Hello Friends,
Surprise! Another newsletter; since I promised to write two letters in a series thatI've called‘Impacted Lives', I figured I'd better not wait too long or you would forget.
I hope you had a pleasant Thanksgiving and you are entering the advent season in celebration of Christ's coming into the world. Both Thai and ethnic minority Christians here normally celebrate both Thanksgiving and Christmas, but since each church will choose a day anywhere from November, right after the harvest, through to February for their Thanksgiving and some time in December to celebrate Christmas, we are in a kind of ongoing celebration for several months. It's kind of nice. One can always get in on a good meal this time of year.
We do have many things to be thankful for. Early last week I received a one-year visa stamp in my passport. This allows me to legally live and work in Thailand for one more year. After 31 years of living in this country – and now raising a "Thai" family here, you would think that one would be trusted to stay a little longer than only one year at a time. But I am thankful for what I have been given.
Part 2:
This past October all the staff got together for a working retreat. Dr. Peter Quesenberry helped the team walk through a process of looking at our organizational values. (Pete was my boss from 1998 to 2003. He and his family joined the MMF this fall. What a blessing to have new team member with such experience and a servant leader's heart). We came up with a list of ten values which we all had a role in determining. Below is a list of few of the MMF values:
Christ centered
Ethnic minority in identity and focus
Enabling people to grow and develop
Participation of all parties as we seek to encourage leaders
Accountability and Integrity
Family focused both in the community and in our team
I was so pleased that "Christ centeredness' was at the top of the list. This was not always the case for all of us in the MMF. This comes from years of working together and growing together in our faith. Not too many days after the retreat I was having lunch with a staff person who has been a bit of a black sheep in the MMF. Chet has been disciplined twice as a result of misdeeds. He acknowledged to me that he's constantly making unwise decisions when it comes to behavior. And we agreed that he continues to reap the consequences – making his life and the lives of people around him difficult. Well, at what I thought was the about the end of our lunch, he said, "What must I do to become a Christian?"So our conversation continued for some time longer. Up until now Chet has never admitted that he is not living a life of faith. He has claimed Christian faith through his Catholic upbringing. Yet, many of the people in his church community show little difference in their lives compared with the rest of Thai rural society. Chet has been resistant to changing his life style claiming that his is no different than the rest of his family and that he is happy with his life. But this month he appeared to finally admit that it's not all that great. So after several years, maybe Chet is ready for a real change in his life. I hope so.
Meanwhile, all in the same couple weeks, another team member sat me down and said he wants to enroll in a biblical studies course in one of the ethnic languages. He's an agriculturalist and a good man. But he feels like God wants him to grow in his spiritual life and that he should live it out more clearly in his work with the MMF. So he wants to learn to read the Bible in his own language. As of now, he can read it in Thai only.
So lives are changing and it is a joy to watch. Thanks for your continued prayers. God is at work through them.
Tan and I will be sending out Christmas cards, but as usual we are running rather late. Please don't give up on us. You'll get them by New Year's Day – Chinese New Year, that is.
Blessings on all of you,
Scott and Tan
MMF
Chiang Rai Thailand
To learn more about Scott's work at the MMF go to the website - http://www.minorityleadership.org/ .