Answer? to prayer

I sent this email to some of our prayer supporters Tuesday morning, 

“A city official has written a report requiring us to put sprinklers in our building before we can

open the wall and let the restaurant use our former office space.  Gary says that would cost about $10 thousand and take quite awhile to get done.  That would be a prohibitive expense and time frame.  The city official is going to meet with Gary tomorrow at 11 am to discuss this.  Gary asked for prayer about this meeting.”

(Gary reminded me later that he said “$100 thousand”.  That’s my lack of number retention for you!)

Gary met with the official, and he did not change his mind.  God answered our prayer with, “No.”  At our church’s day of prayer and fasting last week, Dave Ness said to pray specifically in order to energize your prayer life and see God working.  Another side to specific prayer is that you get clear “no”s sometimes.  I have had several of those lately.

That afternoon, after I laid out the “Sacrifice of Praise” chorus for the worship team folders, it began repeating in my head.  I decided God was telling me to praise Him for these “no” answers as much as the “yes” answers, so I began to do that.

Another speaker I heard recently said we pray not to change God’s mind, but to change ours. When we see clear responses to our prayers, we gain a deeper understanding of who He is. If He gave us all we ask for, we would never be better.  We would make our faulty plans with our puny brains, without His help, and then keep asking Him to fix things when the plans fall apart.  We need His “no”s to begin searching out what He wants of us and to rely on Him as we try to obey the direction we understand from Him.  Also, as one of our prayer supporters reminded me, there may be a bigger issue God is working on and a “yes” answer might not fit in with that plan.

Certainly a “no” answer should drive us to more prayer rather than to less.  God commanded many times in His Word for us to pray and, as said by John Piper this week,  “If prayer did not work such wonders in heaven, ‘Satan would never have such an aching tooth against it as he has.’ Th. Brooks.”  That opposition by Satan is a good indicator that God’s will is accomplished when we pray.  

As to the building situation, if we don’t rent to the restaurant then we will need to rent it to someone else or leave it empty.  Without a renter for that space we won’t recoup the expenses we put out to fix it up.  Gary hasn’t told the restaurant owner yet.  He also plans to get some bids on sprinkler installations next week.  Keep praying with us for God to show His glory in what happens in this situation.

:J

Gary started his investigations into Thai language schools after we returned from Chaingmai, Thailand last June. The OMF missionaries there told him about their language training facility in Lopburi. He applied there, but we ended up second on a waiting list. There is still the possibility that some of those who have signed up for the school won't be able to raise their support in time, so they won't go then. The school starts in early December, so we should know if it is actually full by the time we leave. We won't give up going there until we are in the airport in Bangkok on December 30th. Gary plans on calling them from the airport and if they don't have a space then we would catch a flight up to Chaingmai and start looking for a place to live. (This picture is from www.backpackers-around.com/foto-thailandia-lopburi.php)

The Lopburi school sounds good to us because it is in a small town where little English is around. This is a picture of one of their back streets in a "middle class" neighborhood. This is from a web site called unglamorouslove.com written by someone who is learning Thai there as a part of their preparation for mission work there.

Also, the room and board are part of the price, so we wouldn't have to find our own. We could concentrate on learning Thai with few distractions, except maybe monkeys.

Gary looked at many schools in Bangkok which teach with many different methods, but they are all more costly and living in Bangkok is expensive (and polluted). A couple of schools are also available in Chiangmai and the living expenses are less there than in Bangkok. Gary is concerned we might be too distracted to study well if we were in Chiangmai, though.

These different schools each say they approach the learning of Thai by focusing on a different learning style. Gary hoped he might figure out which school would be best for him if he figured out his learning style. I found a test to determine learning styles in my papers, so Gary took it. He found out all the styles are nearly the same for him, so the approach of whatever school we go to wouldn't matter too much.

House sitters

A family we know well has told us that they have decided to be our house sitters. We met Ken when he moved into the house across the street with some other guys. Then, later, he introduced us to Karen and we went to their wedding. The other guys moved out and Karen moved in. As a young couple, they helped me out by teaching some Sunday school sessions to the youth at our

church on good male – female relationships, even though they were members of a different church.

Our friendship continued as they had their three children. Their two older children sent some presents with us to share with children on our mission trip to Chile. Now, Ken has said he would like to help us set up a website. Overall we have been impressed with their faith and determination to follow God in their lives. We are glad to help support their decision for Karen to remain a stay at home mom and to continue home schooling their children. Living in our house would likely ease their cost of housing.

Also, Ken has worked on fixing up two houses, so he has some expertise in maintenance. They have all had experience raking leaves, although not in a yard quite as big as ours.

When they read our email newsletter about our need for a house sitter, they independently thought of the possibility of their doing it. They were a little surprised when they mentioned it to each other.

Ken then came to speak to Gary and the first of our three dinners together came soon after. We have all been praying about it. Last Friday they brought dinner to our house to tell us they had decided to go ahead with this.

Now I need to write up something for us to work through so we will be clear about what we all have agreed to.

Thank you for your prayers about this already. Please pray now for wisdom for us as we go through this process. Please pray that we would know what we need to write down and that He would protect and increase our friendship as we enter this relationship concerning the house.