Diplomats and Prophets

This week we had our annual staff meeting as an organization. The venue was a beautiful place, Yelagiri Hills, in Tamil Nadu. At the foot of the hills, the weather is hot and dusty. But the moment you reach top, it’s pretty chilled and pleasant.

In our meeting, an excellent Bible, Mr R Stanley, came to share the Word of God to us. What a privilege to hear from this man of God! He has inspired every missionary present there.

I like to share one that really challenged me. That is on Diplomats and Prophets.

He warned us that there are many pastors, leaders and missionaries who get so acquainted with the daily news and trends that they know how to respond each situation well. But when it comes to reflection on God’s Word, there are now powerful words.

This alarmed me. It is now almost 6 months, since I began to read the news of my own state, Arunachal Pradesh, extensively. I began to read every day. Even wrote letters to the editor. I spoke with friends a lot about the developments and issues that are happening. I began to verbally criticise our leaders. In short, I was too immersed in the trends of the state.

I realized something is going off track. My purpose is not to be a political or a social voice.

God has called me to be a prophetic voice. I am to speak His Word, provide suggestions from His word and enable others to understand it better our Lord. There is no substitute.

I felt I slipped that for a while.

But now I am back again. This week once again I am renewed and challenged to keep God’s Word to the highest level in my life.

I am sure we’ll keep on facing some kind of distractions once in a while. I pray each one of us will continue to remain steady and steadfast to the call God has for you.

Reading skills in mother tongue

As many of Lisu young people in India, I grew up not learning to read and write our mother tongue, Lisu. As a result, my skills in those areas are weak, though I speak fluently. Obvious reason: I don’t need to learn for education purposes. The major uses are when I write letters to my parents and sometimes when preaching at my village.

I thought this is not good. So I bought three Bibles: one each for me, Simasa and my sister. My wife, Simasa, and I started to read it every evening since January. Beginning it was difficult. Words are not familiar. We were not able to read well. We have fun too; good opportunity to joke each other.

It’s the fourth month since we began reading in Lisu. We haven’t been noticing whether we have improved our reading skills, until a few weeks ago when a friend of us came to stay with us. We realized we improved a lot. We are reading it much fluently. I discovered because a friend who has been staying with us is struggling more than us. We “corrected” him often.

In addition to the ability to read better, we have learnt new vocabularies and regular expressions in our language. Our knowledge of our language is richer now. We’ll be reading the whole Bible until we complete. Hope by then, we’ll be much better. Even we expect that our spiritual growth will be better.

I often meet many Lisu friends from around the world. Except for a few, most have the problems we have. Some even couldn’t read.

Occasionally, I joke with friends that if you tell your child, “Don’t learn English or other languages”, they will not listen to you! They will surely learn because those are the medium they will have wider access. But they will NOT learn to read, write, even speak, your mother tongue unless you teach them well.

Here is my encouragement to my Lisu friends and those from minority language communities. If you haven’t learnt your mother tongue yet, please pursue. If you have learnt, pass on the language skills to your next generations.

Or if you are involved in language development work in minority languages, never forget to encourage the newly literate or those who are learning to read their language for the first time.

Blessings,

Liahey
April 03, 2011

Short man! Congratulations...

This is meant for fun. Please don’t take serious.

I am short man, about 5 ft 2 inches.

Some of us are not very tall people, including me. But this provides an opportunity for us to reflect of people, who are short but have made big impacts.

Hitler was a dictator of Germany. Negatively he challenged the whole world.

Sachin Tendulkar, the best cricketer from India. He is shortest among the Indian cricket team.

Abdul Kalam, the former President of India, was a short man too. He has influenced millions of students in India during his president ship.

General Than Shwe, junta dictator of Myanmar, is a powerful man too.

More list…

Liahey
4 April 2011

Reading - a gateway to knowledge

Reading was no fun for me till 1999. The only materials I read were the magazines: The North East Sun and a Crime magazine. Besides them, items to read were disgusting.

Then later part of 1999, half-hearted I arrived my Bible college in Chennai. The principal was a very godly person and a veracious reader of books.

One of his goals was to enable each one of us to love reading books. He said, “I want to teach you so you will love reading when you are 60 years old.” I never forget that statement.

He shared his passion for reading and learning.

Whenever, we visited our library, we saw lots of books he signed. He read some of the books when he was 10 or 12 years old.

He shared the current books he is reading and how he is reading. Those are good for us to understand.

Five years I studied under him. During that period I began to read at least a book per week. Those days I could point out where a particular title could be found in that huge library.

Not only me alone. My whole batch of friends became good readers. We had good stuffs to share regularly. Our free time became sharing of thoughts and ideas.

Now its 7 years since I graduated. I believe still I read well.

Yesterday, a friend of mine who stays with us during vacation commented, “I haven’t seen mapha (teacher or pastor) read that much. Is it that really necessary to read that much?” I said the more you teach, the more you will need to learn.

Throughout my life, I’ll never forget my principal’s inspiration to love reading and keep learning.

Today if you are a good reader, inspire someone. If you are not, find someone who reads.

Liahey
April 15, 2011
A house without books is like a room without windows - Heinrich Mann.