Coup in Thailand

An interesting thing happened while I was in Thailand in September. The Thai military decided it was time to overthrow the government and stage a coup. I am a man of faith and I do believe that God is in all things. However, that Tuesday evening, while sitting in the cyber lounge of our hotel, catching up on email and talking to Tammy over Skype, it was a little unnerving to see a headline pop up on My Yahoo that said "Breaking News - Coup in Thailand." It was even more unnerving when all the broadcast TV stations suddenly switched to broadcasting old patriotic songs and showing pictures of the King. The final straw was when the live broadcast from CNN where the reporter was about to tell the viewers about the tanks and troops that were assembling downtown suddenly was replaced with a red screen and a message saying that there were unusual sunspots interfering with the broadcast. Yea...right...sunspots...at 11:30 at night. That was also about the same time that the Internet went down.

Nervous? Absolutely! Hopeless? Never! With God, there is always hope. I called my friend, Ruthie, who was staying just a few blocks from the government center. She confirmed the tanks and soldiers, but also confirmed that there was no shooting. That was good news. Then I turned to the one item of international communication that the military apparently forgot about. My cell phone. I was able to call Tammy, ask her to keep up with what was happening on CNN, and then to text me whenever anything new came on. Even in a so called "total blackout" of communications, God provided a loophole for us to stay informed.

We were blessed in that there was no violence associated with this coup. Church services on Wednesday night were canceled, and that did alter my plans a bit. However, since our meeting to plan the new version of The GodMan was taking place in our hotel, we were able to continue our work without disruption.

My thanks go out to our prayer partners around the world. Through Tammy's phone calling, and Victory Church's email prayer network, we were able to get word out to hundreds of prayer partners. I truly believe that it was the action of these faithful prayer warriors that helped us to complete our work with absolutely no disruption. Thank you to all who prayed.