"Notes from Nika Maples"

HOME PRAYER GUIDANCE THE HOUSE OF LOVE NEW LIFE MINISTRIES CAMPUS MINISTRIES CONTACT NIKA  Team History  Team Goals  Our Photo Album  Thailand  MEET THE TEAM  [Russ & Tracy Pennington]  [Tim & Sherry Walter]  [Steve & Samantha Allen]  [NIka Maples]

My name's Nika Maples, and I'm the newest member of the team here at Siam Christian Church in Bangkok, Thailand.

The children

Teaching five tender hearts (ages 3-6) is not what I had imagined it would be. It is far better! Five days per week are decorated with miniature embraces and the glories of imagination. I look forward to every precious moment with the children. They bubble forth with endearing inquiries. Recess playtime is an limitless venture of discovery; Thailand offers many lovely flowers and creepy bugs to delight in! Our classroom is cheery and resonant with heartfelt songs of praise. Each child is working on his or her own level, therefore, balancing group activities with age-appropriate skills is a challenge. The kids are quick to inform me how to quiz them aright! We daily pray for countries around the world. I am humbled, as in this morning's prayer, when the children asked God to "give little ones in Ethiopia food to eat, especially the Real Food: Jesus." I am storing up parenting strategies to bless my future children by learning from the way these parents are rearing theirs. Intermittent lessons prove difficult to teach. This is my only school frustration: my own inadequacy. I pray for patience.

The University

On Thursday afternoons, I help English club members at South East Asia University improve their language skills. This has been a weekly highlight. University students are comfortable with laughing at their own mistakes. That is just the sense of humor that eases language frustrations and allows for friendships. Ceaseless prayers on the part of the handful of Christians involved with the English club have established open communication with students interested in learning more about the Gospel. This is our desire, to give everyone an opportunity to enter into the life of Love. Two young girls in particular have genuinely befriended me. I bear not the strength to refrain from shouting of their Savior's gift of redemption. God would have me bide His time. Again, I pray for patience.

The changes

I am not sure what this little girl from Fort Worth, Texas thought she was getting into when she agreed to teach missionary children in Bangkok for nine months. I have been sobered by the hopelessness and poverty affecting the majority of the earth's population. I have been torched by an impassioned desire for these destitute people to know the Lord Jesus. I have been overwhelmed with wonder as I "play kindergarten teacher" five days a week. I have been touched by an Almighty Hand while I have knelt in prayer. I have been grieved by the mass delusion that is Buddhist idolatry. I have been lonesome, missing loved ones to the point of exhaustion. I have been dependent on translators, on taxi cabs, on the Lord. I have been enlightened to God's grace upon me, a foreigner. I have been nursed to recuperation by the nectar of praise. I have been filled with unspeakable joy for the blessing of this family of six missionaries and their children. I have been altered.

I cannot expect to resume the complacent life I had been living prior to Bangkok. I cannot imagine looking upon a foreigner or alien without profound empathy. I cannot fathom hearing the word "idolatry" without feeling a sorrowful wounding in my heart.

How quickly the Lord has taught me life-changing lessons. I bless his Name for this unmerited favor!

But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children -- with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. Psalm 103:17-18

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