"It's a Revolution Baby!"

Hi everyone,

I recently read a book by George Barna entitles ‘Revolution’. What an amazing book considering Barna’s history – from statistician writing books about church growth, to statistician writing a book about a movement that his statistics have missed – a book about a trend of Christians who have abandoned the church to seek a true spiritual walk – he calls this the revolution – a word that he himself sees as being overused and watered down over the last few years. Anyway the book is an interesting read although quite short and probably overpriced… anyway at the end of the book he writes “The Affirmation of a Revolutionary” which I found quite inspiring, so here it is:

I am a Revolutionary in the service of God Almighty. My life is not my own; I exist as a free person but have voluntarily become a slave to God. My role on earth is to live as a Revolutionary, committed to love, holiness, and advancing God’s Kingdom. My life is not about me and my natural desires; it is all about knowing, loving, and serving God with all my heart, mind, strength, and soul. Therefore, I acknowledge the following:

• I am a sinner, broken by my disobedience but restored by Jesus Christ in order to participate in good works that please God. I am not perfect; but Jesus Christ makes me righteous in God’s eyes, and the Holy Spirit leads me toward greater holiness.
  God created me for His purpose. My desire as a Revolutionary is to fulfill those ends, and those ends alone. When I get out of bed each day, I do so for one purpose: to love, obey, and serve God and His people.
• Every breath I take is a declaration of war against Satan and a commitment to opposing him.
• God does not need me to fight, but He invites me to allow Him to fight through me. It is my privilege to serve Him in that manner. I anticipate and will gladly endure various hardships as I serve God; for this is the price of participation in winning the spiritual war.
• I do not need to save the world; Jesus Christ has already done that. I cannot transform the world, but I can allow God to use me to transform some part of it.
• My commitment to the Revolution of faith is sealed by my complete surrender to God’s ways and His will. I will gratefully do what He asks of me simply because He loves me enough to ask. I gain my security, success, and significance through my surrender to Him.
• I am not called to attend or join a church, I am called to be the Church.
• Worship is not an event I attend or process I observe; it is the lifestyle I lead.
• I do not give away 10 percent of my resources. I surrender 100 percent.
• God has given me natural abilities and supernatural abilities, all intended to advance His Kingdom. I will deploy those abilities for that purpose.
• The proof of my status as a Revolutionary is the love I show to God and people.
• There is strength in relationships; I am bound at a heart and soul level to other Revolutionaries, and I will bless believers whenever I have the chance.
• To achieve victory in the spiritual war in which we are immersed, there is nothing I must accomplish; I must simply follow Christ with everything I have.
• There is no greater calling than to know and serve God.
• The world is desperately seeking meaning and purpose. I will respond to that need with the Good News and meaningful service.
• Absolute moral and spiritual truth exists, is knowable, and is intended for my life; it is accessible through the Bible.
• I want nothing more than to hear God say to me, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.”

Thank You, Lord God, for loving me, for saving me, for refining me, for blessing me, and for including me in the work of Your Kingdom. My life is Yours to use as You please. I Love you.

Homesick for the future!?!

It was my mothers 60th birthday last Thursday, and to celebrate, we headed out to a Thai restaurant in Blackburn South. What an experience! – the smells, the tastes, they brought us back to Thailand.

One of the Waitresses was actually on holidays from Thailand and heard that we had just come back from there – teaching English. Not surprisingly she assumed straight away that we were Christians. We had a little bit of a conversation with her, and had fun for the rest of the night.

The amazing thing was that both Naomi and I were struck with this sense of – um – what could only be described as homesickness – not that we can call Thailand our home or anything – we only spent 3 weeks there – but our hearts truly are already there – and God willing, in a year and a half we will be there…

A whole year and a half – I am really feeling impatient, but then I guess patience is meant to be a character trait of a follower of Jesus. And who knows what the Lord has in store for us between now and then – for all I know Thailand isn’t even in God’s plans for us…

Pray for us – that the Lord will be with us, we are still searching for a rental property in Noble Park, the struggle is mainly due to not many houses being available in the smallish geographic area we have set ourselves. We have not had many houses that we could apply for in the time that we have been looking – but we continue to look – next weekend there are hopefully another handful of likely candidates, but we will see.

By Their Lemons shall you know them…

3 years ago you probably would not have found me talking about symbolism and things like that, but then 3 years ago you would not have found me talking about many spiritual things at all.

Spiritually, I think I was almost dead at that time, having gone through an eight year desert experience after Bible College & struggling with the mega church mentality where I worshiped. I was at the point where I nearly turned my back on the whole Christianity thing…

At the same time I did some pruning under the expert guidance of Don Burke; we had a dismal lemon tree out the back, that was diseased, and essentially growing no fruit. One Saturday Night, Don said the only way to deal with this problem was to ruthlessly cut back the lemon tree, so much so that only the trunk and major branches were still intact… remove all signs of life from the tree and just let it do its thing…

So we did.

For the next year it looked like someone had stuck a stick in the dirt, as our tree sat there to all the world dead…

Finally, miraculously, some shoots started to appear…

& the kids hacked them off with a stick …

But the lemon tree was not deterred, and a year later the shoots started to grow again… until it had lush foliage… A few months ago we noticed some flowers and finally little green fruit.

Today it is covered in bright yellow lemons, & we now get to enjoy the sweet lemony goodness of the fruit.

Ok, so maybe the whole spiritual fruit analogy thing does not work well with lemons – maybe if it was apples or oranges the story could have worked a lot better, but then the story would not have been true – however it is interesting how much of a symbol the lemon tree has been to Naomi and myself of our spiritual journey over the last 3 years. At the point in our life where we are ready to move on to follow Gods call, our lemon tree is as healthy and fruitful as it has ever been.

I know that when Jesus talked about fruit, he was talking about outward signs of a true spirituality, & I don’t know, maybe I have those… I guess that’s not up to me to decide.

However, I feel the fruit in my own life, the result of His love and patience, it is not the result of anything I did, I was near dead & he pruned me back… to the world I looked like a dry stick, but his tough love and nurture have seen new life spring up in me. There have been things that have hacked off this new life – attacks and trials, but he has persisted with me… And that is why I must follow where he leads, I owe him everything, & I thank him for allowing me to be used by him.

Ironically, when we move out, my parents are planning on doing an extension that will result in the death of our tree, but we will not let that affect my little analogy.

Peter

It's not as easy as it seems

We just found out that we didn't get the unit we applied for, and here I was thinking we were a normal respectable family, lots of stability, extremely reliable..........why wouldn't we get the first place we applied for??? There's nothing wrong with us!!!!!

Getting a big fat no, put me in a position of having to question my worthyness as a person, I feel pretty worthy most of the time. But the more I have been thinking and praying about it, the more I have come to see that God doesn't want us to be worthy on our own merit, our worthyness should come through him.

One other thing struck me too, here we are saying we want to live in solidarity with the people on the fringes and those struggling with lifes ups and downs - well I bet they don't get the first place they apply for either...........infact, I know it is really hard for some of these people to find a place to live. And here I am expecting it to be easy for me because I'm me!!!!!!!
Thanks God for bursting my bubble again.......and again........and again,

I know this is something I need to trust God in, he has called us to Noble park, he has been with us every step of the way with this journey, and it's time for me to let go of my need to control and plan it all and let God in.

Naomi

Finding a new home...

Hello again everyone (anyone??) - long time no blog.

Yesterday was a bit of a mile stone kind of a day for me - we looked at and applied for our first rental property in Noble Park! - talk about your mixed feelings. The place that we looked at was a town house type unit that is ideally located to other UNOH members - with one living in the same block of units and another group living directly across the road. It is a smallish 3 bedroom type place... a bit rough around the edges, but then we have lived in worse.

Driving home from Noble Park to Ferntree Gully I realised how much I am going to miss this place, we have really made a home here - and some valued friends, but then Jesus never said that following him was supposed to be easy!...

On the other hand there is a real sense of excitement and anticipation for both Naomi and myself in looking forward to the move.

Anyway, we will let you know how things went with this place as soon as we know - if things go according to plan we will be moving in around 2 weeks!

Back home

We have been back home for a few days now.

to update you... The school hunt went really well, we visited an number of schools in the end, and there are some great option, though the cost of sending our boys to any of the international schools in Thailand is very full on. However I guess this is an area that we have to trust in the Lord over - if a life in Thailand is what he is calling us to be involved in, then he will make a way!!

It was hard to say goodbye to Thailand, especially as best case scenario it will be around a year and a half before we get to go there again... Naomi & I both shed a tear as our plane took off.

The trip home was routine though it was Luke's birthday. Ash & Anji had bought Luke a number of lucky dip presents for Luke - one for each year of his age which he then received at intervals throughout the trip home - he really enjoyed that!

Life goes on here in Oz as we get ready for our big move to noble park - it will be in around a month from now, with I guess another 2 weeks to a month until I leave Koorong.

We will try to continue blogging over the next while and hopefully by the time we reach Thailand again we will be seasoned bloggers. Thanks for paying an interest in our blog - It probably has not been the most exciting blog of all time, but hopefully things will improve!

Peter

Finally back on the net!!!

I have been trying to connect to the net for around 3 or 4 days now to update our blog, but connecting here can sometimes be difficult - and trying to get assistance from the ladies in the lobby is next to impossible as their computer literacy is nearly as bad as their English literacy!!!

anyway it seems I have finally gotten connected - thank you to everyone for your birthday wishes for Naomi they are appreciated! - things here are going well, we are well and truly finished with the ESL classes and have been spending the last couple of days hanging out with anji and ash - Saturday we went to another amazing indoor amusement park that the kids really loved and Sunday we went to MBK which is a massive (8 stories) shopping center - we had lunch there with the barker family to celebrate naomi's birthday - then ash and I took the kids to see MI3 while Naomi and Anji went shopping. There really was not anything else on in English worth seeing, but the kids loved all the explosions and stuff!!

Today we head out to the only real schooling option that is available to us (given location and stuff) for an interview. It should be interesting - Pray that it all goes well for us - in our minds now this is the only obstacle to us moving here in the future - everything else has gone so well!

In 2 days we fly back out to home - with mixed emotions - a big part of us don't want to leave, we are really loving it here and feel at home - another equally big part of us is missing friends and family - and we do want to get back as we are now more eager than ever to take the next step in the Unoh journey - Noble Park.

I have tried a few times to get the emotions I am feeling down on paper - or blog - but it really is very hard - obviously there are a lot of things that have really spoken to me along the way, you cannot help but be affected by things like this - however I have also been very comfortable here - I could really say that I do feel at home.

People have been trying to prepare us for the shock of coming here - the poverty the smells the business etc... To such an extent that I truly believed that coming here would be a harder job than working in Sri-Lanka - however when I got here I found that the experience was very similar - if not less extreme as we have the option here of escaping to starbucks or a shopping centre if things get too full on for us. I feel a real peace here, and love the life and vibe of this city! - the people are great and on the most part very inviting.

anyway, I have to run back up to my room to prepare for our school visit. If I get a chance I'll try to get back down here again this arvo for an update - otherwise tomorrow will have to do.

(P.S. Daniel - I'll try to get Jacob down here this arvo too for an update - thank you again for all your posts!)

Peter

Tastes like Chicken

Hey everyone, I ate my first frog last night and it really did taste like chicken, although all the little bones were really annoying to eat around. My family are all horrified at me, as they are all frog lovers, but I figure it was already dead so no harm in me eating it.

Had our final english class today, it was sad to say goodbye to all the gorgeous kids (and the not so gorgeous ones too) but I guess all good things must come to an end sometime. Most of the team is heading back home tomorrow, we have made some really great friends here, and it will be strange to have them all go back while we stay on.
I know people are probably wanting to hear spiritual reflections, and all that kind of stuff, but I just don't know what to say........we have experienced so much in the last 2 weeks and it has all felt so natural and been really easy to process, probably because we have felt God's presence so closely during our time. I dunno, sorry if you are hoping to hear more...
Anyway.....only 4 more days now......it is going to be very hard for all of us to leave....we all feel very attached to this incredible place, but we are also excited at the thought of coming home and seeing all our family and friends.......can't wait to share the adventure with you all.

Mum, I need to book in to see you on the saturday after we return.......we can't wait to see you but I also need my hair done...the blue is kind of a mouldy colour now and my roots are shocking!!!!!! so see if you can keep the arvo free and I will call you when I get back......thanks mum, I love you.



Love so much,
Naomi

another spare moment

Trying to continue where I left off...

There are some things that are really beginning to impact me about this place, in particular all those people you see with cerebral palsy - There is an old lady who hangs out just inside the slum each morning who is heavily effected (affected?), her face lights up every time she sees us and I have a feeling that her day to day existance is sitting by the side of the road waiting for anyone to give her some attention... Then there is a young girl 9 or 10 years old who has the same sort of cerebal palsy that I was born with - afecting the right side of her body - and I can't help to think how random life seems to be - or how little human logic there is to God's greater plans - allowing someone like me to have all the care and attention that the western world (& christian worldview) has to offer - yet this girl lives in a slum and essentially has no real chance of getting out - the buddhist world view and the idea of karma if nothing else insure a life of living in the slum...

I'm being called away sorry guys

Can't Blog - eating!!!

Sorry guys,

really want to have time to sit down and blog a bit, but I am just too busy!!! - we are heading out to cabages and condoms tonight (thats a restaurant) for the obligatory team night out - it should be good - I've only heard good things about it - WE are counting down to 3 minutes before everyone is ment to meet in the foyer - so I probably have a good 13 minutes...

Things here are in some ways getting better and better and in other ways becoming more challenging... I have moved on to the Rong Fork slum to teach english this week and am really enjoying it the class we are teaching are probably of a younger average age and we have both boys and girls in this group - it is a little bit less under control and a lot more exhausting, and add onto that that we are teaching outside... - but it is all great...

will have to continue later everyone is here - on time for once!!! sorry about the spelling no time to fix...

Peter

I am in love with this place

Hi everyone,
Naomi here, I thought it was about time I left another message.......thanks so much to everyone for posting on our blog. Anyone who wants to send a more personal message can use our regular e-mail address....we can check it here petedeka@optushome.com.au
We have gotten to the end of our first week of teaching and it was quite sad to say goodbye to the kids that we spent time with this week........Peter and I are off to seperate locations next week, we spent the first week together with the kids so that if there were any dramas we would both be there to back each other up but since it went so smoothly I will be taking Luke with me next week and Peter will take the other 2.
I titled this post "I am in love with this place" because there is no other way to describe how I feel about it.......there is always something happening, everything is vibrant, and it feels to me like there is such an amazing rhythm here.....kind of like a beat....if that makes any sense...maybe sounds kinda stupid, but I know what I mean and I just cant describe it properly.

Daniel, I will get Jake to write to you soon, we spent the morning at this amazing water slide park on the roof of a shopping centre.....so the boys are completely wiped out.

Oh, something very funny........apparently the Thai girls think Jacob is a bit of a hottie.....Amy and a couple of her Thai friends came with us today and Jacob is feeling very embarassed about it all (I think he's secretly feeling pretty flattered)

A big happy birthday to Mel, I will send you an e-mail too Melly!!!!!!!
And Mum, about all I can think of that I would like for my birthday is clothes....but I have already bought quite a few at Khao Sarn road.......the shopping there is unreal and I will probably go back next week because Peter hasn't been yet. Sorry there is so much to say....I think you will have to wait for all the news until we get back.

Lots of mushy kisses (uuugggh)
Naomi (nomblies)

Another Imaginative Title

Sorry - you can only say hello from peter or some other derivative of this title so many times...

Well, its Wednesday here and so we are half way through our first week of ESL training. Unfortunately is some ways we got the raw end of the deal being stationed in the Community centre rather than going to one of the other slums, as we only get 1 week with our kids and then will spend the second week helping at one of the other classes. We have already grown quite attached to many of the girls in our class ( we are teaching girls from 10-14 years of age if we have not already told you). One stands out in particular as our star pupil her name is Mook and she lives in the same slum neighborhood as Ash & Anji. Her English is really a lot ahead of the other kids. She spent quite a long time with Naomi today, just talking about different things, trying to ask questions about our family and life in Australia etc... It was great to see her thirst for knowledge - In many ways, she is what this is all about - helping these kids that otherwise would have no chance, to get a leg up in life. I do not know the actual statistics, but apparently just a little bit of English improves these kids earning potential phenomenally... The other side of this is that you need English to work in somewhere like McDonald's, just so you can Earn a mere $1 an hour - Though I guess this has got to be better than many of the other alternatives out there for a girl like Mook...

We have not had the experience of seeing any of Thailands Seedier side of things yet, though seeing some of the guests here at the hotel and some of those walking the streets it is easy to see why foreigners (ferungs we are called - spelling is probably wrong) have such a bad reputation in this country. The difference in peoples attitudes towards me when I am out on my own versus when I am out with my family is staggering - and it does not all boil down to having three cute blonde haired blue eyed boys I am sure.

On the subject of cute blonde haired boys - Sam has pretty much been adopted by one of the workers in the community centre - she is taking him out to show him off to her friends - stuffing him full of all sorts of sweets and drinks, The girls are dinking him around everywhere on their bikes & and he is having a great time!!!

anyway I should leave it there ... Tonight we are going out to a night market as we have finally organized a baby sitter, so that will be a new experience for us... The first really touristy thing that we will be doing since getting here.

Hello from Jake

Hello everybody,
I just want to tell you that we are having a great time here in Thailand and it's a very nice place.
We have had tons of fun, I have played lots of soccer and I got to feed a baby elephant. I am enjoying being in the english classes.
Now I am going for a swim

From Jacob

Sawadeekaa from Naomi

Hey Everyone,
Looks like it's my turn to send a message home......but where to start??? Today was our first english classes and I have to say I loved it...I literally couldn't get the grin off my face the whole time, during the break the girls had me skipping rope with them (in very hot weather) I think this was the wake up call for the fact that I'm not young anymore....the girls thought my puffing was hilarious.
We are pretty blown away by how well our kids are fitting in....Jacob is outside playing soccer with the boys alot and Sam was the hit of the community centre staff today (apparently he gets points for cuteness) I think he actually got kidnapped (by some responsible older girls) for a while today and then he says he got taken on a motorbike ride, dunno of that's true or not.
Anyway, we are loving it here.....everytime I eat, I think maybe I am in heaven....yummy food.
Anyway, that's it for now.....maybe I will get more deep and meaningful later....maybe not!!!!

Heaps of love to you all
Naomi.

We are here - finally got to a computer

Well, we are on our third night here in Thailand and I have finally got a second in front of a computer to update you all!

What a rush it has been both literally and the adrenaline! We got in to the hotel at 10pm local time (1am aussie time) after getting up at 4am to prepare to leave back in oz. As a result we hit our mattresses and fell fast asleep. Saturday was a day to ourselves and we spent most of that just trying to do some basic grocery shopping and buying some lunch - do you know how hard it is to buy soy milk or sugar when you are faced with the weird squiggly letters of the Thai alphabet - anyway we did it!!! - and then headed out to the community centre in the slum for a bit of a get together and introductions night - Naomi went with the boys in a taxi, but Jake and me walked through the slum. We went over the rickety bridge of (almost literally) raw sewerage, dodged the cars to get over the highway and enjoyed the humor that the locals got out of seeing a young blonde, blue eyed boy walking through this part of the neighborhood!...

As soon as we entered the community center Jake was befriended by about 4 or 5 local boys and he was off playing his first game of soccer in a few minutes. His brothers were not too far behind him playing in the sandpit full of who knows what - and loving it!

Saturday night was for us a great night to catch up with the rest of the team and of course Ash & Anj - we all walked home after the meeting and so Naomi and the boys got to enjoy the sights and smells - I am really impressed with how they all are dealing with it the boys are just taking it all in stride, Naomi too is really enjoying herself and getting a lot out of the experience...

Sunday (today) was a great day - Naomi and the boys went to ash & anj's place for the morning and got to meet many of the neighboring kids and have a great time catching up and talking with Anji. I got the honor of sitting through a 2 hour church service without any real translation, simply going off the vibe of the whole thing, as well as Pastor Suwat's passion about whatever it was he was preaching about.

I then got to visit ash & anji's place too for a while before heading back to the hotel for the mandatory dip in the pool (life is tough!) and then back to the centre for a bit of orientation.

Anyway, now that I have updated you on our movements and stuff, I'll probably get a chance to talk about a few of my reflections in future posts, I'm sure Naomi will like to share with you all a few of her experiences and thoughts too!!!

So to sum it all up, we are all doing fine and are excited to be here, things are going very well and we feel very at ease here (besides naomi's dog fears). We cannot wait to officially start out ESL classes tomorrow, and will keep you all posted - things should start to become a bit more routine once that has started!

Less than 2 days to go...

Hello everyone...

Less than 2 days to go!!! - thankyou everyone for your support and prayers - they are really appreciated!

We are very excited at the moment and can't wait to get to the destination that has been such a big focus for us all for soooo long!

There are 3 prayer points that we have for our trip - so if you could remember us in your prayers (if your into that sort of thing) that would be great.

1. A safe trip - that nothing bad would happen to any of us - but that we would still be confronted and challenged by our surroundings
2. clarification and confirmation - is Thailand to be a realistic goal for our future or are we to remain in Australia working in Noble Park.
3. That we would be effective in the work that we are going to Thailand to do - ie teach English to the kids in the slum.

Thanks for that - and we hope to hear from you while we are in Thailand!!

less than 2 weeks to go

Hello everyone. This is just a quick post to start off our blog. It is less than 2 weeks until we finally head off to Thailand to teach ESL to kids in the Slum of Klong Toey. This trip will be a real time of discernment for us as we decide if living in the slum with our 3 children is a possibility in the future. Thanks everyone who is interested in our Journey and we hope to hear from you along the way! - The Dekkers