while back and said she would, but it turned out she was only after a little money. She looked pretty bad. We'll just have to keep waiting.
Si has lied, stolen and snuck off several times to visit her baby's father, only to get beat up and cursed again by him and his mom. The last time her broke her eardrum. She's also adorable, and is changing. She's getting good mentoring from the older women at Center 1, knows that we love her to pieces, and we're watching her start to blossom. And I get to be her dad.
Comments (3)If necessary use words
24-Jul-08 17:04Da and her baby came home from the hospital Sunday. Her baby's hyperbilirubinemia, dangerously high on Saturday, was normal by Sunday morning. "My baby was healed because everyone prayed," she proclaimed. What is most significant is that Da is not a Christian. Not yet, that is.
St. Francis of Assisi is well known for the admonition, "Preach the Gospel always and if necessary use words." In every case I am familar with, words are necessary for people to know Jesus. But the words that often are not needed are the explanations and solicitations that Westerners are used to associating with evangelism. Over here we've found that it's almost enough to say, "We love you because of Jesus." When folks see that indeed we do love them, the rest all falls into place very naturally.
So many times have I heard people say, "I'm not an evangelist." In reality it's like saying, "I can't love anyone." Of course those people don't mean that. It's just that over the years we've messed up what evangelism really is. "God loves you" can often be presented as far more a condescending belief proposition than the warm invitation of a lover. We forget that God loses credibility if His followers don't do the same thing. Besides, loving people is fun. Doing evangelism the way it is often viewed can be downright scary. Somehow I don't think that was Jesus' intent. We conduct seminars on how to do some method of leading people through a Gospel presentation, much like companies train their salespeople to find customers and close deals. We should instead do training events on how to love others.
I expect Da will soon be a Christian. I don't think we'll have to say much.
Comments (3)Getting the best
19-Jul-08 17:14If you follow the meanderings of this page you are aware of my inconsistency. In this case I knew it had been a while, but Matt Hook emailed me yesterday pointing out it had been over a month. Oops.
To be honest, there are times when I just don't have the time or feel the energy to write, at least half well. In this case, a lot of the energy loss recently came from within our organization. When you're the leader, sometimes you feel as though not only you can't please everyone, you can't please anyone. But of course those times produce good soul searching and character building, and are therefore necessary. In any case, good has come of it, and we're feeling encouraged.
The other difficulty with getting behind in telling stories about what we do here is that there are so many that happen all the time that once behind I don't know where to begin. Eventually I just have to forget about telling most of them and just move on. I'll start with one from today.
I challenged one of our former students to read Jonah again. She has definitely met God and it is clear He has a significant purpose for her, but has really never completely submitted herself to His lordship, other than for possibly one or two very brief periods. I have seldom doubted the sincerity of her heart. Her resistance comes from a past of so much hurt and brokenness that make it very difficult for her to settle down to really trust that God will take care of her. For that reason I believe God is very patient with her, and that in time she will come around. Meanwhile she has been fleeing from God's call.
In the process of reviewing Jonah myself, I stumbled across chapter 2 verse 8, during Jonah's prayer: "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs." It wasn't the first time I'd been impressed by it, but reading it was one of those lightbulb moments of seeing a deep, ancient truth as though for the first time.
We started Servantworks to say to people that living like Jesus is the best there is. It's not about the call of duty and sacrifice. It's about getting the best. That verse made me think again about all the Christians I know who just like this former student, cling to other things besides Jesus Himself, and miss the best that God has for them.
I'm not about to say that Judy and I have rid ourselves of every worthless thing, but we have indeed found that giving them up does bring a lot of incredible reward and fun. Just today Judy went to visit Da in the hospital with her brand new baby girl who is under careful observation with a bad case of hyperbilirubinemia (jaundice). Da has hidden her pregnancy from her family, most of her friends and the baby's own father. When she discovered she was pregnant, she said to the tiny fetus inside her, "I hope you're ready, because we're going to have a difficult life." A social service agency referred her to us, and for the last several months Da has been a member of our own family. Today she told Judy, "I have never met a family as loving and forgiving as yours." Of course Judy and I know our own shortcomings--all the times when we are unloving and impatient with our children and others. We can only receive something like that with extreme gratitude, knowing that one way or another, in spite of our incompleteness, God does wonders in and through us when do dare to stop depending on worthless things. In this case we have one more beautiful young woman who calls us Mom and Dad. And she's an incredible cook besides. Thai food, no less.
Comments (5)Last Thursday
30-Jun-08 16:06
Last Thursday Na, 17, told me about the 3 times she has been raped. The first was by 4 men.
Bpu told me that her cousin was once again badly beat up by the guy she has been living with off and on for over a year. She ran to Bpu's apartment, and cowered in the corner, crying at every sound she heard that the boyfriend was coming after her.
Pim, drop-dead gorgeous with an even more stunning 8 month-old girl, told me how her husband has been staying away nights, and shows little interest in either her or his lovely daughter. He is almost certainly using and dealing drugs.
Pear, the 14 year-old we've had in her home who ran away in April, called several times asking to come back.
June told me about the memory stuck in her head of a guy holding a gun to her head while he raped her.
If we are to help Bpu's cousin, we need to reach her mother, 7 hours away, and get her to stop allowing her daughter to sell herself.
If we are to help Pear again, we have to take her back in our own home, because we really don't have an appropriate place for her elsewhere and don't know of one that would take a troubled girl her age.
If we are to really help Pim, we need to start spending time with her boyfriend, who began his relapse when he lost his already low-paying job--a typical scenario for young uneducated Thai men.
Na and June need lots of counseling, prayer and patience.
How do we deal with such heavy stuff all the time? We just love God and love people. Friday morning I woke up tired, stressed about some internal issues in our organization. I arrived at The Well Center 1 at 8:10 to hear the sound of our students singing for morning worship. My heart leapt. They are so dear and precious, and their brokenness doesn't take away from that one bit. In terms of the problems we can't help, well, we're starting to pray more.
Comments (4)The curse of yaba
18-Jun-08 15:50A few weeks ago Wi, one of our former students, and her boyfriend were arrested.
About 100 yaba tablets and some ice were found their apartment. Her boyfriend has 3 kids by another woman who was already in jail. The boyfriend was supporting the kids by drug dealing.
Wan called me the next day, asking me to go visit Wi at the police station. I arrived in the early afternoon to find Wan, her boyfriend, her mom and a friend waiting, along with Wi's 8 year-old daughter. While we were waiting, Wan's mother, a long-time drug user herself, told Wan she would like to find out who the turncoat was who alerted police to Wi's activities. I said that if we're going to play with stuff like that, we are the ones who are wrong. It's a bit late to blame someone else. The mother didn't respond.
When the visiting hour arrived, we filed into a narrow space along with a few others members visiting their own family members. We were separated from the lockup by steel bar doors about 5 feet apart. The lockup was evenly split with about 5 men and 5 women. None looked older than 25. Wi wore a tiny low-cut dress; her dreadlocked, tattooed boyfriend was shirtless. She was in tears.
I didn't catch a whole lot of the conversation. Listening to a second language in a noisy room with multiple simultaneous conversations requires concentration more than I am able to muster for more than a minute or two at a time. My attention was mostly on Wi's daughter, distraught at seeing her mother locked in a cage. There was a solid plate that she could just barely see over, so she was scrambling for a better view. I picked her up and held her for the rest of the visit.
“Don't cry now,” Wi called to her, in tears herself, which of course only made it worse.
Yaba, Thailand's most common drug, is a mix of mainly methamphetamine and caffeine with who knows what else thrown in by the labs that produce it in neighboring Burma. It is rampant among Bangkok's young, especially the poor who have little else to do. It is especially widely used by bar girls. Users tell me it doesn't produce a high to speak of--just suppresses the appetite, revs up your system and teaches your body to want more. It has tripped up several of our students, including some that have spent a lot of time with us and were making strides in their growth. June, whom I wrote about in the last post, is now finally at home with us detoxing.
If you are a drug counselor and would like to help train others, we would love to talk with you.
Wi will probably get several years. When she gets out her daughter may be a teenager.
Comments (2)Two daughters
29-May-08 17:50Last night I had dinner with two of my adult daughters.
One just finished college with an education degree. The other only finished 7th grade, but has been working towards her G.E.D..
One is happily married. The other is single with two children, and has had many relationships.
One looked healthy and bright. The other, just coming out of a bad addiction relapse, looked gaunt and beaten, with even a tint of jaundice.
One grew up in our home, nurtured and provided for. The other grew up with alcoholic parents including a father who would beat and kick her, at least until she left home at age 13.
One will find a good job when she goes back to the U.S. The other can barely hold a job.
Our daughter Anna is visiting from the U.S. for three weeks. Besides hanging out with us and being a refreshing encouragement, she is helping with the ministry and brushing up on her Thai. She and her husband Ben plan to return in two years to work with us full time. The most exciting thing she is working on is a plan to involve her church in a long-term partnership with us in Thailand. We'll also be putting together some new videos. You can read more about it here .
The other, whom I will call June, is not literally my daughter. But we call her 'Daughter' and she calls us 'Mom' and 'Dad'. June joined The Well 3 years ago, was anything but a model student, then last year spent a few months in a recovery program. She recently tried working at factories but as we had feared, couldn't handle the 72-hour work week and other conditions. Her relapse occurred one year after her previous relapse, which itself was triggered by a rape. Relapse often happens at the one-year point in time. We're hoping she will agree to come back to The Well.
I have often thought how different things might be had we been able to care for June since she was a small child. She could have grown up nurtured and provided for, and given her strong intelligence might have an advanced degree by now. She has been a follower of Jesus for 3 years and seen a lot of healing, but we've seen that lives as broken as hers seldom heal quickly.
There are those who prefer to invest in caring for children over caring for broken adults. "It's far better to get them before they are messed up," they say. Of course they are right. But as much as Jesus loves the little children, He loves broken adult children just as much. And I find that investing years into their recovery can be just as delightful as investing years into a child. Because somehow when I love people who in many ways can be so frustrating and outwardly unlovable, the cross means more. Paul's point that Jesus died for us when we were His enemies rings loud and clear. I find myself pondering the deep, deep love of Jesus--vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.
My two beautiful daughters sat across the table from me. I beamed at them proudly.
Comments (3)Leaders in training
29-May-08 02:40Last week we sent Gai, Miaw and their daughter Chompu to the northern province of Payao, where Gai and Miaw have enrolled in the Payao Bible College. Gai and Miaw's desire is to complete degree program that includes four years of study and a year internship, then serve in ministry, possibly with our own Servantworks team.
It was just 3 years ago last January that we met Miaw, then a timid 17 year-old, in front of a bar in one of Bangkok's red-light areas. I still shudder to think where she might be if that meeting had never occurred. Gai as well has had his own struggles with addictions. Both however are extremely bright and talented, and we expect will someday be leaders of many. Meanwhile we pray for their adjustment to a rigorous study program.
Payao students work to support themselves, including growing rice in the colleges own field, so Gai and Miaw's overall cost for tuition, room and board is only about $200 per month. We already have a sponsor for Chompu, but if you would like to be a part of assisting Gai and Miaw take this exciting step towards helping to transform Thailand, please contact us .
Not time yet
18-May-08 16:29We all wonder what it must be like to die. I caught a bit of a taste yesterday.
I took Gai and Miaw, a young couple in our program, along with Bpop and Bpon, two single guys who have been spending with us, to do a small roofing project at Miaw's grandmother's house in the Lopburi province. We were mainly going to replace a lean-to tin roof in front of the house, but the main roof, made from used bituminous tiles, also had some unplugged holes.
Bpop and Bpon were building framing for the lean-to, so I got the caulk gun out to patch the holes in the main roof.
"Can I walk on that?" I asked Bpop.
"How much to you weigh?"
"About 65 kilograms." Ok, that was a bit light. I actually hang right at about 67kg, or 147lbs.
"Yeah it will hold."
"Ok." So up I went.
I tread lightly, trying to stay on the seams, and patched some holes. No problems. I asked Miaw to help spot holes from below. She tapped on a spot towards the back of the house. I found the spot, and just as I bent down to apply some silicone, gravity had its way, and the brittle tile caved in. About seven tenths of a second later, the time it takes to fall about 8 feet, I was lying on my side on the linoleum/concrete floor below.
The next 5 seconds or so, or maybe 10, I don't know, were a few of the weirdest I've experienced. Sort of surreal, outside of reality. In a fright situation like that, the neurons fire like crazy, and you really can't think. But then you do think, really fast. I suppose it's what people mean when they say "My life flashed before my eyes." That really didn't happen--I just lay there not moving while my brain frantically tried to assess the damage and figure out what to do next. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me, so I moaned, panic-like, trying to breathe. I wondered if I had broken bones. I wondered if I would be able to get up--ever again. I wondered what everyone must be thinking.
I discovered that I could breathe, and a little later tried to move. There was some pain, but not intolerable. Sitting up slowly, I looked up at the roof, and said, "I see I've made a new hole."
As it turned out, it wasn't so bad. I landed pretty flat on my side, so the impact was distributed along the length of my body. The main sore point is the around the illium, that big plate on both sides of the pelvis. Ribs and neck are also sore. My mouth apparently caught a piece of roofing on the way down, so I now have 2 small stitches closing up a small hole in my lip. Had I been on a higher part of the roof, or over something else like the glass cabinet used for storing dishes, well, can you say "disastrous"? I can walk, but slowly. I think I'll stay home tomorrow.
Sam, 11, had just finished reading Circles of Seven, a Christian fantasy book in which the main characters must take risks and sacrifice themselves for their mission. Seeing me hobble around the house, he remarked to Judy, in all seriousness, "I am afraid this ministry is going to kill my father." Poor guy.
The ER bill came to about $8.45. Oh, and the hole I made was easily fixed with some spare tiles that were lying around.
Comments (9)No hitter
13-May-08 15:06Sorry about this one--doing what a parent has to do. Anna graduated with an education degree a week ago Sunday, finishing with a perfect 4.0. I teased her all they way through about getting a no-hitter. Like any no-hitter in baseball there were close calls.
Recent highlights
12-May-08 23:40
Ok, It's been a long time again. I find that sometimes I just need time off--too often I find myself writing a blog entry late at night. Here are some recent highlights:
Went back to Buriram for a day with Stephen and Sandi Freed of International Teams . Center 4 has a new loom, and the hardworking women there are cranking out silk and cotton fabric for handbags. The $200 investment should increase their production efficiency two or three times over their old homemade equipment.
Pear, our wayward 14 year-old, has called a few times. Her father died in a motorbike accident earlier this week, so she has come back for the funeral. We saw her briefly--she obviously felt awkward, but clearly had not learned her lesson, thinking she can just live a free life as an adult. Tonight she called, saying that she wants to come back and be in school. However it may be too late, and in Thailand you can't start school mid-year.
We're really quite full and can't afford any more students, but when they arrive battered and bruised, we just can't turn them away. Nong arrived a couple of weeks ago with a black eye, brought by one of our current students. Last Monday we went to pick up Si, a 17 year-old mother with facial bruises and wounds on her neck, along with her 6-month old boy. We've known her from her home village for a couple of years. She dropped out of school, come to work in Bangkok, where she got pregnant. After she was three months pregnant she found out the father already had a wife. When the baby was born, she went to live with his family, along with the first wife. However the father would drink and beat her. Si is an orphan, said she's been sad all her life, but always did well in school and would like to be a doctor.
A not so sad case is Wan, 30, who was homeless and jobless, trying to figure out what to do next. At the request of one of our students who used to do drugs with her boyfriend, we invited her to just spend a few days to sort things out. Wan spent 6 years in California from age 9 to 15 and speaks nearly perfect American English. There she had gone to a Catholic church some but did not understand much. When she began to learn about Jesus with us she lit up. Just today she told me how much she enjoys reading the Bible we gave her.
Mae, one of our 14 year-olds, is enrolled in school and will begin on May 15. She bought her school uniforms last week and brought them to show. We'd like to see Mae be the first in her family to finish high school.
A young couple in our program has been wanting to to head to northern Thailand to Bible school this month, but they have been struggling with their relationship. We've spent a lot of counseling time with them, but are still not sure what is going to happen.
Another student that has lived in our home for several months ran away. We knew she had a drug problem and was at high risk. She sent a text message to Khio, another of our workers, saying that she couldn't be a good person anymore. We are told now that she is dealing drugs. Jaimie's cell phone turned up missing soon after she left.
When you think you've heard everything, you haven't. One of our former students has been enrolled in a Bible school, but not working. She admitted last week that she has been “freelancing”--selling herself at night at times to make ends meet.
From time to time we hear from wayward students. One who has been with us a couple of occasions, leaving both times because of addictions, has been in contact again and is considering having another go. Another who left on unpleasant terms called last Sunday, and we met up with her last Monday. She beamed broadly, her eyes moist. She is doing well, working at her step-family's bakery.
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- Odds and ends
- If necessary use words
- Getting the best
- Last Thursday
- The curse of yaba
- Two daughters
- Leaders in training
- Not time yet
- No hitter
- Recent highlights
- Just the beginning
- Culture shock
- Not forgotten
- Fun with language
- My day before Easter
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Anna Larson
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Reply #18 on : Mon June 09, 2008, 16:12:40