I was 10 years old yesterday

Yesterday was my 10th birthday, I thank God and people for LIFE. At 17:00 on Saturday, January 24, 2009 I was going on our motorcycle (Honda Dream 100 cc) to The Airport Plaza in Chiang Mai to repair my phone. On the ring road (near Nong Hoi) a mini-truck suddenly changed lane and ... squeezed me.          Grateful I had a helmet, grateful to many wonderful people and of course grateful for God's healing power. It is a wonder to live. Yesterday Anna and our co-workers celebrated me with the a Ice creta cake and sang Happy Birthday to you.

                                      Thank you all for praying for me for 10 years ago.
                            Grateful to live. Ingvar (Fred)

Better prisoner.... or a walking Mummie

I do not like the word Home Blind, but it is so easy to fall into being Home blind. Not to see all the the good and beauty we have in and around us. We can also become blind to all the wonderful people we have around us. We have wonderful coworkers here in Ubon-Pakse and in Sweden. I pray I will always see their beauty and their capacity. This is now our Ubon-Pakse team.

I can sometimes wake up in the middle of the night. Just Can't sleep. Since it has always been easy for me to sleep, I get first irritated and wonder: What is wrong with me?

But more and more when this happens, I start to hear the night cry: Help me! I spend some time to pray, listen to some worship and…. "eat" a little from the Word of God. After some time I fall asleep again.

2 photos is speaking to me:

                                     

                                                             

The woman in prison, I do not know the name of. But the man outside the tomb is Lazarus, as Jesus and the people helped him alive and free. God has a wonderful plan where he wants us

• To give us LIFE inside and outside the prisons.
• To help us to help each other to be fully free.

The aim is not just to be a better prisoner .... or a moving Mummie. We need both God's and human help. Who put all these pads around Lazarus? And who put on the stone? The people. And now Jesus asks them to remove the stone and the pads: Make him free and let him go. John 11:44

This applies to all of us, especially it is important that we as leaders do not go around as good prisoners or living Mummies.

I am now preparing my selves for Sunday's preaching from John 11. Praying I will be able to share God`s Word in not just how to be a Good Prisoner or a Happy moving Mummie. But to come out in freedom with the help of Jesus and other people. Fred

Transformation- How it can look like.

Some of the people He sends to us are like mummified beings. All wrapped up in pain, self-pity, remorse and with a high level of defences. And being met by ‘too’ much compassion and pity can make the layers of covers just increase. At that point it takes a balancing act between confrontation in love and waiting and letting the environment and time mature the larvae until it is ready to break through its cover and show the true colors, that hidden beauty.

Sometimes I just stop in the middle of watering the garden or doing the accounts or something else and just start to thank God (and shed a few tears of gratefulness) as I think about some of the people He has sent our way.

For some time ago I said to one of our staff: Don’t worry about the coverings and all the defences. God knows what is inside and what she needs. Let the environment of love and acceptance do its work and in His time it will breakthrough. She is taking good decisions and she is on her way ‘through’ just give her time.

So we wait. Then suddenly we see something happen. Actions are changing. She starts to show compassion and mercy and we find a softness and a sensitivity to others. We start to see an originality of beauty breaking out like a beautiful butterfly and we just stand by saying: ‘’You never knew that it could be such beauty behind all those layers. 

Today she is looking for the least, those shunned by others, she’s searching them out.

• An old grandma said when she came with a plate of jackfruit. ‘’Oh I sat here so lonely, everyone has gone and they left me behind with nothing to eat the whole day. Why do you do this? I am not a Christian I am a Buddhist?!’’ 
• To those who would say, we have nothing left, we have to fast because there is nothing, and no-one has ever given us anything, no-one has ever had an interest in us. In that family of garbage pickers 2 girls at high risk, one of them is pregnant and a mother is struggling to feed them when the husband is in his fit of gambling and drinking and drugs. No-one can read or write. The kids are not in school. 
• When our transformed worker came there with a couple of food bags amazing JOY was breaking out.                                                                                                                                                            This is one of several ‘forgotten’ ones who are receiving love in action by our new metamorphosis transformed larvae to butterfly. Anna

Pioneer year 2019

The word Pioneer is ringing in me over this New Year. And, the immediate need to reach the unreached.

                                      

Welcome to join the Church planting here in Issan and southern Laos. On the 12:th Dec 2018 we started in Ubon city a new Church called Streams of Grace. 

Starting a church in a city is first more difficult than in the countryside, also financially. But since people have jobs, they give 10:th and within a few years city Churches can stand of its own. And even become mother Churches for others.

One difination of "unreached area" is: Less than 2% Evangelical Christian.

Statistics can be discussed, but it is also claimed by many that: 90% of the world's evangelical missionaries go to ethnic groups already reached by the gospel.

Here in Ubon we are: 

We  see :

1. That People are praying for Help. And God answers them streight.

2. ... but also God sending us to them

3. ... to give them the Word of God and our testimonies.

Have a good

Ingvar