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| Looks kind of like olives |
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| Looks not quite like the olives I know |
Several days later, we opened the can, and I looked at the fruit that looked a bit different from the usual black olives. So then I decided to read the label more closely. The label listed the main ingredient in English as “olives” but in Thai it was written as หนำเลี้ยบ (namliap), not the word that I knew for olive, มะกอก (makawk).
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| But it says "olives" |
I decided to look this up on the internet and found that the fruit we had bought are not even related to olives! The taste was quite salty, so salty it is hard to distinguish from the salted plums that you can find in Mexican grocery stores in the states.
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| Not your usual olive pit |
So it is that not everything is at may at first seem to be.
So it is with our work here in Thailand. When we first visited MB Mission’s work here in Northern Thailand, it appeared to be a certain way. Upon being here a while, we find that beneath the surface, things are not always what they appeared to be at first. They are not necessarily better or worse, just different.
If we were to have made decisions based on appearances, we may have made decisions that might not have been appropriate. Which is why during our first year here, we did not do much teaching; mostly we were just listening and observing.
And still there is a lot yet that we don’t know. It’s not always easy to know how to respond to situations we encounter.
Jesus warned his disciples when he sent them out into a world where things are not always as they seem, to be, “wise as serpents and innocent as doves”. (Matthew 10:16)
May this be our prayer.
