“No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.”
—Chinese Proverb
“Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.”
—Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success
I’d heard how tiring rice planting is, but I didn’t really begin to understand until a couple of months ago when I helped my Thai brother Nong plant his rice field. Nong is Seventh-day Adventist. He and his wife Noy have let us use their house and property to start our children’s church ministry. Also, they have happily agreed to let us use a portion of their land to build our creative learning center. Nong told me he was very glad that I could come and help plant rice because he knows that the rice will also be used to help feed all the kids we minister to. I was glad to help because it gave me new insight into what life is like for the Isan people.
Most days it feels like we are just toiling away our lives here in Thailand. It’s hard to see how learning a few new words in Thai, eating a meal with friends or even planting rice will have any significant impact on reaching the unreached. Yet, in the same way that a rice farmer painstakingly thrusts each seedling into the mud until his entire field is sown, we believe that each action we make will add up to something greater. Like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, we trust that God will provide the growth.
Please consider partnering with us as we seek to plant gospel seed in the hearts of the unreached Thai Buddhists of Isan.
