Planting Seeds at Christmas Time
What is Christmas like in Thailand? Is it just a normal day? How do missionaries use the time to uplift Christ? We asked several of our missionaries to share their experiences with Christmas in the mission field.
Well, it’s a time that we don’t neglect, and when we preach at Christmas time, I will talk about it. Mostly, it’s just to glorify God. And in our little church out there, people know that God wasn’t born on Christmas Day, and that really is a pagan thing. They do kind of know that. But it’s just done very nicely. Things don’t stop on Christmas Day; we live our lives as usual, and so do my people. In my village, you wouldn’t know it’s Christmas. If I weren’t with other missionaries and people from America, I might forget it’s Christmas too.
It’s so huge in America that people can’t realize it’s really a normal day for us in the jungle. But if you’re in my village, you will see no Christmas lights, you won’t see Christmas trees, and you won’t see anything to denote it’s Christmas. The people are poor, but they’re happy, and they have food, so for them, life goes on.
Please pray for our people. We just finished such a spiritual evangelistic meeting, with so many people attending and hearing such a clear message from heaven. Even the Baptist pastor attended most of the meetings, and I’ve been praying for him for a long time; he’s resigned as the pastor, but he’s strongly related to the Baptist church. He came to us later and said, “I’m so sorry I missed the last meeting,” He was really genuine. His Baptist friends visited and wanted me to pray for them. So, I feel like God is really working. I see many people interested in coming to church since the evangelism; several have gotten a bit of persecution for being interested in our church. So it’s a big step for some of the people in the Baptist church, too. They can see the light, but they’re not coming to it yet.
It’s very different to be here than in America because everything in America changes, the whole atmosphere, whereas in Thailand, they recognize it, but it doesn’t change much. You may see lights, and the kids at the schools have a Christmas program, but it’s all around Santa.
We’ve toyed with the idea of not celebrating Christmas over here because that seems to be more common, especially among more conservative Christians…one reason that we chose to is that our kids are in school. They are given Christmas from the Santa perspective. I think Santa is a counterfeit for Christ, and I think it’s important for them to understand that. So we’ve tried to turn it into where their eye is on somebody else. So, we started with a gift exchange with the children. Our goal has not been successful in this sense, but our goal was for them not to know who got their name, so they couldn’t tell them, like I want this, or that. We don’t allow them to do Christmas lists. They get fifteen dollars to spend on their person. And so, our goal has been to focus on giving rather than getting.
We also have an activity day where we invite the community. If we were to say we are going to have a program (at another time of year), nobody is going to come. However, because they recognize Christmas and have a Christmas program at school, they’re not suspicious of us; they’re just like, “Oh yeah, it’s Christmas,” so they come. We’re flooded with this community of kids on that day. This will be the third year that we’ve done it. It’s been a good way to break down some of those culture and relationship barriers that we’ve had. Last year, I think there were 80-100 kids, and we had many adults here, too.
Marilee: In Thailand, most people give gifts for the new year. Christmas seems to be blended into New Year, and it’s still a big gift-giving time, but their picture of Christmas is that Santa was born in the manger and grew up and became Santa Claus.
Mike: Something like that. All confused and mixed up. I have to say that when we first got here, there was hardly anything about Christmas. However, it’s coming more and more. It’s becoming a commercial thing, an opportunity to do skits at school that usually have Santa Claus and reindeer and Joseph and Mary, and it’s all mixed in. But despite all of that, we find that as Americans here, if we want to give anything to anybody and tell them Merry Christmas, they will receive it. We’ll give them some fruit, maybe, and then some literature, and they’ll be happy to take it. It’s the best time to give out materials to people here.
Marilee: Yeah, they receive it cheerfully, whereas, at other times of the year, they might feel like, "Oh, you’re just being a missionary, or you’re just trying to change us."
Mike: Kind of suspicious.
Marilee: but at Christmas time, the heart is seemingly wide open to receive gifts, and they don’t seem in the least upset that it has spiritual content about Christ because, especially if there’s something about Christ’s birth in there, they just feel like, it makes sense; it’s Christmas.
Last year, our church family went around our whole neighborhood to every home and took them just a small gift. We then sang to them, read them a Bible verse, and said, "We’re coming to bring a special Christmas blessing to you," everybody received it quite well.
Mike: And now some of those very people are attending church on Sabbath, it’s just amazing.
Our car recently needed an air conditioning recharge, so I took it to the shop we usually go to. In the end, he gave me the bill, but I had one of these Christmas gifts ready for him, so I gave him one before he gave me the bill. When I looked at it later, I saw he had already deducted the labor charges just as a gift to us, and when he received that gift from me, he lit up. It was just so special to know there was an exchange of friendship. He didn’t give his gift because of Christmas; however, he received our gift because I said Merry Christmas to him, and he was smiling so happily. He’s a village leader as well.
Let’s join our missionaries in prayer for those they have been witnessing to during this holiday season! Many seeds have been planted and we pray that they will grow deep roots in good soil.
To learn more about the missionaries featured in this article, please click their names or photos above.