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| Family Reunion For June Mobile Clinic! |
Dear All,
I know it’s been a long time since I have been able to write to you guys, but boy was the month of June a busy month. Starting off with a mobile clinic, then having an english camp two days later, then having our missions meeting a few days after that, and on top of all that I continued to try to study as much Thai as I could in between each event. So for the sake of saving you from crazy confusion, I have decided to split this blog into four chapters. Chapter 1 will be Thai Studies. Chapter 2 will be Mobile Clinics. Chapter 3 will be English Camp, and Chapter 4 will be the Missions Meeting. Feel free to read a chapter at a time so that you don’t have to read all four chapter in one sitting. I hope this will be somewhat helpful in guiding you to see what my journey has been like for the entire month of June. So here it goes...
Chapter 1: Thai Studies- Passion for Languages
JUNE 5, 2012
I officially finished Thai reading lessons about a week ago and began my journey of translating the Thai bible near the beginning of last week. It’s been a blast so far and really exciting to see just how much Thai I can remember from so long ago. My dad said that when he first started translating the bible it took him one hour to do a verse. After finishing my first week I got it down to two verses every half hour. Now, I have a better advantage then my dad because I know more Thai than he did when he first started, but it’s still pretty exciting to see myself improving every day.
I wanted to share with all of you a little story of what happened a few weeks ago It’s more of a story about my dad, but it was pretty cool for me to be an observer.
Our church works on a rotating plan where almost every week we have a different person preach, but one week the person whose turn it was said he couldn’t do it so my dad gladly stepped in. Our church is going through a series on Daniel so for that particular week the chapter we were studying was chapter five. In the middle of the week my dad began preparing for his sermon. As my dad was preparing he began telling me of a huge burden he had for talking about how dangerous it is to not understand what God is saying when he speaks to you and how it was equally important to read His word daily. He made a great point about how King Belshazzar was afraid of the writing on the wall (Daniel 5) not just because it was “creepy” but because none of his advisors could understand its meaning... Not understanding a word from God should cause each and everyone of us to shake in our boots.
Later that week my dad had one of his staff members come up to him and talk to him about her husband who never read his Bible. His reason? He claimed he couldn’t understand what it said. My dad’s worker was so burdened over her husbands lack of enthusiasm for reading God’s great gift that she begged my dad for advice. As my dad relayed the story to me, I could see the sadness in his eyes as he continued to explain to me how much it should frighten us when we do not understand God’s Word, not make us indifferent. Even Belshazzar sought high and low for an advisor that could translate God’s message to him. So with excitement in his eyes my dad told me how much he as looking forward to church that Sunday because his conversation with his staff member more than affirmed how much God wanted the message of the importance of his word to be preached to our church. But as the day neared, he got a phone call from the pastor whose turn it was to preach, and he said that he had decided to go ahead and speak on Sunday! My dad was a little disappointed at not being able to speak on the message he had planned, but he shook it off and began preparing for his Sunday school lesson instead.
When Sunday finally arrived, we sat and worshiped for a while and then Pastor Wechai came up to speak. Now for me personally, Pastor Wechai is the hardest Thai person to understand. He uses really big words and formal Thai so when he preaches I normally tune out and read my own passage of scripture. But for some odd reason or another, I felt a real desire to make an effort to understand his sermon that day. So I begged God to open my ears and mind to understand what Pastor Wechai was preaching on. As he reached the microphone, he said, “Now I know we as a church are studying the book of Daniel, but today I felt that God really wanted me to address a very important issue for Christians. I want to talk about the importance of reading the Scriptures daily.” My jaw almost dropped at that point, both because I had just understood two full sentences from Pastor Wechai and because his “change” in topic was exactly what my dad felt burdened to preach on! As he continued on into his sermon I remember feeling as though my ears were being opened for the first time. I barely struggled understanding anything he said, and only missed a couple of things when I was trying to write out the points he was giving. In the middle of the sermon, I leaned over to my dad and said, “Looks like God wanted that point to be made, whether or not you were the one to preach it.” He looked at me a little shocked at first because he realized I understood what Pastor Wechai was preaching and then he smiled with excitement and agreement that God had gotten His message across in His own way.
After the sermon was over I talked with Pastor Wechai for a little bit, and for the first time I answered his questions without pause and with real understanding. When my dad and I made our way back home, he turned to me and said, “Becky, don’t ever be ashamed by the amount of Thai you know. I’m very proud of what I saw today.” Although I can’t take any credit for understanding the sermon (because I know that it was God opening my ears and had nothing to do with my amount of knowledge) I am really thankful that that day I got to see and hear God’s desired message being preached. I got to experience what it is like to truly understand a sermon and I got to witness a church hearing a message that God so obviously wanted them to understand.
JUNE 15, 2012
This is just to let all of you know a little bit of how my Thai learning has been. Today we took the English Camp team to our little church in Bangkla. This morning it was my dad’s turn to preach and as he began his sermon I (like I did a few weeks earlier) begged God to open my ears to understand what he was saying. And, just like before I felt my ears and my mind open and I absorbed everything he said. Several of the words he used I could remember because of my work on bible translations only days before and it excited me so much that I ended up writing them down in thai, just to see if I could remember how to spell them. As I was writing my notes I felt as though someone was tugging on my mind to look around me. So as I looked to the left and behind me I realized that I was surrounded by the American team and they had no idea what my dad was saying! Since my dad normally writes down translations for the teams when he isn’t preaching I suddenly felt a burden to somehow help them understand what my dad was preaching. So right then and there I prayed that God would guide me as I tried to make an effort to write down a translation of the sermon for the team. As many of you know, my dad is a very very fast speaker, so when it comes to sermons, writing down notes is incredibly hard! I wrote and wrote as fast as I could trying not to miss anything he said. After the first page was full I whipped it over to my mom to have her check and make sure I didn’t mistranslate anything. Reading it over quickly, she smiled and handed it off to the English Camp team. Three pages and a terribly cramped hand later, my dad stepped down from the podium and I got to put away my pen. It was so exciting to again be able to see how my studies were coming along and feel God opening my mind to understanding.
PRESENT DAY
All in all, I am really happy with how my Thai studies are coming along and I really hope that I will continue to learn even after I leave Thailand. Language really has become a great passion of mine, and I hope and pray that God will continue to develop and use this passion greatly in these coming years.
Chapter 2: Mobile Clinic --JUNE 7-12-- THE JOPLIN TEAM (A)
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| THE JOPLIN + THAILAND TEAM |
As the team from Joplin, Missouri arrived at the airport on June 5, my heart began bursting with joy at the sight of all the familiar faces.
We have been working with the church from Joplin for over ten years now, and every year for the past ten years they have sent out team after team to assist my dad in mobile clinics around Thailand. They were the first team to bring out kids to help with running the children's program, which we generally do off to the side of the clinic. They were the first team that really worked at building a relationship with both us Derbyshires, and the Thai staff. They were the team that was there to encourage my parents when they got the news that I had been injured in Africa and was being med-evacuated into a hospital in Niarobi. And they are one of the teams that has become so dear to us that every time they come it feels more like a family reunion than a business pickup.
As I watched each one of them greet my parents and the Thai staff with excitement, I was again reminded of how great the body of Christ is. This group of Americans were embracing my Thai Aunts and Uncles as if they were greeting their own family. It never ceases to fill me with excitement and joy when I see people from various cultures bound together by one common thing... Christ.
There were several new faces among the old, and we quickly became fast friends knowing and respecting that we each were there that week in answer to God’s call for us to share His Good News. As the days went by and we went from town to town passing out medicine, sharing the Good News, and teaching english it was exciting to see God blessing our team with unity that can only be found in brothers and sisters in Christ. Soon the new American newcomers were embraced by us here in Thailand just as though if they were the regulars. It was truly an amazing experience.
For those of you who don’t know, Joplin, Missouri was hit by a tornado last year and many people lost their lives or their homes because of it. But even in that hardship, the people of Forest Park Baptist Church, still felt called to come to Thailand to ensure God’s word was being spread to the nations. Several of the people who had come this year had lost their homes to the devastating tornado, and stated that no matter how much work still needed to be done in their lives in Missouri, they couldn’t ignore God’s constant call for them to come and serve Him in Thailand. Isn’t it amazing? Here I am in the middle of Thailand and I am surrounded by a group of believers who truly would do everything for Christ. The Thai’s have endured being rejected by their families and friends in order to follow Christ, and the Joplin team have endured their own financial hardships and still have managed to come to serve. But what better cause can there be? We got to witness and be apart of God’s name being spread throughout the country of Thailand, and we got to experience first had the joys of being in the body of Christ. What a gift!
Chapter 3: English Camp --JUNE 18-22-- THE JOPLIN TEAM (B)
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The Two Christians of Our English Camp
Folk + Beam |
Being a part of an English Camp is hard work... being the person to plan the English Camp is even harder. In the weeks before English Camp began, I made change after change in my schedule trying desperately to make it as smooth as it possibly could. When I first talked to my mom about being the person to plan the English Camp she asked me how many American volunteers I thought would be good to handle 300 students... I told her at least 18, that way we would have enough to have two Americans together at all times. As I continued to make changes I felt God continually remind me that if I committed my plans to him then, and ONLY then would they succeed (Prov 16:3). So as I continued in my planning I constantly prayed for God’s hand to prepare the kids and the leaders of the camp. As the time drew closer to camp, we were told that 18 was not going to be a possible number to meet, so I said told the church of Joplin that 16 members would be fine we’d just have to make the teams a bit larger. As the time drew even closer, we were told that even getting 16 members would be an impossible number to reach. So with a fist clenched as tight as crocodiles mouth, I slowly emailed back asking how many members they were planning to send out. The response I got was a little more than frustrating... five people... only five people had signed up to help with the English Camp. Ok Lord, I know I JUST committed these plans to you but seriously? FIVE PEOPLE!?! ... Yes, five people Becky, remember it’s My plan for these children to hear about Me not yours. Peace settled on me like a wave of freshwater. Ok Lord, five people. Guide these plans that I have made. As the battle within me faded, and the plans in my mind changed, I worked and worked, continually praying that the five people coming would be extremely flexible. When the team finally arrived in Bangkla, we immediately set out organizing and looking over all the supplies we had and the supplies that they had brought. By the time Monday rolled around, we had a tentative plan of what craft we were doing each day and what sports equipment we were using, but nothing could have prepared us for what happened that day and throughout the rest of the week...
EVERYTHING WENT GREAT! The transitions were smooth, and we ended up being able to have 2 groups per grade (8 groups total). I couldn’t have asked for a better group of volunteers, they took on each task with ease and joy. Even when I made all the non-Thai speakers take on a group of a least 30 or more Thai students, they thrived! Not only that, the kids LEARNED! Even after that first day, I was filled with such awe and thankfulness of God’s hand.
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ME as Tinkerbell with Jason as Captain America
For DISNEY DAY! :) |
By the time Wednesday rolled around we all started to feel the exhaustion setting in. The ride home was quiet and our bible study that night was even quieter. All eight of us went to sleep early and barely made it to the breakfast table the next morning. But there to greet us was my dad beaming with eager anticipation to tell us his feedback from the day before. With complete joy on his face he told us that one of the students from the camp had come to bible study that night and had professed his desire to follow Christ! The joy in our hearts couldn’t have been greater. I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t expected even one to come to Christ that week. I had thought that maybe our work that week might impact them later in life, but never had I imagined that one would change in one day! But our God is a great God and in his goodness He chose that time to save Nong Beem. What a blessing! God truly took the camp into his own hands and even though we were outmanned, and dead tired his glory shined through.
Chapter 4: Missions Meeting --JUNE 29-JULY 7-- EVERY TRIBE TOUNGE & NATION
Completely exhausted from English Camp and Mobile Clinic, the mission meeting hit me on a low. As much as I love Thailand, I had no desire to venture to Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) or as I like to call it, “The Land of the Whites”. Although I find it an overly large city and one that I will probably avoid living in, Chiang Mai is the prime location for our annual Missions Meetings. A safe haven for missionaries, Chiang Mai is where many move to so that their kids can attend a Christian school, and so that they can be close to the border of many countries.
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| Me and My Sister with Sam James |
For the missionaries of the IMB, the meeting meant a place to undergo new training, and relay stories back and for so that they could see what God across the world... For me it meant juggling between lifeguarding, youth events and helping my mom sell stuff for Thai Country Trim. Since I technically didn’t qualify as a “youth” any more and and wasn’t an “m”, I was stuck in the middle trying to figure out exactly what my tasks were for the day, and trying not to feel burned out by the large amounts of people who not only spoke English, but they often spoke to me so fast that after one conversation I found myself wanting to run into my hotel room and take a long nap.
But as God would have his way, I once again was blessed with a marvelous encounter. This encounter was with a man by the name of Sam James. He has been on the mission field for 50 years now and still gives no sign of wanting to retire. Now at the age of 80, he and his wife continue to serve God in one of our South East Asia countries, living a life full of seeing God’s provision time and time again. He truly is a man whose sole desire is to see God’s name proclaimed to the nations. As much as I wish I could share with you all the stories I got to hear from him, I can only safely say that one day I hope that God will use me, the way he has used Sam James.
PRESENT DAY! JULY 9, 2012
Today I am back in Bangkla, and have just finished touching up my mom’s catalogue for Thai Country Trim. Tomorrow I will continue to work on my Thai learning, and try to add the finishing touches to my dad’s clinic website (which has to be up and running by the time I leave!) Again I am truly sorry for not being able to update you as often as I said, but I hope that this will give you more of an idea of what I had been up to for the month of June. May God bless you all and grant each of you his grace and peace!
Shalom!
Becky Derbyshire
Prayer Requests:
-Please pray that I will get my dad’s clinic website up and running in time
-For my sister’s future roommate at CBU
-For the upcoming July Mobile Clinic
-That we can pack everything my sister needs for college in time
-For my continued efforts to learn the Thai language
-For the Ticks that have decided to take up residents in our house... pray that they will find a new home soon! :)
