Strengths, God, and Culture

This week I have learnt many things, about me, the others on my team, thai culture, farang culture, and GOD!

Phil Porter from YWAM Bangkok came to speak to us about Discovering Our Strengths (and more!). After doing two tests, I learnt 1. That I am People Oriented and Structured; and 2. That my 5 top strengths in leadership are Empathy, Developer, Includer, Restorative and Connectedness. I also learnt that everyone else on my team are either Task Oriented/Unstructured or Task Oriented/Structured, apart from Daow (my roomie) who is the same as me. And I learnt the 5 top strengths of everyone else in my team. By doing this, I have been able to understand almost every question I had about that person: why they act the way they do, why they need the things they need, and why they say the things they say. Now I understand, not only my teammates but also myself. And by looking at all of our strengths and how we all fit together into a team, like a body with different parts, I can’t help but FEEL that there is definitely a GOD who created us and put us all together. Wow, He is so amazing.

This week has also been an exciting week for me as I have tried to express my worship in a different way to God, a way that I haven’t used for awhile, and that has been through dancing. Since outreach in Laos, Daow (who has a real heart for using Thai dance to reach out in Thailand) has taught me two dances, a Thai dance and a mixed (slow-ish) dance, and I remembered how much I love to express my feelings through moving to music. So this morning before our team met together, I went upstairs into the classroom, put music on, and danced for God – as my worship to Him. And I was able to connect to Him in a way I haven’t been able to for a LONG time. I can connect to Him through playing music, but dancing is a whole new step. After this, I went to our team meeting and we sung together. In this time when I closed my eyes, I could see a picture of a dance, I could see the actions: expressing themselves through what the words of the song were saying. So in my heart I followed these actions, and again I was able to connect to God and understand the songs so much more. God really touched me as in one of the songs I realized again that His love can change me and His love can turn my weaknesses into strengths. And no-one can ever satisfy me like God can. I was so overwhelmed that I cried.

The third main thing I have learnt this week has been about culture. In our meeting today Phil talked to us about culture differences. There are many differences between Thai and Western culture, for example westerners like their personal space and time, so if they visit someone, they will call first to make sure it’s ok. This is how they show respect. But Thais only call before visiting someone when it is a business meeting or someone they don’t really know, so if they show up to your house or room without calling, it’s a way that they show they feel close to you, that you are their friend, and that you are more than just business. But to a westerner, “just showing up” might seem rude. There are many differences like this. Some aren’t good, but some are very good. Phil pointed out that us westerners have a lot to learn from Thais. Many things of their culture are biblical, such as sacrificing personal time and space to serve others. As farangs we like our personal time, but Thais are willing to sacrifice their personal time for others, just like Jesus sacrificed His time for others. Another difference is that us westerners like to grow up and leave our families, living out independence. This is good and biblical of course, but all too often we tend to forget about the needs of our parents. We forget to support our parents. But in Thai culture, the Thais support their parents until their parents die. And this, too, is something we can learn from them. Because this, too, is biblical (Matt 15:4-7). There were a lot more examples we talked about, and I was really challenged to live not as a farang, not as a Thai, but like Jesus – using the best from both cultures.