An Overdue Blog

Ok so it has been like 3 weeks since I have made a blog, so I guess that I should put something together to keep my loyal audience reading. Well I had my final exam and everyone in the class passed the test, so that's always good. In fact, everyone passed my class with lowest mark at about 70%. Yeah, I kind of made it easy to pass my class but my class isn't the only class for the program so some students did fail overall, but whatever. After the exam I went to Bangkok for the Ethnos Asia conference, just like I said I was going to in the last e-mail. The conference was very good, and I enjoyed my time with all of the other people. The worship was fun because they let you dance, which is something that I haven't really been able to do since I have been in the camp. Oh and when I was at the conference, God gave me this word to share so I went over to the people that you are suppose to tell that kind of stuff to and told them it. They thought that I should share it, but when the song was finished the worship team just kept playing right into the next song, so they didn't really give a chance for anyone to say anything. It wasn't like they did it on purpose, but it seemed like the opportunity to share the word or whatever you want to call it had passed so I just went and sat down. Anyways, after the worship service the people that I told the word to called me up to share it, even though it seemed like the time to share had passed, so I went up to the front and said it. The word was related to a song that the team had sung, which was "Blessed be the Name of the Lord", by Matt Redman. It was about the last part of the song, I guess you could call it the bridge. Anyways, the part goes,

'You give and take away, You give and take away
My heart will choose to say, "Lord, Blessed be Your Name."'

So what God said about the song, is that He doesn't give goodness and then take it back, and then give some more, so that He could take it back. No He doesn't do that, but He does give and take away though, so the song is still true. He gives life, and takes death. Jesus said that He had come to give life and life more abundantly, and God takes our sins (the wages of which is death) away from us as far as the east is from the west, and places them in His Sea of forgetfulness. He gives goodness and He takes the badness. He gives freedom and takes away bondage. He gives peace and takes anxiety. He gives destiny and takes away hopelessness. He gives love in place of hate. He gives us crowns in place of our shame. He gives the oil of joy for mourning, faith for destitution, a home for the displaced, a family for the orphaned, and He give light in our darkness. He gives Truth for all the lies, and the Himself on the cross for all our sins. He gives and He takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Even when He takes something from us in the physical, He trades it in for something in Heaven, so then you store your treasures up in Heaven where nothing can happen to it, instead of on earth where it can be destroyed. So yeah that was the word that God gave me to share (well something along those lines). After this was coffee break, and people were coming up to me and saying that it was a good word, and that they had liked the song except for the one part at the end, until after I shared the word, and I told them to thank God for the word and not me. Well every good and perfect gift comes from God, so everything good and everything perfect is a gift, and they are from God, so don't thank the messengers, thank the one who sent the message (well I didn't say exactly that but anyways). This was all fine and good, but it wasn't the reason that God got me to share the word even after I went and sat down or why I am putting this story in my blog. So during the coffee break, I was talking with one of the other teachers from the refugee camp and this Irish man taps me on the shoulder and started to say thanks for sharing the word like everyone else. Then he starts saying, "this wee little girl in my church...", and then has to turn around as his eyes start to well up with tears. So I put my coffee down on some table where they were selling stuff, and went over to the man who was now fighting back tears like I am as I write this. Then he begins to tell about this 12 yr old girl from his church that had passed away from cancer that she had in the top of her spine and the bottom of her brain, if I remember correctly. The girl wasn't his daughter, but he is from a pretty small church so yeah. For three years she fought with cancer, since it was in the top of her spine, she ended up being paralyzed from the neck down, and as you can imagine since it was cancer, she was in a lot of pain all the time. On top of all that, where the usual things that comes with cancer and the cancer medication, but despite the immense amount of pain, the cancer wasn't her main concern. He told me that all that the girl really wanted to do and what she was most concerned with was not herself in her painful state, but all of her classmates at school. Despite the cancer and all its symptoms, she wanted and did go to school to tell her classmates that Jesus loved them. All the time that is what she was most worried about. I mean this was a little girl, aged 9-12 when this was happening, having her whole life slowly taken from her and all she wanted to do was go to school to tell her classmates that Jesus loved them. So as often as she could, and whenever she could muster the strength, she would go to school to tell the other students that Jesus loved them, up until the very end of her too-short life. The girl had died only 3 weeks before this man was telling me this. Anyways, the song, "Blessed be the Name of the Lord" was the funeral song for this precious, little girl, and I think the word that I gave meant a little more to this man and his wife than it did to me and everybody else at the conference, and it certainly meant a lot more to me after that. It is not that everybody else shouldn't receive something good out of it, but the word was most definitely for that one Irish couple. So the next time that God tells you to do something and it doesn't seem to fit right or doesn't really look as pretty as you want it to, just do it anyways, because He knows what He's doing, and that should be good enough for us.

So yeah the rest of the conference was really good, and then I went back to camp, hung around there till graduation (March 11th), participated in graduation and then went to Bangkok with Peter and Aleno (both from Nagaland, India). I stayed with them for two days there, and went back to Mae La (the Karen refugee camp) for only one day and, yesterday (Thursday, March 15) I took the bus up to Chiang Mai to visit Bonnie and Ray Emery before they go back to Canada. So I will be in Chiang Mai until Monday and then I will go back to Mae Sot (the town near Mae La), to meet with Pastor Robert (the man who sent me out to the camp in the first place) so he can take me to visit some of the other refugee camps. So this is my blog that tells the story I wanted to share and has very little for what I am actually doing. Well it kind of seems weird to blab on after sharing the story that I have. So may the Lord our God bless you all mightily in the name of Jesus Christ, and thank-you for reading my long overdue blog.