Fast Horse, Riding Hard

22 April 2012

Dear Phyllis,

I wish you were here. We are seeing things like I have never seen, or heard of, in my life. This is like the movies, only better. There is no way I can put in writing the way things are happening here, but the short story is that Jesus is on His fastest horse riding hard.

I have written to you about Paul and Marisa before. I have known Paul for about three years. He lived next door to Scott and Kae. Scott would invite him to our Bible study, but I thopught it was a waste of time. He was the last guy on this planet that would ever get saved. I never met such a no-hoper. Around Christmas, a year and a half ago, it was just like Jesus came back in a parachute and landed on their house. Paul never repented, believed, or accepted Christ. He just happened to be on the bus that Jesus hijacked.

At first he was as unteachable as any man I ever met. Talking to him was like pouring water on a rock. Now he won't stay home. He is over here every morning at 6:00 or 7:00 while I am having devotions and stays for two hours. The testimonies of what is happening is unreal.

At first the Lord gave them two children. Shortly after they got saved, Marisa's niece called her saying she wanted to come live with them. Then Marisa's daughter, by a previous marriage, that she hadn't seen in ten years, called wanting to live there. Within a month they had two 13 year old daughters. It was as if, as soon as the girls got off the bus, they were instant Christians. Both of them are fantastic, but Benjuan is somdething like I have never seen. She is only 13, but she looks and acts like she is 23. She is up every morning at 5:00, does most of the house work, nearly all the cooking, and spends most of her spare moments reading her Bible. She has started a Bible study for classmates at her school and is winning them to Christ.

Marisa is a highly legalistic, choleric woman. But that is good, as she runs a very disciplined, tight ship. They religiously have family devotions for an hour every night, and there is zero tolerance for anything in the house that is not according to the Bible or honoring to Christ. They were at a meeting one night where several girls were making a joke and being light about their back-slidden devotional life. Marisa rebuked them, and Benjuan thought it was disgusting that anyone would profess to be Christian, and not be totally dedicated to Christ.

The first major miracle happened last Christmas. They were working with a man who had a boys home but they were poor as church mice. Paul wanted to buy a pair of soccer shoes for each of the 15 boys and have a Christmas party. Garreth invited everyone in northern Thailand to come to the party. It got totally out of hand. Paul feared that as many as 100 might show up. They bought food to feed a potential crowd of 100. Marisa fried chicken for 100 and Paul ate 2 pieces before they got to the boys home. People came by the truck loads. Paul stood there in a amazement and watched 207 people get and eat a large piece of chicken when he knew there was only 98 pieces in the pot. They has six small cakes and he saw all 207 people eat a large piece of cake – and some came back for seconds.

They had a camp for the boys that was a huge success. It was so good that everyone wanted to do it again. That was two weeks ago. Paul and Marisa have no experience in Christian work, so all this is new to them; but what happened was a genuine visitation of the Holy Spirit. Paul came to see me the next day out of his mind. He said, “That was the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.” There were 40 people that showed up. The Lord had provided a gifted man to run the program. The preaching was good, but the last night the Lord visited the place, and the meeting went on all night. Paul went to bed at 3:00AM, but it was still going strong when he got up the next morning. The testimonies of what happened are too numerous to relate, but there were come amazing conversions.

There were two really bad teenage boys. One was the son of a fine Christian woman who had been a severe heartache to his mother. Both of these bays were dramatically saved and want to be missionaries. Paul gave a challenge at the end of the camp asking how many wanted to give their lives to serve the Lord. He put out a paper for anyone that wanted to work for God to sign. All 40 signed up. That caused a big problem. The next week a large number of these young folks showed up at Paul's door saying, “We signed up to work for God. What do we do?”Of necessity, Paul had to come up with something for them to do. He had never been to a street meeting himself, but just for some activity he took a group of these fired-up Christian kids to markets and public places to pass out tracts and have open air meetings. One of the bad boys that had been saved had ruined his stomach by drinking. He was in pain half doubled over. The boy gave a tract to an old man who refused it. The kid said, “Take it!” The man replied, “I can't read.” So the boy stood there and read the entire tract to the old man. When he finished he said, “Praise the Lord! I am healed! The pain in my stomach is gone.”

A couple days ago some lady from a Karen village north of Chiang Mai called Marisa saying her husband had left her and asked for prayer. Marisa went a considerable distance to this village to pray for this need. She got all the women in the village to pray for this desperate situation. All the women were boo-wooing, crying, praying when the phone rang. The call was from the man. He had repented, and was coming back. Paul got all this on video, including the phone call that came while the ladies were praying.

Several months ago Benjuan came home from school telling a terrible story about a classmate of hers. The father was a no-good drunkard and her mother was dying of last stage cancer. She had an 8 year old brother in a home where they had no food. Paul and Marisa went to see the mother and led her to Christ. She wanted to get baptized, but was too sick to go to church. Paul asked me if I would baptize her. We went over there that night and I baptized this sick woman with as much water as I could pour on someone with last stage cancer. We prayed for healing, but it was difficult to imagine that much good could come out of this hopeless situation. Much has happened since then. Boa has been healed and the doctor says there is no trace of cancer now. The 13 year old daughter, Duan, has been saved, and is doing very nicely with the Lord. She and Benjuan are virtually like sisters. But Sombat, the husband, was unspeakably BAD. The devil himself could hardly make a more wretched being. He treated his wife like dirt, He provided no money for food for the family, but drank up all his salary. He forbade Duan to go to Chriatian meetinggs, and took his 8 year old son to bars dead drunk on a motor bike. Paul wanted to kill him. He said, “This man is in need of more prayer than you realize.” For some strange reason even Boa went bonkers and turned against Paul and Marisa. Marisa said, “We must pray for Sombat.”

Neither one of them knew anything about fasting, but they had seen it in the Bible. Marisa said, “We will have to fast.” Paul replied, “Yes, but we must pray also. Other wise it is just a diet.”

“Does that mean we must pray all day?”

“I don't know, but let's start to pray.”

The phone rang. It was Sombat and Boa. Of course. They both had repented. Paul said, “Man, this is making me nervous.”

It was about three months after they were saved that Ng and Benjuan came to live with them. Then another 11 year old girl showed up in need of a home. Their house was filled with three girls. Four more girls, who were living in a remote Karen village, needed a place to live. That made 7 girls in a home where 3 was a crowd. Marisa also had a teenage son that was living with her sister. A year ago he came to stay with them for a brief period, but was just plain NG (no good), and Paul put him out. Ten months later Mo called. He had been saved, changed his name to Mathew, and wanted to come back to live with them again. I asked Paul, “Where are you going to put him?”

“I don't know.”

But he is there now making them a family with eight children. And with more to come.

If that isn't enough, a large number of young people who had been touched by the Lord at the camp meeting descended on them wanting to serve the Lord. Poor Marisa is cooking for 18 people eating like horses. Paul was reasonably well off living on his retirement salary. But he isn't financially able to carry this staggering burden. Paul told me, “I told Jesus, 'You must have misunderstood me. I just said I want to help the poor – not be poor.'” He is so strapped, the other day he reached in his pocket and pulled out 5 cents saying, “This is all the money I have.” But the Lord is miraculously sending money from other sources.

Paul has an extensive outreach via Face book . For many years he had been a prison guard, private investigator, and worked with law enforcement agencies. He has gotten reestablished with many of his former associates and friends. Every day he comes over with tales of more amazing connections. People he has never heard of are sending him money. He has zero organizational structure, but simple to have a name for some of his projects, he concocted the names of a couple of missions. The other day an accountant, he had never heard of, wrote him saying that she would handle his finances in the states. His former prison guard friends decided to have a raffle sale to help him with his camp project. One player said, “If I win, I will give all the money to Paul's ministry.” She won. Paul said most of those prison guards are real rough hombres. There is little difference between the guards and the guarded except that one sleeps inside the prison and the other sleeps at home. But a surprising number of these harden men apparently have been saved. Paul said one of his associates was especially bad. He was a Hells Angel type with violent tattoos and long hair. His wife wrote Paul saying, “The other day I saw my husband sitting in front of his computer crying.” She was very surprised to see such a hard man crying and asked him why. He answered, “I just read this letter from Paul.” She read it and cried too. The impact of his testimony seems to be as great in the states as it is here in Thailand.

This morning Paul and Marisa came to Kichikun's church and brought Boa with them. This is the lady with stage four cancer that I baptized five months ago. At that time she had about a month left in this world and was supposed to be a jar of ashes and burnt bones today. As far as I know this was the first time she had been in church since being saved, and, perhaps, the first time in her life. She gave a moving ten minute testimony of God's amazing mercy on her life.

Man howdy, I mean to tell you, things are really getting good around here. The Lord's work is not through the expected channels of established missions and missionaries, but through the most unlikely means. That way the Lord gets all the glory.

A grateful observer,

bill