Month: July 2008

work near bhutan

Nice email from my pastor friend…..

Wow! During these few weeks I was busy engaged in several assignments to expand His ministry in remote and unreached areas in Himalayan hill as pursuing negotiating for church land, NOC – No Objection Certificate from local Bxxx  government and forming local Adventist committee, estimation etc….. in Sikkim xxx State. In Eastern Himalayan Sikkim state one generous brother donated plot of land in remote rural areas and there we conducted cottage meeting and 30 members accepted 3 Angels Messages and join SDA Church faith.

In this remote village in Sikkim we do not have any church we tried to make small hut as prayer hall but xxx majority dismantle and burnt it. The reason villagers got afraid many will change their religion and some politician were behind it but still we had fellowship under the tree in the same area where they dismantle our hut but we did not retaliated with them instead made friend and serve as community social health workers.

As the time passed by we thought of making small bamboo house to stay half as living room and half as prayer hall. But we did succeed because in the same room we did stay and put few beds to sleep and kept kitchen utensil. Therefore, villagers were not able to destroy this house since it became home before their eyes instead of worship hall. But during Sabbath, mid-week, vesper etc… our fellow continuously gathers in this room and had worship plus made as multipurpose. Our member’s continuous sincere prayer to our Lord was answer at last.

steppin’ out


Joe Jackson sang this song in the 80s if i remember right.

Just wanted to put down this experience before i forget it completely.

While in Bangkok last month i went out with my 5 year old fan to Makro to get some fresh veggies and raisins, and of course corn flakes for her 🙂  Bangkok is a huge city, but quite dirty.  It is the only place in the world where i have had 2(!) cockroaches climb up my leg while eating at a restaurant.

Anyway, sidewalks are not really safe with all the holes and motorcycles etc., and while it is very unlikely you will die if you don’t watch every step as in countries like India or Cambodia (what sidewalk?) or Georgia, the chances that you will meet with some kind of accident of running into wires or stepping into holes or cracks and wind up in the hospital are quite high.

The two of us were walking one morning around 10am down a street near the immigration office.  There aren’t many shops there, and with a university on one side, greenery is surrounding both sides of the 2-lane road.  Sidewalks in Bangkok are also all potential shop-opening places, with many people pushing their restaurant to some prime location every day.

After walking in front of some old building which had a nice green hedge, i turned to look at my protege who was following.  She held a leaf or something in one hand, and while usually she would start talking to me when i looked at her (she’s female OK?  They like to TALK) instead of saying something, she looked intently at something on the ground around my feet.  I was still walking forward, and tried to follow her gaze.  My very next step slid out from under me!  What is going on!  Is it an earthquake? no, noooo, it’s a, it’s a SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!  About 80-90cm long, and bigger around than my finger, the pretty light-green thing, obviously shocked out of its senses too, slithered quickly to the side of the sidewalk just before the restaurant and up and over the hedge.

Whew!

The rest of the day was quite uneventful with just the usual shopping, catching tadpoles in the construction site’s mudpool and guppies in the big round pot in front of the police station, playing some English games on the computer, watching her swim, cooking, eating, reading the Bible, and going to bed.  A Nice Life 🙂

malaysian life


It’s hard to imagine that three weeks have already passed since leaving Bangkok.  Most of the first week was spent with a pastor travelling up to Kuala Lumpur (450km) in his car to attend his meetings at a Tamil-speaking church there.  Since then i’ve been spending most of the time with the translator of the book into Chinese, helping make the book extremely faithful to the original.
The pastor is one on my very short list of pastors i have personally spent some time with, that i would like to spend eternity with in heaven.  Not only is he mild-tempered, but humble.  This humbleness is a very very rare commodity among us Seventh-day Adventists – especially among church employees.  Almost everywhere i go the attitude is: “You’re a nobody. What can you possibly know about anything?”  But now i know 6 pastors who i will enjoy spending eternity with.  He asked me deep questions about the prophecies in Revelation, and it was nice to hear that we have similar beliefs on the mark of the beast and the seal of God etc.  I do hope tho, that there are no cars we have to drive in heaven!Malaysia is an Islamic country, so they don’t allow churches to buy land and build a new church.  Fortunately, the British ruled this place for a while, and some churches were built then.  The govt., probably fearing a backlash, doesn’t forcibly close down churches, so here and there you can see a cross on a building.  The new style for churches is to rent or buy space in a shop-lot.  These are long rows of buildings – usually 3 or 4 stories high.  Even then, the native Malays get first shot at purchasing them, but of course many are still available, so that’s where new churches meet for worship.

The Tamil-speaking church i went to in KL rents the 2nd floor for around 200usd/month.  There were around 100 worshipers in the 20feet by maybe 60feet long room.  While the speaking was all in Tamil, most of the written material on the screen was in English.  It was interesting to note that when asked what language they wanted the study material in, about half said “English”.