Screw all dignity.

First, an apology I have not posted in a minute. And by a minute, it has been like a month. The Holidays have been very busy, and there have been lots of changes here. But you all supported me with your money and prayers, so the least I can do is keep you updated.

Secondly, some good news: I am posting three blogs in three days to make up for my lack of blogs all month.

Third, I am in Africa now, which is wild. But we will get there eventually. But this blog takes place in Thailand, so Africa will have to wait.

Some context. It is about week three of Thailand, and we are in the back of a truck driving to a village in which we are doing some sort of ministry. It is about ten at night, and it is very cold. We get there and sleep in a random house’s basement.

We were in this village to minister to the villagers. We did house visits and prayed for anyone we could. These house visits involved bringing food and the gospel to these villages. We had a translator who would present the gospel, and we had two people come to Jesus that we saw.

The second aspect of this weekend trip to this village was a Christmas program. This means we watch Thai children dance to the same 5 Christmas songs for about 15 hours over three days. This was pretty exhausting, but there is one moment I want to focus on. The 11 kids we lived with had also prepared some dances.

More context: this stage they performed on was decently funded with mics, lights, etc. And everyone in the village was watching on plastic chairs in this field. There were about 300 people in the crowd.

Back to the story. So, about 4 of the girls from our house got up to do a song. And one of my friends said, “Should we run up to the base of the stage and act like massive fans?” I thought, screw all dignity, let’s do it. So, he and I followed by a decent amount of our teammates, ran to the front and cheered and danced. And when the girls got off the stage, I heard one of them was crying. So I go up to her, and she says, “No one has ever made me feel that special than when y’all were cheering for us.” Her name was Jan she is 17.

The point I am trying to make here is the moment before we ran up we were afraid of what all the Thai people would think. There was fear of breaking the status quo ( Which, for this context was you sit in your chair, watch, and then clap.) But Jesus broke the status quo all the time. We are not called to be politically correct or culturally sensitive. We are called to love; sometimes, being culturally sensitive is loving. But in this case, it was not. We can not let social fear stop us from radically supporting the body of Christ.

See you tomorrow.

Thanks for everything

Drew McKinney