Home again home again

Hello everyone,
So as you've noticed I have been back for a while now. When I first returned in August my schedule back looked something like this.
Thursday: Finish OMF debriefing and fly down to San Diego where my car and stuff were
Friday: Drive up to Los Angeles, dump my things in my apartment and drive to InterVarsity Leaders retreat until Monday
Tuesday: USC InterVarsity back to school all day planning meeting
Wednesday: Move in day for all university housing
Thursday-Sunday: Welcome week and the busiest 5 days of the year for new student outreach. (also trying to unpack my stuff)
Monday: Classes start (still trying to unpack my stuff)

Needless to say my first few weeks back were pretty crazy. Since then things have been busy as well, with me leading a Bible study in 2 freshman dorms, going to a church community group, and volunteering at an organization called World Impact on Fridays, plus classes, friends, music, and trying to figure out what to do when I finish up at the end of this semester. Throughout it all God has been good though and has been continuing to show me so much about myself, the depths of my own sin and my need for a Savior.

Some of you may have already recieved the thank you letter I sent out recapping my summer in Thailand but I thought I would post it up here as well. Hope that it blesses you.

Thank you so much for supporting me in my trip to Thailand this summer! I was amazed to watch God faithfully provide the finances for my trip through the generous support of people like you. Now that I am back in the States I wanted to let you in on a few quick glimpses of what God did in my summer.

God taught me patience and humility

Going into this summer I was expecting God to teach me big things. However, the things He taught me were not often what I was expecting and didn't come in ways I expected to be taught. Perhaps the biggest thing God taught me was patience with my teammates(and others) which arose from tensions within our team. While our team loved each other we also had several significant conflicts arise, particularly over time-management and punctuality issues. Through these challenges God taught all of us a lot about our own faults and the quickness with which we so often judge others. While it was not pleasant at the time, as our team leader Brian said at the end of our trip, “I'd do it again in a heartbeat!” “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11

God amazed me by saving people

One of the highlights of my trip occurred during a 2 week period when three other members of my team and I were going to universities with Thai Youth For Christ workers and engaging in conversational evangelism with English students. On our first day there, a Thursday, I met a Thai student named Wit whom I helped with homework, hoping the conversation would turn to more evangelistic topics. He soon had to leave for class however, and I invited him to a party that our team was having at our church that Sunday night, not really expecting him to come. Three days later however he showed up 2 hours early to our party(!) and by the time I'd gotten there had already talked with local Thai church members and decided to accept Christ. Praise God! Wit became one of our closest friends for the rest of the trip and is truly a living testimony to God's power in His saving grace. “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again...” 1 Peter 1:3

God made cross-cultural missions more real to me

There are few things in life more important than sharing the good news, and God used this summer to help drive that truth into the bedrock of my soul. One of the sad realities of our trip is now that we left the local Thai church we worked with is no longer able to continue many of the programs we ran (English teaching, slum outreach, orphanage outreach etc.) which God used as tools for sharing the gospel simply because there are not enough indigenous believers to sustain the programs. While in America Christianity is everywhere I met people in Thailand who had never heard the name of Jesus (Prai-yay-su in Thai). People are needed to share the good news of Jesus and my prayer is that you and I would stay faithfully invested in God's call to bring the gospel to all peoples. “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” Romans 10:14-15

I want to reiterate my thanks for your support of my trip this summer one more time. If you want to hear more (or just say hi) don't hesitate to contact me (lundeen@usc.edu and 920-277-2947) or check out my summer blog: www.e-l-in-thailand.blogspot.com Thanks so much and God bless YOU!

Almost Done

Well, the summer has flown by. As I write we leave our condotel and Ban Suan church where we have spent the last 6 1/2 weeks tomorrow to go back to the OMF Mission Home in Bangkok for several days before returning to the States. After returning to Los Angeles, we will have 3 days of debriefing where we will have time to reflect on our summers and what God has been teaching us while also being taught how to effectively integrate our experiences into our life back in America. I won't try and give you a whole "what God has taught me blurb" here, (I have hardly had enough time to think about it) but I will let you in on a couple of things that happened in our last week.

1. We finished painting the wall outside Ban Suan, so now every cab/tuk tuk/bak bak driver who drives by will be sure to notice there is a church there! It is 3 crosses set on a hill, with a red, orange, and yellow sunburst emanating from the middle cross. (pictures to come later)

2. A girl named Aam at Kunatee secondary school (high school) placed her faith in Christ last Saturday! Praise God for that.

3. We have had to say many goodbyes already. Last night Ted and I taught our last adult English class sitting in a restaurant since the power was out at the church, and were sad to say goodbye to our students afterwards. In an hour we will teach our last English class of younger students (10-13 years old). Our Thai neighbors who we have become friends with are also noticing that we are leaving and have been very gracious. This morning as Ted, Katie, and I finished painting the wall our favorite lady to buy Thai Tea from (we call her Thai Tea lady) down the street came and brought us 3 free Thai Teas with boba. Tonight our team will eat our last dinner here at a Vietnamese restaurant that we have frequented and whose owners are very kind. We have been told by them that we must come and to expect gifts.

While it will be sad to leave I am also excited to return home and to debrief. After that I will have a very week with moving into my apartment, having an InterVarsity leaders retreat, and meeting freshman in the dorm where I will be leading a Bible study this semester. Pray that I will be able to see what God has taught me this summer and that I will be able to effectively integrate these things back into my ministry with InterVarsity and into my personal life in the fall. Thanks and God bless,

Erik

Quick Praise Update

Hey there all,

Just wanted to make a quick update to share some praises for God with you all. This past Friday, myself and 3 others on our team went to a local university with two Thai Youth For Christ staff. There we spent a couple of hours basically doing conversational evangelism with Thai students. We went to the part of campus with English majors, then were introduced as native English-speakers and so we would talk to students, help them with homework, and share about the gospel.

The first student who I talked to was a guy named Wit, in his 3rd year at university as an English major. We talked a bit, he filled out a Youth For Christ survey card, and then I began to help him a bit with his homework. I was hoping to be able to share about Jesus with him but he wanted help on his homework because he had a class very soon so I helped him out, thinking that then he would go to class and that would be that. Lo and behold, his class got cancelled and so he came to lunch with us where we found out he was Hmong. One of the girls on our team is also Hmong and so began to talk to him and shared the gospel with him in her limited Hmong. Afterwards a few YFC staff prayed for him and we invited him to the "American Party" our team was hosting at the church on Sunday. He said "see you on Sunday" but I admit that I was skeptical and didn't want to get my hopes up that a student we had only met for a little while would travel across much of Bangkok just to hang out with some foreigners.

However...yesterday he came to the party about an hour early, and met some local church folk. By the time I showed up a half-hour before the party he had already believed on Christ and was excited about his new faith! This just goes to how God is entirely the decisive factor in bringing people to faith, for "it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Cor. 1:21) And so we will boast in the Lord, and His great power and wisdom. Pray that Wit may be planted on the good soil and give God praise today for his global plan of redemption!

Seeking to treasure Christ more with all of you,
Erik

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all

Hello everyone,

My team has about 2 weeks left to our trip here, and about 5 weeks behind us. In this time, God has been working among our team and has been continuing his work among the Thai people.

This past weekend the team was able to go with several church members to the much more rural town of Lopburi, part of a province famous for it's monkeys. There we saw monkeys in the streets, elephants in the streets, and were able to experience more fully what rural Thailand is like. We praise God for the work he has been doing in Lopburi. While we were there we hung out with a new believer, and 1 young Thai man accepted Christ during a Bible study with some Thai believers before dinner. At that same dinner we were able to pray for the non-Christian grandpa of a Christian family who attends our church in Bangkok, and who has problems with alcoholism.  Just earlier this week we were astounded to hear that this older man accepted Christ just days after we were able to pray for him! God is the great doer in his saving work, for "neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth" (1 Corinthians 3:7), and so we desire to give him all the glory for his work. We thank him for opening the hearts of these men to see "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Corinthians 4:4)

In my reading time here I read through a passage in John Piper's book "Finally Alive" which I would like to share as an encouragement to everyone who calls on the name of Christ. It is based on the text of 2 Corinthians 4:1-7. In regards to our personal evangelism efforts, Piper writes

"If you feel average or less than average in your sense of fitness to tell the gospel, you are the person God is looking for -- a clay pot, who simply shares the treasure of the gospel, not the glitzy intellect, not the glitzy eloquence, not the glitzy beauty or strength or cultural cleverness. Then God will do his work through the gospel, and the surpassing power will belong to him and not to us. Be encouraged, ordinary Christian. You are appointed, precisely in your ordinariness, for the greatest work in the world: opening the eyes of the blind and showing the Treasure of Christ."

One of the things that I have been learning on this trip and that I pray we will all learn more and more the is the gloriousness of justification by faith. That God loved us, and gave his only Son that we might know him by believing in him (that's it! believing!) is truly the greatest news in the world.  We don't need to dress up the gospel or to add or subtract anything from it. Justification by faith is right there at the center and it's a truth that I pray we will all realize more of the greatness of day by day, and that this truth would cause us to go out and share this news, this glorious news of the mercy of God, with friends and acquaintances and the man on the plane and the guy next to you on the bus. Yearning to seek after harder Him with all of you,

Erik

Please pray:  That our team would be open to learning in these last 2 weeks, that the new Thai believers would be planted on the good soil, and that God would conform us more to the image of His Son, by whatever means necessary.

The journey continues

Hello again everyone,
Once again apologies for my lack of frequency in updates. Much has been happening however in Thailand. Since my last update the team and I have gotten settled into a weekly work routine here. Myself and 3 others work at the Ban Suan Church, a local Thai church that is very close to our hotel. One of our main activities here is teaching English, as English speaking is a skill that is in high demand everywhere here.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach a class of 10-13 year olds English, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I teach a class of 20-30 year olds. The majority of the students in both cases are not Christians and it is a great opportunity to be able to build relationships and to teach them through Bible stories that many of us know, but that are usually completely foreign to them here. (Prodigal son, Jonah, Daniel and the lions den, good samaritan, etc.) Last Friday after teaching from 6-7, four of our five 20-30 year old students came out to dinner with myself and the other teachers which provided a great opportunity to get to know them better outside of the classroom and we hope that the dinner will be a regular occurrence. They were curious to know why we were here and it was an awesome way to be able to share about God and what he has done in our lives.

Our team also reaches out to several of the poor communities in the local area. On Tuesday mornings four of us have an opportunity to go and work at a nursery for several hours, where I have been privileged to teach(or really just play with) about fifteen 2 year olds by my self. For those of you who know how good I am with little screaming drooling 2 year olds who don't speak a word of English, you can imagine how this is a growing experience for me. =) We also have been able to start going regularly to one slum community and to teach basic English to the kids and adults in a fun, relaxed, outdoor kind of "neighborhood block party" type setting while they in turn will teach us a little bit of Thai. All of these opportunities provide great inroads to share the gospel and pray that God will help us to be able to reach Thai people with the love of Christ.

One other bit of excitement happened about a week ago when our team learned that Patrick Fung, OMF's General Director (whom I heard speak at the Urbana conference in St. Louis last December) was speaking at church just across Bangkok. We were able to hop in taxi's and to go hear him speak (he spoke in English which was great and was translated into Thai) and were also able to meet him afterward, introduce ourselves, and get some advice on our trip from him. Overall it was very encouraging. While there I also talked to a couple of long term Presbyterian missionaries from the U.S. who have kids about my age and they were very encouraging as well.

Thank you all for your prayers and please continue to pray for the work of our team and for the Gospel to go forth in Thailand. While Christian missionaries have been here for 185 years, Thailand is still one of the most unreached nations in the world. I will leave you with a poem from the late missionary Amy Carmichael, which I have found to be inspiring many times and which I hope will be a blessing to you as you seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God

 

 

Yours in Christ,

Erik 

In Thailand! End of week one

Hello everyone,

Apologies for my lack of frequency in updates. Now that I am in Thailand however I hope to be making an update for you every week. To start from the top, myself and the team have been here since Sunday, June 20th, so for 9 days now. All flights went smoothly getting here and none of us felt too jet-lagged. The first 2 1/2 days were spent in Bangkok at the OMF Bangkok Mission Home which is a small complex that serves as a sort of national headquarters for their mission work in Thailand. While there we got to explore Bangkok, experience some Thai culture, eat our first bit of street food, and learn how to live with the heat/humidity.With the help of some OMF missionaries we toured the Thai Royal Palace, where we saw large Buddhist temples filled with golden statues of Buddha, along with hundreds and thousands of gold ornaments and decorations. The Thai people bowed down to worship the Buddha statue, in hope of making merit for another life. All of this served as a sobering reminder of the Thai peoples need for Jesus and gave me a very distinct picture of outward idols that are still worshiped in a very real way today.

The next 3 1/2 days were spent at a hotel where OMF was hosting their annual conference for all of their Thailand missionaries. While there, myself and the team got to take part in providing child care for about 110 kids from age 0-18. I had the privilege to take care of sixteen 6-7 years olds along with two others. The experience was a great learning one for me (I'm not the best with 1st graders =) ) and it was a great blessing to be able to meet and talk to so many missionaries who came from all parts of the world and many of whom had been faithfully serving the Lord in Thailand for decades.

On Sunday night we arrived in our condotel, where we will be staying for the next 6 weeks. The first thing we did was go to the local church we will be working with which is only a half block away. At first glance the church looked like a restaurant as it was simply a small hole-in-the-wall type place along the street, however upstairs there were chairs for about 30 and a pulpit to preach from (we will be significantly adding to the size of the congregation). The Thai church members here have been a huge blessing, helping us get settled in, showing us how to use local transportation, and showing us around the poor areas where we will be ministering. It is a great privilege to be able to come here and to witness to the Thai people about Jesus, many of them not knowing a thing about the gospel. In closing, please pray for

Reny-a Buddhist monk who we talked to for about 30 minutes at the palace. In his mind Jesus was a good teacher who's moral teachings should be added to those of the Buddha, in order to garner greater knowledge.

Physical health-our team has had some slight trouble adjusting to the food here in SE Asia, and one of our members had to stay back today due to stomach problems.

Boldness with the gospel-The Word tells us that the gospel is the power of salvation to everyone who believes. There can be no greater message, please pray for us to be bold, joyful, and faithful in sharing the gospel with the Thai people whom we meet.

Teamwork and love-Please pray for our team, that we will all have grace and patience with another. Jesus' disciples are to be known by the way they love one another, and this has potential to be perhaps one of our most powerful testimonies to the gospel in Thailand.

Thanks so much, thanking God for all of you,

Erik

Get Ready, Get Set.......

Hello everyone,
So I've just returned from OMF's pre-field training in Colorado and it was amazing! While there I met my team along with many other participants who are going to different countries with OMF this summer on trips like my own. Here is a picture of my team at one of our "team times" at night where we had a chance to share testimonies and discuss fears and expectations of our coming trip.

While in Colorado I was also able to meet many former missionaries and learn so much from great conversations with people who are passionately pursuing God. On top of that I was very blessed to hear great teachings with titles like "The Story of God's Glory" and "God's Passionate Pursuit of East Asia". As a whole the weekend was very humbling and reminded me just how big and great God is and how much He loves people all over the world. As I get ready to leave in a couple of weeks I would ask for much prayer for myself and the whole team, as this trip will be a huge of experience for all of us. Thanks so much for reading and here are a few other pictures of gorgeous Colorado.

The beautiful retreat center we stayed at.