Just Here

Here I am again.  Eleventh trip.  Never gets old.

I'm here in Thailand with a Team of seven from Highview, having arrived March 8 to visit our Hot Springs family and be the English speakers for Pastor Suradet's ESL Day Camp.  We hit the ground running, with Day Camp starting March 10 and ending on the Friday, a lucky 13th.   For more on that exciting component of this trip, check out the link at Highview To Thailand.

Now, in these post camp days, we have settled in to a more relaxed way of being together with the kids.  And I'm loving every unproductive moment of it.  The Team is gelling so well that there's virtually no work in leading them, except for the work leadership just is.  But in terms of output of energy, it's happening so beautifully between all of us, and we are taking care of each other in the easy ways community should be.

There will be work enough later in the week.  I've been invited to team teach with Suradet at a youth conference this coming Friday in Chiang Mai.  Highview will do the service here at the church on Sunday.  Then a youth camp of about 300 students will descend upon this property next week, and I've been invited to 'encourage' them for about an hour and a half (yes Highviewers, they actually want me to talk for an hour and a half! ;).   I'm working on those things a little at a time.  But by and large, these are days of being 'just here'.

It's in the 'just here' suspension of time that most of the love happens, I think.

The laughing at inside jokes, now possible simply because we have collected enough shared memories, AND because our language learning keeps improving little by enough.

The quiet that breathes between silent 'artists' drawing scenes and cartoons and cards for Sponsors.

The ping pong tournaments and soccer games and badminton volleys.

The gathering of tamarind 'pitters' or vegetable choppers, chatting and laughing and sometimes singing.

It's in the unexpected snuggle with a little one who's no longer shy, but full of things to tell Ahjahn Ruth while pulled close in a hug.  I'm warm, she tells me, and pulls closer on a 'chilly' morning (21C).

Someone's always singing.  Someone's always laughing.  Someone's always working.  Someone's always playing.  All of us always loving.

And I breath it in, in slow, gentle breaths, deep and quiet and just being.

Someone in Canada, a critic, once said, "I think this Thailand thing you do is just all about you."  That stung.  I want to live my life poured out for Jesus, spending it all on the things that matter.  I want to be here because He wants me to be here, being hands and feet and compassion and love and service, partnering with quality people of strength and compassion.  Not for me.  Not for me.

But the truth is, it's turned out to be, not so much 'about' me, but in many ways 'for' me.  God's breath-snatching gift to a little girl of 11 who said she'd go, and that same 51 year old woman who came undone, but was allowed to come back again.  And again. And again.

And it never gets old.