A taste of Thailand

It's Saturday, April 13th, and it's a beautiful day in Nashville. The sun is shining and with the warmth of the sun comes a nice cool breeze. The first part of our afternoon is spent with some friends from church and our new friends from Colombia. We are all gathered outside in our apartment complex passing out donated food to the refugees. After doing this for a couple of hours, we all go our separate ways.

It's now 4:30 and Mitch and I decide to go on a walk. Our plans are to walk, come home and eat dinner, then stay in for the night working on some things.

We make our way towards the exit of our apartment complex when all of a sudden a small asian man comes running up to us, grabs us both by the writs, and pulls us into some apartment.
(At this point it's probably sounding really sketchy, but because we know they type of people who live amongst us, we know their harmless).

As he is dragging us he mentions the word "eat" so we figure a meal is going to be involved in this. We walk into an apartment full of sweet asian people who tell us to sit down at a table full of interesting looking food. We're given a bowl of plain noodles, then a woman walks up and pours some sort of broth over our noodles. Thinking there was chicken in it, I almost got away with not eating it, however she tells us it's fish and continues to lather it over my noodles. I say a short prayer in my head, "God help me eat this," and begin eating. Although it isn't the worst thing I have eaten, it is certainly not the best either. We eat what we can while trying to communicate with these people via a translator. We realize the man who pulled us inside is named Lai that he "loves english people" (english speaking people).

We find out that Lai is a Christian, and he becomes excited when hearing we are too. He invites us to his house at 8:30 to pray. So come 8:30 we head over to his apartment where we are greeted by him and his family along with another family from Thailand. We pray with them and sit and listen as they tell their stories. This family has been through a lot in their life. From fleeing Burma due to war, to also having to leave Thailand and losing a child in the midst of it all. They were former Buddhist, but praise God that they are now followers of Christ. 

Lai just recently got a job in Kentucky and him and his family will be moving there this summer. We leave their house that evening thinking we may never see them again. 

There's not really a point to this story, other than I just wanted to share it. These random encounters is what I'm going to miss about Nashville. Seeing God bring believers together from 2 totally different backgrounds and cultures is an experience in and of itself. I am so glad that the rest of our evening didn't go as planned and we were able to meet Lai and his family. I think it made his day and it definitely made our day as well. 

"Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up." Romans 15:2