17 August 2014
Dear Phyllis,
I really don't know what to say today. It is not due to the absence of events but I am not sure how to handle them. Unlike the traditional good-news-bad-news scenario, let me start with the bad news first.
Two years ago a close friend asked me if I would be willing to work with him in establishing a training school for minority boys to equip them for getting good paying jobs as high skilled workers. The original concept was very broad based with training in several areas. The simplest was wood working and I was asked to be the instructor to train boys how to be good carpenters and cabinet men. We had good facilities and bought some basic equipment. My friend was also in contact with an NGO whose basic purpose was identical to what he had in mind. It looked ideal. The NGOs had contacts with minority groups and we had the basics for a school. But it didn't work out that way. We started out with three boys, and I was given a list of projects of various things that customers ordered. I wasn't thrilled with the requests, but was able to produce an acceptable product. But there was very little instruction involved. All these projects were first-time jobs for me, and I had to think my way through a maze to figure out how to make them. That wasn't teaching anyone the ABCs of wood working. Most of the time was simply giving the boys sand paper to sand down projects. Not surprisingly all of them quit. But then a new feature was added. They introduced me to a former Lisu (minority) pastor who was out of a job and available to work with the school. John was pure gold. I liked him very much right from the beginning. He had very little background in wood working but had the basic gift and spirit to pick it up fast. I taught him the basics, and he did very well with them. After one or two projects he was qualified to do what he had been taught very well. He spoke adequate English, so we actually became fast friends. The NGOs provided two more boys as students. These were good lads and one especially had great promise. But the continued assignments of odd first time – for me – difficult projects resulted in a lot of sanding. A month ago both boys said sayonara (goodbye) to go get a paying job. True, it was supposed to be a school, but basically we were using them to do a lot of grunt work free while selling the projects at a slight profit.
Editor's Note: The boys were being paid 7,000 baht a month each. I am not sure if Bill was aware of this or not. Minimum Wage in Thailand is 300 baht a day or about 6,000 baht a month. The boys were being paid more then minimum wage and they were being trained. If the boys were doing grunt work as Bill states, then Bill and John are responsible because it was their responsibility to train them. Gary
We had to make some money to cover overhead and John's salary. About that time my friend told me that they were rethinking the school project; whether or not to try to get more boys or quit. But there were several orders so John and I wound up making some fairly high quality desks and cabinets. Friday afternoon my friend told me that they were “closing the school for keeps effective today”. I asked John if he knew anything abut it. No. At 3:00 Friday afternoon one of the men from the NGO showed up to talk to John. He handed him his two week pay envelope of $135 and told him in an hour the project was finished and he was out of a job.
Editor's Note: John was given not 2 weeks pay as Bill indicates, but 2 months pay. This is common practice in Thailand. Gary
That ain't the way it is supposed to work. Needless to say John wasn't too happy to be given one hour notice and be put out on the street with a wife and family to feed. He told me, “That is not the way Christians are supposed to treat each other.” I don't know how John felt, but I thought it a little out of character with the Bible as the NGO brother left this man out of work with nothing but $135 in his hand when he went out to get in his fancy Toyota and drive off. The NGO brother probably puts as much in his gas tank each month, as they expect this Lisu brother to live on with his family. I can identify with John as I face the same scenario. And I don't drive a fancy car. I can't see how we are going to pay the rent next month and I ride a beat up motor bike. I was working for free at the school and Pammy isn't disappointed as I frequently had to dig in my pocket to pay for some tools and supplies we needed. Facing a financial stone wall is nothing new for me. I have lived this way for 56 years and the Lord has always provided. But this is hard on John.
Editor's Note: Bill was asked not to purchase supplies but to ask for supples from the NGO. Bill ignored these guidelines and puchased supplies without permission. The NGO reimbursed Bill for legitimate supplies and denied reimbursement when Bill purchased things the NGO thought were not needed. The NGO reserved the right to purchase supplies and this was made clear to Bill on several occasions. Gary
That's the bad news.
The good news is that something weird has happened in my home. Pammy has gone bonkers for Jesus. About three weeks ago I came home one evening and asked, “Did you have a good day today?” She replied, “No it wasn't good. It was EXCELLENT!!!” Well that was good news, but I didn't know what to make of it. She said, “I spent the whole day with Jesus and He is so wonderful.” She was just gushing with the wonderful things she had gotten from the Bible that day. It certainly was one unusual day. But it didn't quit. Day after day it was the same burning testimony. For two years she only came home at night to sleep. Now she would scarcely go out of the house to buy basic food. She was loathed to quit her time with the Lord. I didn't know what to call it. What she was coming up with was good, but I was still highly skeptical.
Then she would scarcely come out of her room all day. She said Jesus was giving her songs. Again I was skeptical, but was genuinely surprised that several of these songs were amazing good. The words and melody were terrific. Some of it were really high quality melodies.
Xiamin is certainly the greatest hymnologist of the 20th century, and arguably the greatest hymnologist since Charles Wesley and Issac Watts. She has written well over 1,000 Chinese hymns known as the Canaan Hymns. I can't listen to these hymns without copious tears. If you want to listen to something that will really tear you up, check out The Canaan Hymns (English version) on YouTube.
Xiamin was born a simple peasant girl in Hunan, China. She never got past middle school and was saved as a teenager. There was absolutely nothing special about her at all. She was just an uneducated peasant girl that you probably wouldn't even be too happy is she came to your church. But shortly after she was saved songs started coming to her heart – words and melody. She started humming some of these songs with friends, and they asked, “Where did you learn that?” She replied, “I didn't. This is just something that the Holy Spirit put in my heart”. Soon she got together with someone who could write notes and began to put some of these hymns on paper. They began to spread. It wasn't long before they were being sung in all Chinese churches world wide. These songs have been the wings for the revival in China.
They are so absolutely distinctive. They are totally Chinese. There is nothing in the western world like them. We have our praise songs and Hill songs but these are radically different. Only China could produce something like this. As I have listened to these hymns, I begged God, “Lord, please do something like this for Thailand.” I don't know whether or not that is possible. These songs have been born out of poverty, suffering, and pain; and yet unspeakable love and joy in the Holy Spirit. Xiamin has been in jail and for sometime had to hide to keep from arrest. It would be impossible for something like this to be born in a hip-hop culture with the, “Oh, I'm so happy, I love Jesus”; shallow western church life. Thailand isn't as bad as the US, but there is virtually no persecution here, and the Thai church knows little of suffering. Also there is an almost unprecedented revival going on in China, and with such an out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, it is not surprising that the Lord would also provide the hymns that go with it. That certainly was the case with Wesley and Watts.
I am not suggesting that Pammy will be the Xiamin of Thailand but some of her songs sound so unusual that I can only speculate that they well might be of the Lord. Some of the melodies are something like I have never heard. They certainly are not western, and they almost sound a little like the Chinese melodies. There is a rather distinctive Oriental flavor to them. She has filled a note book with these songs in the past two weeks. Much of these songs are pure Scripture. She was trying to sing some Bible verses to m the other day and I said, “It doesn't fit. You are trying to sing five and six syllables on one note.” I don't know how she got around it, but she tells me that some are straight from the Thai Bible but they seem to fit nicely with the melody.
I don't know how to explain this strange phenomenon. I have called it revival. Amazingly, she keeps saying, “I am a new person. I will never go back to being that bad person that I was before.” That is great, if it is real. No one can stay up forever. Sooner or later they will come down. But she has been amazingly consistent or the past three weeks. Her cravings to go outside, and excessive money spending characteristics have almost totally disappeared. She rarely goes out of the house. The other night things started going sideways in the kitchen. I saw all the signs of another real scrap coming on. I said, “Look, before I get mad and make you mad, lets back off and allow the Lord to settle us down.” That didn't help much. Dishes started getting slammed around the kitchen pretty hard. I was going to tell her, “It looks like the new person didn't stay very long, and the old person is back”. But God gave me grace to keep my mouth shut. I expected the worst, but was genuinely surprised that after half an hour the sun came out again, and the new person was visible. That really was amazing.
The other day she was out for several hours and came home saying, “Well, I led another lady to Christ this afternoon.” For whatever other weakness she may have, I must say she is one of the most aggressive soul winners I have ever met. How many are really saved the Lord alone knows, but she prays with more people to accept Christ than anyone I have ever met in Thailand, and very few in the world.
I am grateful for what it appears the Lord has done for her, but I am also well aware that when people become super-spiritual there can be serious danger. I know from painful personal experience, and from observing many others, that one of the most dangerous aspects of a close walk with the Lord is the possibility of becoming spiritual intoxicated. By that I mean, a person can lose their good senses. A person can easily feel that the Lord has taken them to an enchanted land beyond the restraints of the natural world. In 1956 we had a serious hyper-spiritual movement in Japan that started with a push towards the charismatic movement. There was a great hunger for the Lord and revival. Forty some good missionaries started waiting on the Lord for a Holy Spirit out-pouring on Japan. They became so intense that they left their mission stations and went to the city of Toyama on the west coast of Japan. They said, “When the Holy Spirit comes He will do more in one month than has been accomplished in the previous 100 years”. That could be possible. But in their hyper-spiritual state they got so close to the Lord that He was talking directly to them to the point that they didn't need their Bibles anymore. The Toyama movement became the worst spiritual shipwreck in post-war Japan.. One dear TEAM brother, Bill Loutz, survived and became a hard-head conservative.
I hope Pammy doesn't go too far down that road. At the moment she has a deep craving for the Word of God. When a person gets to that point where the Lord is talking so clearly to them they are wide open for delusion. The bottom line of spiritual guidance is the Lord telling us what to do, but when a person goes too far in that direction we find the devil using that frequency also. Over the years I have seen numerous times when good men of God have said, “God told me...” and then do some of the most unbiblical, off-the-wall, things imaginable. Many (most) spiritual disaster begin with “God told me”.
I don't know what John is going to do. God will have to tell him. For that matter God will have to tell Bill also. And I trust He will keep His hand on Pammy.
Prayerfully, bill
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