Heading Back to Hellhi!!!

Tomorrow we're leaving glorious land of Thailand and heading back to Hellhi. Yeah, that's my new name for it. I'm so dreading it. The good thing is that God's taught me a few things over the past couple of weeks, so I do feel like I'm heading back with a different attitude on some things. Love for the city not being one of those.

Today was a lot of fun. We started by doing on a zip-line tour through the jungle. The tour was called Flight of the Gibbon. Which was funny to me b/c my Grandmother's maiden name was Gibbons and I remember pretending like I was Gibbons monkey when I was a kid. I actually think we have pictures. When you grow up in a small town like New Zion, you do odd things to entertain yourself. My sister, Mary Kathryn, always liked pretending like we were homeless people that lived under our trampoline.

In this picture you can see Abby sailing across the line onto the next plank. Then from that plank we repelled straight down approx. 50 yards!!!!

This is a picture from one of our straight drops.

After the canopy tour, we went to this thing called "Monk Chat." It was a ton of monks just sitting at tables and talking to people, mostly tourist. Could you imagine once a week the elders and pastors of churches opening the church doors to the public to just talk? It would be a disaster. Did you know that the Prime Minister of England has unscripted Q&A sessions in front of parliament every Wednesday? I know that is random. The monks don't have these sessions for accountability, but that's what I thought about. Is there any accountability in America???? Is there any accountability in our churches? Is there any accountability in my life?

At the first local church I attended over here, a man went up front to the mic. and confessed his sin of offering a prayer to a Hindu god. Holy Cow!!! I would never get in front of any church and confess one of the many sins I committed in the previous week. I didn't plan on writing about accountability, but I think I've been overlooking it's importance for way too long. How do we ignore scripture like James 5:16 that says,

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

For the guys reading this: Has anyone in the last month asked you if you've viewed pornography or committed any sexual sin recently? For the girls: Has anyone asked you if have lusted over the boyfriend/husband that you don't have? For parents: Has anyone asked you if you've spent more time at work than with your family? For any believer: Has anyone asked if you've shared your faith with anyone this week or spent time in the Word daily?

I don't like my answers to some of those questions. Yeah there are better questions, but those are the first things that came to my mind. I hope you get the point I'm trying to make. Having people ask us hard questions like the ones above benefit us. James 5:16 says to confess and pray then you will be healed. James 5:19-20 states,

"My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover a multitude of sins."

This isn't a command for us to run to all of our friends and reveal their sins to them. You know the people you can ask the hard questions to. The great thing about a question is that the person always answers truthfully to themselves. Lies may come out of their mouth, but in their head they know the truth.