Jesus 4 Asia Now

Jungle School Demolished

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Lisa Sharon

Home

Series Code: JFAN

Program Code: JFAN000037A


00:21 Hello, and welcome to Jesus for Asia Now.
00:23 I'm Natalie Wood
00:24 and I have a special guest with me here today
00:26 to talk about the work
00:28 that she and her family are doing in Thailand,
00:30 and I know you are going to really enjoy these stories.
00:34 And before I welcome my guest and introduce her to you,
00:38 I want to share with you one of her favorite texts
00:42 and that is in Romans 8:38-39.
00:47 "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,
00:50 nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
00:55 nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
00:58 nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
01:02 from the love of God
01:03 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
01:06 So I want to introduce you
01:08 to our special guest today, Lisa Sharon.
01:11 Welcome to the show, Lisa.
01:12 Thank you. So glad you could be here.
01:15 It's been a long time coming.
01:17 We've been wanting to have
01:18 a show like this for a long time.
01:20 We did one about your family's work,
01:22 but you weren't here.
01:23 No.
01:24 And neither was anyone else from your family
01:26 so all we had was video,
01:28 and now we'll get the stories in person.
01:31 So we first met when you still lived in Idaho.
01:34 Yeah.
01:35 And we lived in California at the time
01:37 and we were in Idaho visiting family.
01:40 And then you moved with your family to Montana.
01:42 Right.
01:43 Can you share a little of the story
01:45 of the beginning there of your family in Montana and...?
01:49 Well, when we moved from Idaho,
01:51 I had asked my boys, "What they wanted in home?"
01:55 They were upper teenagers by then
01:57 and so I wanted to,
01:59 you know, I wanted to let them decide.
02:01 It had to be a place with a lot of snow,
02:06 and they wanted to be way out where it wasn't like
02:09 right in the middle of a lot of people.
02:11 It had to have no electricity, no water and no phone.
02:16 I put my foot down when they came to the phone part,
02:18 so we found this place that was way out
02:21 and it had, you know, 6 to 12 feet of snow every year
02:25 and we had to use snowmobiles to go in and out.
02:27 And, you know, at the time it was a really crazy idea
02:30 but that's what prepared us for mission service.
02:33 And so it turned out to be a really big blessing.
02:38 It was a long ways out there.
02:40 I remember coming to visit you in winter
02:43 and then it snowed a little bit before we got there
02:45 but then it snowed a foot overnight
02:47 and so we were able to drive out
02:49 but after that it was snowmobiles
02:51 for you all the rest of the winter.
02:53 Yeah.
02:54 So you were home schooling your boys there, right?
02:57 Yeah. I was.
02:58 So it wasn't like you lived way out
02:59 and you were trying to take them into school everyday?
03:01 No.
03:02 And especially that first year,
03:03 we didn't have any work up there
03:05 and so we didn't have to go anywhere.
03:08 So it was probably the best year of our lives
03:10 as far as getting to spend time as family
03:13 and really big, drawing closer together and stuff.
03:17 And it was right after that
03:19 when Ben left on a vision trip for Asia,
03:24 and basically that was his last year at home.
03:27 So it was a really, really special time.
03:31 So he went over with us on the vision trip
03:33 and he was there for just maybe a few days.
03:37 It seems like maybe a week but it wasn't very long.
03:41 And he said, I think I need to call my mom.
03:44 Yeah, he called me and he told me,
03:46 "Mom, I just can't come home
03:48 that there's such a need over here,
03:50 I didn't realize that there was such a need in Asia
03:52 and so I can't go home."
03:54 So I didn't see him again for two years.
03:59 But, you know, if you're going to lose your kids,
04:01 that's a great way to wisdom...
04:03 To God's work. To God's work.
04:04 To caring about other people and serving them.
04:06 That's right.
04:08 So he came home two years later?
04:10 Two years later, he came for a one month visit.
04:13 And one morning, we were all sitting at,
04:16 we just had worship
04:18 and we were sitting around in the living room just talking
04:20 and he turns to his brother.
04:23 I think he turned to Jason first,
04:24 I'm not sure but he said, "Hey, Jason,
04:26 why don't you come over to Asia with me?
04:28 I need some help."
04:29 And Jason said, "Yeah, sure I'll do that."
04:33 And then he was like, wow.
04:36 You know, and then he turned to Andrew and he said,
04:37 "Andrew, how about you?"
04:39 And Andrew said, "Yeah, I think I might like to do that."
04:42 I'm like, "Oh, no, three of my boys are going to be gone."
04:47 So they left, the three of them left on my birthday of all days
04:51 and that was in March of 2009, I believe.
04:56 And so it was just the three of us left at home,
04:58 we didn't know what to do with ourselves.
05:01 You had Travis, the youngest of them.
05:02 Yeah, I still had Travis at home.
05:05 So we decided to become more involved
05:07 with Jesus for Asia at that point
05:09 because I was already talking to them.
05:11 And so then we decided to help out
05:14 a little bit more with the ministry.
05:16 And Jon decided that it was a good idea
05:20 for me to just go over there
05:21 and kind of check it out for myself
05:23 so I know what I was talking about
05:24 and then I could write about the projects
05:25 while I was over there.
05:27 So we went for a three month mission trip too.
05:32 But same thing that happened to Ben,
05:35 you know, when you see the need,
05:37 you meet the people and you get to know them...
05:40 I mean, they're not just statistics,
05:41 they're not just people
05:42 that live on the other side of the world then,
05:44 they're real people and you just can't,
05:48 you just can't go off and leave them once you see the need.
05:52 You know, whether you can stand on a mountaintop
05:54 and see 50 villages that have never heard of Jesus,
05:58 I don't know how a person could leave after that.
06:01 So we decided to stay
06:04 and my husband had to go back to America
06:06 and he had to just, you know, wrap things up
06:08 we hadn't planned on moving over there.
06:10 And so he left, Travis and I to move to our new location.
06:17 We had found a training school
06:19 that had been built by donors from America
06:21 but nothing was, it was empty.
06:24 Nothing was being done there.
06:26 And so actually Jason joined us
06:28 and three of us moved down near Sangkhla Buri
06:33 and we were only there a couple of months,
06:38 my husband was still in America.
06:40 When I was handed my first baby,
06:43 Hannah was 14 months old
06:46 and she'd been abandoned by her mother,
06:48 and her father was a soldier and couldn't take care of her.
06:51 And so it was like, I had to email my husband,
06:55 "Surprise! You're dad again."
07:00 So you now have four boys and a girl.
07:02 Yeah.
07:03 It's a girl.
07:04 Yeah, it was a girl. Congratulations.
07:07 We were really excited to get a girl.
07:10 But it wasn't like something that I had planned on.
07:13 You know, when you're handed a child,
07:15 you look at the child and you say,
07:17 "Twenty years, wow, that's commitment."
07:22 But, you know, if that's what it takes
07:24 that's what we're going to do, so that's what we are doing,
07:27 it's our 20 years of commitment at least.
07:32 And it wasn't very long before
07:35 more children came in to where I ended up with six girls
07:39 because God has a sense of humor.
07:43 Four boys and then six girls.
07:48 But we'd always wanted girl so it worked out really good.
07:52 So couple months later,
07:54 I was given another little girl,
07:55 she was eight years old, we've named her Mary Beth.
08:00 She likes to have an American name.
08:02 And couple months after that,
08:07 my, Jason, my son had saved
08:11 the life of another little girl,
08:12 she was seven at the time
08:15 and she needed special care for a while
08:17 and so we took her in, that's Esther.
08:20 She's 14 now.
08:22 And then like a year later, we got Destiny Grace.
08:29 Oh, I always forget my older ones,
08:31 my older ones were Sanda and Nam Phoon.
08:34 Sanda is now married and has her own family,
08:36 so she's not living at home now.
08:38 And then Nam Phoon just finished academy
08:41 and so she's been away from home for about five years
08:43 and that's why I forget.
08:45 Yeah.
08:46 But yeah, they came around the same time.
08:50 Wow! So suddenly you had six girls.
08:52 Suddenly I had six girls, ranging from 6 days old to 16.
08:59 Well, that's quite a spread.
09:00 Yeah.
09:02 Thankfully you had already experienced
09:04 most of the teenage years...
09:05 Yeah.
09:06 Once before from a boy perspective.
09:08 I really thought I was pretty well prepared.
09:10 I thought I was a pretty good mom,
09:11 I found out I didn't know anything.
09:14 Every child is different though.
09:15 Every child is different,
09:16 and girls are far different than boys.
09:18 Yeah.
09:20 And the learning needs, and the emotional needs,
09:23 and some of the traumatic experiences
09:25 that a lot of young people have had over there.
09:28 Yeah, they bring across a very sunny disposition
09:31 when you meet them.
09:32 But deep down inside they're very damaged little girls,
09:35 so it takes a lot of work, a lot of love.
09:39 A lot of love.
09:41 But they smile and they love back to you.
09:44 They do.
09:45 Yeah, I like being there and meeting the girls.
09:48 Finally, it was many years actually...
09:50 Before I got to meet them, but I enjoyed it very much.
09:53 They are so sweet.
09:54 They are.
09:56 The love is paying off.
09:57 Yeah.
09:58 Okay, so you were in Sangkhla Buri
10:00 during all of this time?
10:02 Yeah.
10:03 And then what happened next?
10:05 'Cause you aren't there anymore and I know you've been,
10:07 so we're going to keep on going with the story.
10:09 Yeah.
10:10 Well, that there was a lot of problems
10:13 that developed there,
10:14 one of them a major one
10:16 and that the mission was really concerned about
10:17 was the child traffickers.
10:19 You know, we were kind of rescuing kids
10:21 that would have been probably taken by them.
10:25 And they didn't like that
10:26 and so it was kind of a dangerous area for us.
10:30 The other problem was that our neighbors
10:32 had put in loudspeakers right behind us,
10:34 and in Asia it's a very polite thing to do
10:38 to share your music with your neighbors.
10:41 But... At very high volume?
10:43 At very high volume.
10:45 But unfortunately
10:46 we didn't approve of their choice of music.
10:49 It wasn't peaceful and pleasant for country living?
10:51 No.
10:52 We were trying to, you know, run a school there
10:55 and having this loud and rocked music
10:57 blasting at us continuously was,
11:00 it just wasn't a good idea.
11:01 So because of those two things,
11:04 we decided to look for a new location
11:06 and we went a couple of other places
11:08 and kind of checked them out
11:09 but nothing was really where God wanted us.
11:13 And so we finally, we were talking about it as a family
11:17 and we decided that we needed to move someplace
11:19 that was dark, where there's no Christians,
11:22 where there's no other missionaries,
11:24 where there's no churches
11:25 so that because, you know, there's thousands of villages
11:28 that need help
11:29 and we didn't want to be someplace
11:30 where there's other people already working.
11:33 So the only problem was that I have a bad back
11:36 and so we couldn't be on bad roads.
11:40 So Jason looked at Google Earth,
11:43 that's just a great way to find your new location.
11:46 It's a handy tool. Yeah.
11:48 He found a river that we can navigate with a boat.
11:52 And so it's kind of a long story
11:55 but they went to the nearest town to that area
12:00 and they just kind of talk to them
12:02 and asked if it would be possible
12:04 for us to find property there to start a school.
12:08 And we got nothing but yes, it was amazing,
12:10 we didn't expect that.
12:12 But, I mean, the emperor said yes,
12:14 the headman of the village said yes
12:16 everybody was like,
12:17 Just go choose what you want, you can do whatever you want,
12:19 and just let us know where you decided to settle."
12:23 So we did and we were very careful,
12:26 we got permission from every headman
12:28 of every village around, and the emperor and the...
12:30 I mean, we were very careful,
12:32 made sure that it was really true
12:34 that we could have whatever we wanted
12:35 and how much land we wanted.
12:37 So we went down the river and we found the perfect spot.
12:40 It had streams coming down the mountains
12:43 and it was in the jungle, there were no loudspeakers.
12:48 That was very important to us.
12:49 And so we got permission,
12:52 then we started building our school there.
12:54 And we had to chop out the jungle,
12:56 it was a lot of work,
12:57 there were these huge bines all over the place.
13:00 And we cleared and that took us a year to get the school ready,
13:05 and build the buildings
13:06 and get the jungle cleared enough
13:10 to where we could have students there.
13:13 And then the students started coming.
13:14 We started out with hot season school
13:17 which is like summer vacation for them.
13:19 But everybody wants to learn English
13:21 and so we just thought,
13:23 well, you know, if we invite the students
13:25 to come during summer break,
13:27 then we can get to know who the good students are
13:31 and who the bad students are, you know.
13:32 Who are really interested in spiritual things
13:36 and then we can handpick our students.
13:38 And so that's kind of what we did,
13:39 we didn't handpick them all of that way
13:41 but a lot of them we did.
13:43 And so we started out our school year with,
13:45 I think it was around 20 students,
13:47 I don't remember now.
13:49 But that was our ideal maximum.
13:53 We didn't want more than that
13:54 because we wanted really one on one time with the students
13:56 so that they could learn.
13:58 Okay, so what kind of school, what were you teaching?
14:01 You said English, they want to learn English?
14:02 Yeah, all of the students wanted to learn English.
14:05 They wanted to learn medical,
14:06 and they wanted to learn about the Bible.
14:09 So it's kind of like an English Bible training school.
14:12 So that's what we've done.
14:13 We had a work study program.
14:15 We wanted to follow Ellen White counsel
14:17 for the medicine school basically.
14:20 And so we had half study, half work.
14:24 Well, a lot of these students didn't know how to work.
14:27 I mean, here we are.
14:28 Where were they from?
14:29 Well, a lot of them were from refugee camps
14:32 and a lot of them were from Burma.
14:35 And the ones from Burma knew how to work.
14:37 But the ones from the refugee camps,
14:38 they had never learned.
14:39 There's no place in the refugee camp for them to work?
14:42 No, there's no place for them to work.
14:43 It's just full of house after house,
14:45 hut after hut after hut.
14:46 Yeah, bamboo house.
14:47 We call house, you know, you say house in our culture...
14:50 And it means something different,
14:51 vastly different from the reality for them.
14:52 Vastly different.
14:54 Yeah. So hut after hut.
14:55 Yeah.
14:56 Miles and miles, I mean, you drive pass
14:58 some of these places on the road,
15:00 and you just miles and miles
15:01 of hut after hut after hut, all the...
15:04 It's like all of the roofs just,
15:06 they're like stacked on top of each other almost.
15:08 Yeah, I can't imagine living that close together,
15:11 it's just so, it's so hard.
15:13 Anyway, they didn't know how to built houses,
15:16 they didn't know how to make the leaf panels for the roofs,
15:18 they didn't know how to do anything.
15:20 And so when they came, we had the work and study.
15:24 And half of the students left
15:28 because of the work program which was fine.
15:31 So they didn't want to learn to work.
15:32 Yeah, they didn't want to learn to work.
15:33 And so we ended up with only nine students,
15:36 but they were so excited.
15:39 They told us, they came for the English.
15:42 They stayed because of the Bible.
15:45 They started out with we had like a,
15:46 Jason was teaching Bible, and he taught a one hour class.
15:50 Well, pretty soon it became an hour and half,
15:51 and then it was two hours,
15:53 and then it was three hours everyday
15:54 and they just, they couldn't get enough.
15:55 They weren't just getting enough.
15:57 Yeah, plus, morning and evening worships.
15:59 It was like they just couldn't get enough.
16:01 Wow.
16:02 And so it was beautiful.
16:05 It was so exciting to see
16:07 because they were just so hungry
16:09 and so thirsty to know the truth.
16:12 You know, and they ask us difficult questions.
16:14 You know, where like, in one Sabbath,
16:15 they asked us, "What happens to you when you die?"
16:19 And we kind of talked about it.
16:21 We're like, you know, I'm afraid
16:23 that this is gonna offend them
16:25 but let's just do a Bible study.
16:27 So instead of preparing a Bible study,
16:29 we just got out our "Strong's Concordance"
16:31 and looked up every verse in the Bible about it.
16:35 And when we finished reading all those verses
16:39 and then just summarizing,
16:41 the students, their reaction was,
16:43 "Oh, so that's how it is."
16:46 It was like... Okay.
16:48 That's what the Bible says, that's way it is.
16:50 It was... They...
16:51 It's so beautiful to see it.
16:54 I wish you could experience it
16:55 'cause it's just, it was so neat.
16:57 Wow!
16:59 But...
17:00 So how did you build the buildings there,
17:02 the house and the buildings on the property?
17:07 Well, it's a little different than what we would build here.
17:12 We go out into the jungle,
17:14 and we find a nice looking bamboo clump,
17:17 and we start chopping with our machetes,
17:19 cut down the bamboos, strip off all the leaves,
17:22 and haul it on back to the house site.
17:26 When you get enough of that then you...
17:28 Well, you also have to find logs
17:30 that are down in the jungle.
17:31 It has to be either teak or iron wood.
17:34 If it's...
17:35 And they have to fallen away.
17:36 Yeah, they have to have already fallen down,
17:38 you can't cut anything 'cause that would be illegal.
17:41 But then you haul those back, those are really heavy wood.
17:45 Especially if they're big.
17:46 Yeah. Yes.
17:48 And then you have to make them
17:49 into smaller posts or something.
17:51 No, you don't cut those things because they are just,
17:54 they are the way they are sorted all.
17:55 They're not cut at all.
17:56 Yeah. Anyway so...
17:57 Okay, your house posts are whatever size the tree was.
18:00 You start out with just four posts in the ground,
18:03 or six, or eight, or however big you want the building,
18:05 and then you just start trying bamboo on with,
18:08 then we use bamboo to make ties to tie it all together.
18:12 And sometimes we use wire and nails
18:15 but usually is bamboo ties.
18:18 'Cause you're in the middle of the jungle...
18:19 It's not like you're just gonna run down
18:21 to the hardware store and buy nails.
18:22 No, we don't do that.
18:23 We get everything we needed from the jungle.
18:25 It's a lot cheaper.
18:26 But it's also not as, it doesn't last very long.
18:31 Like, if you build a house,
18:33 if you cut the bamboo at the exact right time
18:36 so there's no bugs in it,
18:38 then it'll last a long time.
18:39 But if there is any bugs in it, then they chew your bamboo up
18:43 while it's in the house, and then it gets,
18:45 it's like sawdust all over the place.
18:48 And it's really unnerving
18:50 when you sit or lay next to the wall, and you hear that.
18:53 Yeah, you can hear the bugs chewing.
18:58 But it's a lot of work
18:59 but you can put up a house in maybe a week or two.
19:04 What about bathrooms?
19:05 What did you do for bathrooms?
19:07 Well, we dug out houses which...
19:11 It's not, you know, there's not a lot of rock in the dirt
19:14 so you can dig a pretty good outhouse pretty fast.
19:18 And then we just used, for that we use tin
19:20 'cause I didn't want to use bamboo
19:21 'cause you can see through it.
19:23 So we used tin and it just made a little square outhouse with.
19:29 Yeah, there's yeah...
19:31 That's a really fancy one.
19:33 They have squat toilets.
19:35 It's not like the nice things like we have here,
19:37 but it works...
19:39 It's not flushing, you use the dipper and...
19:41 Yeah, you use a dipper and a water tank
19:43 to flush the toilet.
19:45 You have the big school building
19:47 where the boys are living,
19:48 you have the girls' dorm, you have a house,
19:51 and you're living there for how long?
19:54 We were down there for two years.
19:56 Okay.
19:57 And then something happened to this school building?
20:00 Yeah.
20:02 It was a Friday.
20:04 And we only allowed one home weekend per month.
20:08 And it was not a home weekend,
20:11 it was a weekend
20:12 where everybody was supposed to be there.
20:14 But that morning, one soon after another came to us
20:18 with really good reasons why they needed to go places.
20:22 You know, one was gonna go get some yellow beans
20:23 for the school
20:24 'cause we were out of, we were really low on food.
20:28 We said, "Okay, that's fine."
20:29 One of them needed to go get seeds for the gardens.
20:32 I mean, they were really good reasons.
20:35 Every single one of them, we just said, "You know what?
20:37 This is a real need.
20:38 They're not just trying to get away or anything."
20:41 And so one by one, the students left
20:43 until there was only four students left.
20:46 And since it was Friday,
20:48 we were in the kitchen building making bread for Sabbath.
20:52 We always did a special meal for a Sabbath.
20:56 And it was like a baking class, we had every Friday.
20:59 And so normally on a Friday afternoon,
21:03 the students would have been in the big building
21:05 in the classrooms cleaning and getting ready for Sabbath.
21:09 But that day, there was nobody there.
21:12 And the wind came up,
21:15 you could see the rain was coming.
21:17 And all of a sudden, we heard this big snap, snap, snap,
21:20 and then we ran to the front of the kitchen
21:23 to look out to see what was coming down.
21:25 And there came a 90 foot mango tree
21:30 right at center over our new building
21:33 and smashed it completely to the ground.
21:37 With the branches and everything
21:39 the entire building came down.
21:42 There was nothing left.
21:43 Wow.
21:44 And we just sat there with our mouths open going,
21:47 "God is good."
21:50 If those students hadn't gone home that day,
21:53 people would have been killed.
21:56 But nobody was injured.
21:58 We went right out and started cleaning up,
22:01 and within two weeks, we had a brand new classroom.
22:04 Wow.
22:05 The students for just so...
22:08 They worked hard but they got it up.
22:10 And it was good for them
22:12 'cause they learned how to build even better.
22:16 So the first time you built that building,
22:17 do you have any idea what it cost you
22:19 to build the building?
22:20 I believe it was around $400.
22:24 I think that's what you told me at the time.
22:26 Yeah, I believe it was around $400.
22:28 The second building cost us a grand total of 10.
22:32 Wow.
22:34 Because you could reuse the materials,
22:36 or you could get everything from the jungle,
22:38 or what was, it depends.
22:39 We could reuse some of it, but the difference was
22:41 is that we knew how to make things by then.
22:44 So we knew how to make our own leaf panels,
22:46 and we knew how to do our own thing.
22:48 So all we had to buy was some more nails.
22:50 Wow. Yeah.
22:52 Wow.
22:53 So God blessed even though there was destruction,
22:55 and it seemed like loss of property at the beginning,
22:57 there was no loss of life.
22:59 There was no loss of life.
23:00 And we made the second building much better and bigger.
23:04 And cheaper. And cheaper.
23:06 And there were no more mango trees
23:07 to fall on the building.
23:08 So after that we call that mango hall
23:11 just to remind us
23:12 of how good God is to take care of us so well.
23:16 Wow. Well, I think at this time we have a little video.
23:20 Do you want to tell us about it?
23:21 This video, Jon took when he came to visit us.
23:25 And as, you know, no words or anything
23:27 but it just kind of shows a little snapshot
23:29 of what our school was like.
23:31 Okay, we will play that at this time.
23:32 Okay.
27:17 Well, that was a beautiful place.
27:19 That video, I'm sure, just barely captures
27:21 a little bit of what it was like there.
27:23 Yeah, it just shows a little bit.
27:27 Well, I know that not long after that whole incident
27:30 with the mango tree,
27:32 you were forced to leave this beautiful place.
27:35 And I know that we don't have time
27:37 for that story in this show.
27:39 So I want you to join us next week
27:42 for the rest of the story of Lisa and her family,
27:45 and where God has led them from there.
27:48 If you have been impressed
27:50 to give to support this ministry,
27:53 you can send your tax deductible love gift
27:55 to Jesus for Asia,
27:57 PO Box 1221, Collegedale, Tennessee 37315.
28:02 Call us at 423-413-7321
28:06 or visit our website at Jesus4asia.org.
28:09 May God richly bless you
28:11 until we see you again next week
28:12 on Jesus for Asia Now.


Home

Revised 2017-12-04