Micah and I returned from Cambodia March 9. We really enjoyed our stay there because the school, students and volunteer staff there are incredible. We have made very dear friends. Andrew Sharon allowed me to teach some of his Bible classes in 10th grade. These students are hungering after God’s Word and it was a tremendous joy to teach them.
The only thing we were able to do to extend our stay in Thailand was purchase a 2 month visa from a local travel agent in Seim Reap. We now know that without a trip to America to purchase one year visas, we will be unable to continue our work here. As I think about this, I am reminded of my prayer: “Lord whatever is Your will for us please make it unmistakably clear, because I am weak and so slow to perceive Your paths.” Just as clearly and definitely that we knew God’s will for us to come to Thailand in the first place, we now, 21 months later, know He wants us to take a trip back. We will leave April 18 and return July 5.
As soon as we entered Thailand hower, and during the first week, we became severely oppressed with vehicle accidents and calamities. Coming from Bangkok we had heard that one person dies in that city every hour from motorcycle accidents. Now at 10p.m. as we drive towards home, we came across a double – decker bus accident on the opposite side of Highway 1, which is a 2 lane freeway. This particular bus holds 44 people. The driver apparently had gone to sleep sending the bus headlong into the median and bringing down 5 large trees in the process, finally landing on its side with the nose digging into the bank. One large tree was across our lane. Several vehicles had stopped and people were UNPROFESSIONALLY pulling passengers through the broken windshield. It seemed quite possible that all were dead. I had previously been informed to never stop and help during an accident because not speaking the language I could be in serious legal trouble lasting for a year or more. I could hardly bear driving slowly past and not trying to triage and help those people. We drove on in perfect silence for 20 minutes, not able process what we had just seen. Micah said he felt God had delayed us at the last gas stations, so that we would not be inolved in the accident. I remembered that I had been surprised and a bit guilty that we took 30 minutes there.
The dreadful news of the earthquake in Japan has literally shaken up the world. This occurred in the midst of several other vehicle accidents that were in our path here, a hurricane and one fatal motorcycle accident. I pause in my life to find the meaning of these catastrophic carnages which had been so vividly open to my gaze. The fragile, uncertainty of life, the finality of an instant end that could come to anyone at anytime, brings us to our knees to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Indeed, “All flesh is grass.” “Which is today in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven.” 1Peter 1:24, Luke 12:28. There is not time to waste – Jesus is coming! There are many without hope, dying without the Lord. Our lethargic spiritual life must be shaken and woken up with a start or it will be forever too late.
Mrs. White states in RH 29, 1900: “The day of test and purification is just upon us. Signs of a most startling character appear, in floods, in hurricanes, in tornadoes, in cloudbursts, in casualties by land and by sea that proclaim the approach of the end of all things. The judgments of God are falling on the world, that men may be awakened to the fact that Christ will come speedily.”