Resurrection

I have to confess that I have couple of weaknesses.

I have a hard time walking past a bookstore.

And I have a hard time walking past a plant nursery.

I like plants.  And flowers.  My yard will never be big enough for all the different flowers that I would like to plant.  Last year we acquired a couple of exotic plants.  (I call them exotic only because I am not from here.  They are actually native to Thailand.)  Both of these plants are in the ginger family (Zingiberaceae).  I have to admit I have a special fondness for plants in this family.

Lotus ginger (Curcuma alismatifolia) is typically grown as an ornamental.  Several of its close relatives are grown as herbs, mostly unknown outside of SE Asia, except for tumeric (Curcuma longa). We first encountered this plant at a flower garden in Chiang Mai back in 2011.  But there are places in Isaan where there are large fields of lotus ginger that bloom at this time of year.

Lotus ginger - Curcuma alismatifolia

The other plant we acquired is Globba winitii (I don't know of any English name for this plant.)

Globba wingtip

There are several species of Globba that grow in Thailand, usually as forest understory plants.  Some species are fairly common.  Most species do not have the pink (or white) bracts like the one in the picture above.

The problem with many plants in the ginger family is that, come dry season, they die.

Well they don't really die, but it seems like it.  The blooms fall off and the leaves dry up and all that is left is a pot full of potting soil.

I had never grown these species before, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect.  I tried not to give up.  Do I water the "empty" pot or leave it alone?  I figured that the plants are adapted to dry season, so I left them alone.  I only had to remember which of my empty pots weren't really empty.

Finally, my patience was rewarded.  Little green shoots started breaking through the brown soil.  The lotus ginger wasted no time in sending up a flower shoot. (I'm still waiting for the Globba to flower.). The bloom is even richer in color than last year.

Lotus ginger - year 2

At any rate, I am very happy.  That which was dead has come back to life.

So it is with us who believe.  One day, if Jesus tarries, these bodies of ours will die.  That which was once alive will be placed in the ground.  To human eyes, this patch of ground where the body is placed may appear lifeless.  But one day, that which was planted will come to life again.  It will come back to life even better than it was before.

As Paul writes:

But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back. - 1 Corinthians 15:23 (NLT)

We look forward to that day when we will bloom again with new life after Christ returns.

Alive!

 ​​​​​​​​The grass withers, the flower fades,
        but the word of our God will stand forever.
                                                                Isaiah 40:8

First a cousin.

Later a sister in Christ.

Now we rejoice that Pat has gone to dwell forever with the one who has been the object of her praise and worship for many years.

Pat and I grew up living less than 20 miles away from each other, though in separate towns, in central Connecticut.

We were not only close in distance but also close in age, being born only a couple of months apart from each other.

We mostly saw each other at family gatherings, though it was always a special treat when we went to visit their house, because they had a swimming pool.

At about 5 years of age, sitting across from each other. 

I didn’t see or hear much from my cousin after high school.  She had gone off looking for something and ended up finding Jesus and a husband.  But I really knew little about where she was or what she was doing for many years.

But then our lives intersected.  We ended up moving to Bakersfield, California, only 50 miles from where Pat was then living near Lake Isabella.

Steph, Pat, and Don (and Josh's legs)-sometime in the early 90s

It was a difficult time in the lives of both of our families.  We were in the process of adopting a child, an adoption that, in the very last minute, did not materialize.  Pat was recently separated from her husband and trying to get established on her own.  In spite of her own difficult circumstances, she was a great encouragement to us.

We saw each other a lot that first year we were in Bakersfield.  We traveled to Lake Isabella almost every weekend and ended up putting in a vegetable garden in her back yard. We had commonalities in that we both played guitar and liked similar worship music.

It was fun to be a part of her family as she raised her two children to love Jesus as much as she did.

Eventually, we moved away from Bakersfield to Fresno, but we stayed in touch and were glad to celebrate her reconciliation to her husband—a testimony of her great faith in Jesus and her love for her husband.

Reconciliation Celebration

Our lives continued to intersect in Fresno as we were both involved with a movement to get the good news of Jesus Christ to those people in the world who have not had opportunity to hear about Him.  Our common interests brought us together at missions conferences.

Later, after moving to Thailand, our paths would again cross as we served in our different roles for a common purpose: Pat with Global Teams and ourselves with MB Mission.

Pat with Steph and Frank visiting us in Bangkok

Pat's life wasn't without struggles, but she faithfully served Jesus through it all.

Pat was able to be at her husband's side while he battled cancer.  But Jesus called Don home a few years ago.  Only in the past two months did she marry again.

Today, we received word that Pat has gone to be with her first love.


This isn’t the first time that Pat has died.  Many years ago she made the decision to die to self and live for Jesus.  And while she may no longer walk the dusty streets of earth with us, she is more alive than ever in the presence of Jesus.

We will miss you here, Pat, but glad that you are home.

Thank you for touching the lives of so many with the love of Jesus during your sojourn with us.

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.  Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.  Anyone who wants to be my disciple must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me.
John 12:24-26 (NLT)

Slow Down

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.  He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.” Luke 10:30-34 (ESV) 



When people ask me if I like traveling, I typically respond, “I like being other places, but I don’t particularly like traveling.”

Usually when I am going some place, my goal is typically on my destination, not my journey.  I tend to dislike disruptions and once I hop on a bicycle or jump in a car, it is really hard for me to stop the vehicle and get out.

Yet life is so much about the journey and not so much about the destination.  If God’s goal for us was only to get to heaven, then He would likely just take us from this world as soon as we believe in Jesus.

But He doesn’t do that.  Because our planetary purpose is about the journey.  Things we often see as interruptions are ministry opportunities that God puts in our lives.  Our choice is whether we want to be like the religious leaders who walked right by the man who had been robbed on the way to Jericho, or like the Samaritan man, whose name has become synonymous for one who helps out those he encounters.

Too often, I live like the former.  One incident is deeply embedded in my brain.

Many years ago, I was assisting a co-worker with his work in Twenty-nine Palms, California.  We had begun the day early, while it was still dark, and had put in a long day.  I was on my way home to Bakersfield and I pulled into a McDonald’s in Barstow for dinner.  I normally don’t like to eat at McDonalds but I just wanted have something fast so that I could be on my way home.

As I got in line, I noticed a homeless man and I felt the Spirit stirring me to buy him a meal.  But, like the religious leaders in the story above, I chose to ignore such promptings, justifying my actions by the fact that I had already put in a long day and I wasn’t even done yet.

When I sat down with my food, I noticed that someone else had bought some food for the homeless man and was giving it to him.  And the Spirit seemed to speak to me, “you ignored me, and someone else is going to get the blessing.”

You think I would have learned from that, but still I have a tendency to rush by ministry opportunities that God puts in front of me on my way to ministries of MY own design and under MY control.

Lord, help me to “stop and smell the roses” as I walk along life’s path.  Help me to be more like the Samaritan who sees the ministry opportunities that You have placed right in front of us, that I have a propensity to totally NOT see.  And by Your grace through Christ Jesus, forgive me for all the times when I refused to see what you wanted me to see in order that I might be a channel of your love in the lives of those around me.  Forgive me my pride in thinking that somehow the ministries that I have designed are more important than the ones You have laid out before me.

Dagwood

When I was a child, our family would sometimes eat at at a restaurant (I think it was Litchfield Farm Shop, later bought out by Friendly’s) where they served a sandwich called “The Dagwood”.  The sandwich took its name from Dagwood of the Blondie cartoon strip.  Dagwood makes these extremely tall sandwiches made up of all manner of whatever.  But they all have a commonality—a piece of bread on either end.

The bread is not the most consequential part of the sandwich, but the two slices to give you something to grab onto as you eat.

As I did last year, I am focusing on the first and last photos of the year I took—that may not be of the most consequential events of the year but they serve as kind of a way of to grab onto the year.




January 2 is Ozz’s birthday.  On his birthday, he and his wife, Sara, came to join us for dinner at our apartment in Bangkok.  Sara is a good friend of ours whom we have known since our early days in Fresno, California.  Ozz is studying at a seminary in Bangkok.

Jus a few days ago, Sara and Ozz again joined us for dinner—only this time it was Christmas dinner at our new place in Chachoengsao Province.  With them was their 8 month old son Elijah.  Elijah is their first child (and kind of like our first grandchild), so their lives have been filled with a lot of change.



Our lives, too, have been filled with a lot of change—first a move to Chonburi and then to Chachoengsao.  Our lives have been filled with some births as well—first the birth of a vision to work in Northeast Thailand and then (when some complications arose), birth of a vision to start a church in an isolated community in Chachoengsao Province.

But even as people are born into this world, others leave it.  And so we bid farewell to my mom in late July.



The above picture of my mom and me I took back in 2007.  It is at the location of another birth, of sorts.  The Haystack Monument in Williamstown, Massachusetts marks the location of the birth of the world missions movement in North America—something that is significant in our lives as we have become part of that.  So even though my mom is gone, there is new life rising up in her place.  Pray that God will use us to bring new life in Jesus Christ to the people of Thailand.

December 31, 2012.  It is a few minutes before midnight and the main street in Ban Phrueksa is relatively quiet—belying the fact that there are a bunch of noisy parties going on on a lot of the side streets.



We seldom stay up to bring in the New Year, but since this was our first in Ban Phrueksa, we thought we would stay up and see what happens.  So we watched the final two episodes of season I of The Mentalist and then broke open a new deck of Uno cards to keep us awake.


Just before midnight we wandered out onto the streets and son the sky came alive with fireworks.



The abruptness of that moment—from quiet to loud explosions—is kind of what our December was like.  At the beginning of the month we were not even imagining living in Chachoengsao.  And then the timing seemed right and so there was an explosion of activity with a lot of praying and then house-hunting and participating in a multitude of Christmas outreach events and then moving mixed in with all of this.

And here we are—starting a new year and kind of a new live in Ban Phrueksa, Chachoengsao, Thailand.  As I reflect back on the year and see death and new life, I am reminded of the transient nature of life on earth.  But God and His work are not transient—His work will last.

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.  Ecclesiastes 3:14 (NIV)


I wonder what kind of sandwich we’ll have this year.

Letter from Mom

 
Today I received a letter from home.  My Mom wrote me a card—it was the first one she had sent to us since we moved to Chonburi.


But the timing of this was especially poignant.  Only 10 minutes earlier, as we were driving to the post office, my sister had called from California to say that my Mom had just passed away.

It is fitting that my Mom used stationery with an image of a bird on it.  I have always had a huge interest in nature type things—in this I was more like my Mom and her dad than my siblings.

This love of nature expressed itself in my early years as my trying to make a pet of whatever creature we could find in our back yard and pond.  As an adolescent, I found myself following my Mom’s father’s footsteps and a joined a trail maintenance crew.  Later on, with my Mom’s brother, I joined a forest fire-fighting crew.

Physically, I was more like my Mom than were my siblings.  Only I had the brown eyes.  Only I had the hair that did not bleach blond in the summer like my siblings.  (When I was young, I was jealous of this, but now I am glad for the more sun-tolerant skin, being that I have lived in the tropics and worked outside for many years.)

We siblings have had a practice of having one of us call my mom each day to check on her.  She lived alone in the house she had lived in since she got married in 1946.  Today was my turn to call her, but just a couple of days ago she had e-mailed me not to call her because she was going to a party for one of her Chinese grandchildren.  It was they who had called the police when my Mom did not show up at the party.  (Several years ago my mom helped several Chinese people to learn English and she was adopted into their families.)

It was from my Mom that we all learned the value of service.  My Mom has been a volunteer for all kinds of organizations throughout her life.  For years she worked with the girl scouts.  Every year our garage would fill up with cookies as it became the regional distribution center.  And we would also go to help set up tents in the girl scout camp each year.  (I learned how to tie a clove hitch at a very early age.)

It was in her later years when Mom volunteered with literacy volunteers, through whom she met her Chinese family.

During my younger years we hosted exchange students from Norway and Barbados, so we also have family in those countries as well.  The exchange students came through a program called AFS, of which my oldest brother is now on the US Board.  Perhaps it was through these exchange students, as well as our cross-country road trips, that I got an interest in things exotic and foreign.  And so later I found myself living in Haiti and marrying the prettiest girl in the world, who just happened to be German-Canadian.  And now I’m in Thailand.

My Mom endured the idiosyncrasies of my youth (and there were many) and told me that they made me special.  And she was right—after I learned to control them, they have enabled me to adventure many places where others might not venture.

So thank you, Mom:
for loving me
for teaching me to love and serve others, no matter their race or nationality or religion
for putting up with me when most others thought me unendurable
for encouraging my curiosity and need to explore.


When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
"Death is swallowed up in victory."
"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:54-57 (ESV)





Sylvia Russell 1924-2012
Vernon Russell 1920-2006

Lambak (ลำบาก)

 
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:14 (ESV)
 
เพราะประตูที่แคบและทางที่ลำบากนั้นนำไปสู่ชีวิต และพวกที่หาพบก็มีน้อย (มัทธิว 7:14)
 
One of the nice things about learning a new language is that as you read the Bible in that language you find they will use words the bring up different connotations in your head.

Matthew 7:14 is one of those verses that I got a whole new picture of as I read it in Thai.  The word translated hard in English is translated lambak in Thai.  When I use the word lambak, the picture I often get in my brain is that of the walking portion of my commute to school.

Walking in Bangkok can be a bit dangerous/hazardous.  One book I read written for foreigners moving to Thailand recommended that foreigners not even attempt to get around Bangkok by walking. And if there are any hazards in walking in Bangkok I encounter them on my walk down Rang Nam Avenue each day:

• missing paving stones
• tilted paving stones (trip hazards)
• trees/poles/steel cables sticking out of the side walk
• manure  of various kinds
• motorcycles/cars driving/parked on the sidewalks
• restaurants on the sidewalks, narrowing the walkway to one person wide that is occupied by the person serving or people eating
• gas or charcoal grills
• pots of hot cooking oil
• awnings or umbrellas lower than head height
• people with umbrellas with the wires right at eye level
• people walking, not watching where they are going
• crowds of people, not moving, blocking the sidewalk
• wet/slippery spots
• drain pipes that drain water into the middle of the sidewalk
• uneven pavement
• vendors selling lottery tickets out of wooden trays protruding into the walkway
• people selling all manner of whatever
• beggars
• holes that open to the sewer
• hole that seem to have no apparent bottom
• people selling “services”

There may be more, but you get the picture.  Difficult.  Hard.  Lambak.  No wonder the author of the book recommended taking a taxi (is that safer if the driver is on meth?) or having your own car with a hired driver (who you can at least screen for drug use).  I will often walk in the street, which is also dangerous, but at least I can get to my destination.

If you want to walk on the sidewalks of Bangkok, you need determination and you have to really pay attention, or you will end up waylaid, injured or perhaps dead.

Jesus says that the way that leads to life is hard.  There are difficulties and distractions along the way. No wonder he says so few will make it.

But there is hope in this as well.  Even though there will be difficulties and hardships in the Christian life (they seem to be guaranteed), if we endure the difficulties and don’t get sidetracked by the temptations, we can make it to an infinitely better destination than the one at the end of the wide, easy road. We may be scarred and bruised, but that is no more than Jesus endured to make the way possible for us to have abundant, eternal life.

 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (ESV)
 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10 (ESV)

The Beachhead

It starts out small.

A single sedge “nut” or seed somehow finds a favorable enough environment to take root in the not so plant-friendly beach sand.  Soon it sends up more shoots, and eventually more sand is blown into the clump and is trapped there.  A small dune begins to form around the sedge.  It now has its own little micro-environment that is a little less harsh and barren than what is around it.  The soil scientist in me suspects that a soil will begin to form within the miniature dune.  Eventually a seed or piece of this sedge dropped by a bird may end up nearby, and if conditions are right, this process will start all over again.

Like a military unit, the sedge has set up a beachhead.  It will be able to expand out from here, causing the dunelet to grow and eventually be colonized by other plants.

Missionary work is like that.  We start out with a small group of believers and as people find a favorable environment within this mini-church, it begins to grow.  Eventually, people go out from these churches to begin new ones.

That is the situation in Thailand now.  There are not many churches in the country, though some areas or people groups might have many.  But people are beginning to go out from these churches to begin new ones.  Pray that the lives of these young plants won’t be snuffed out by the sand and surf around them, but rather, that they would find small areas of good soil on the beach from which to begin transforming the landscape. 

Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Matthew 13:8 (ESV)