Vegetables, but Something More Important

It was a special day.  

The yellow banners in the market reminded our eyes.  And our noses quickly led us to the delicious aromas coming from stall after stall.  The annual Vegetarian Festival is primarily celebrated by Thai-Chinese who are wanting to cleanse their bodies from all meat and dairy to please their god.  However, everyone seems to enjoy the delicious dishes. 

This opened another conversation with one of my Thai friends with Chinese heritage...

"Why didn't your sisters come to church today?" I asked Lin.
"They had to go with my mom to the Chinese temple." She responded.
"Do they go every Sunday?"
"No, today is the first day of Tesagan Jae."
"The Vegetarian Festival, right?" 

"And what do they do at the temple?" 

"Pray to our god.  Today we celebrate because he comes to earth for the festival time." 

"What does he do on earth?" 

"Ummm...I don't know.  I guess to spend time among the people."

I asked if I could ask more, and with permission, our conversation continued on to her family's beliefs about sin, getting rid of it; heaven, getting there; god, and the unreachable standard of good he demands.  

After listening attentively, I was still confused.  And the more Lin tried to explain, the fewer answers she seemed to have. 

Lin has heard the gospel before (and again today as we talked), but still stands unsure, somewhere caught in between the pulls of family, a religion she doesn't really understand but grew up with, and the offer of a relationship with the world's Creator. 

Yummy vegetarian food!

A Fun First

    

Turbo speaking (and me translating) Sunday morning.

One thing about translating is that you must (at least I must) become a lot more familiar with the material than you would if your only responsibility was to listen.  Some points that stood out to me...

*There are about 360,000 Christians in Thailand, that's 0.58% of the population.

*Of those believers, about 150,000 of them are in tribal villages, which means only about 0.35% of Thai-speaking Thais are Christians. 

To put this in perspective, if you walk around Bangkok and meet 300 people, statistics show that only one of those will be a true Christ-follower.   

Doesn't that put some urgency into sharing the gospel.  

And when we share it, do we share like it is a chore or like news that we had just won the lottery?  (Cause isn't eternal life even greater than that?!)

We both had a lot of fun and are already asking when the next time will be.