Tonight Hannah and I went to a birthday party. It was for Khruu Khwan's son. It was awesome.

There were these two missionaries there from Australia. One of the ladies works up in Burma with a specific hill tribe group working on developing a written language in order to translate the Bible for those people. We were all sitting around talking about learning languages and she told us about a man she works alongside.

He is a Burmese man who speaks eight languages. Eight....crazy, right? But that's not the craziest thing. The craziest thing is that God has actually given him a few of those languages (I forget how many...). What does that even mean? I thought the same thing.

She told us this: He was going to a group of people in order to establish contact with them. He brought along with him a good friend of his who spoke the people's language in order to translate for him. He began speaking in his language...but the words came out in the language in which he did not yet know. He was thinking in his own language, intending to speak in that language, but the words came out as the people's language. So...God literally put the words into his mouth. God taught him the language.

Okay...confession. When I heard this I really could not believe it. But than I thought about the numerous times this summer when I have had the same reaction to a story, either read in a book (Brother Andrew...see a previous post) or heard from missionaries. Even from talking with a Korean man in Cambodia at our hotel (ask me to tell you that story sometime). Each time I've heard some account where it could only have been God working, I have stood there, opened mouth, wondering about the truth of it. And than realizing that it is in fact true. That my Father could actually work in those amazingly unbelievable ways.

And I finally understood tonight something that God as been try to teach me all summer. Something he has been trying to teach me through the stories and accounts I have heard. The lesson is this: my understanding and belief of what God can do, how he can work, is too small. My belief in God's working in this world is too small. I have put God in a box...thinking he is powerful. But not believing he is powerful enough to literally put a new language in someones mouth. Or make seeing eyes blind (as Brother Andrew experienced). Or provide for every single need of George Muller. And the list could go on.

I have always easily accepted the stories of miracles Jesus did in the Bible. Healing people. Raising people from the dead. Feeding thousands from a boy's small offering of five loves of bread and two small fish.

But why than do I find it harder to believe that He can still work in similar miracles ways today? Why is my faith so small? And my unbelief so big?

I want to believe that He is so powerful that He can still do similar acts today. And I want to believe that He is still working this very moment to care for the forgotten of this world and to melt hearts of stone. I was thinking of camp songs the other day. Paw, the girl I teach English to, always wants me to sing songs with her. To teach her new songs. So I was trying to remember the many songs I have learned over the years at camps and Sunday school and vacation Bible schools. And God remained me of this one: "My God is so BIG, so STRONG, and so MIGHTY there's NOTHING my God can not do, for you!" How true that is.

So slowly, God is reminding me of his power. And I learning to believe that he does have the power to protect the thousands of hill tribe people in Burma fleeing their villages as the army burns them down. And He does have the power to cause reconciliation between Thai people and hill tribe people. And He does have the power to come into the urban slum where Paw lives and give those girls hope for a brighter future. A future where they can become teachers or doctors, not prostitutes. And He does have the power to make his name known in a nation where over 90% of the population are Buddhists. And He has the power to direct my path for the future.