Shedding the weight of spirit worship

n Nang Lapapinya's church elders encouraged her to go to Bible school

The second of two testimonies from Thailand’s flourishing Bible schools

MAE SARIANG, Thailand — Nang Lapapinya is a 27-year-old woman from the Lawa ethnic group in the northern part of Thailand. She is now studying at the Ngong Mala Bible School in Mae Sariang.

I asked her what difference she had noticed in her village since people there had turned from spirit worship to Christianity.

“People are more in harmony and more united than they used to be,” she said. “They have learned more of other dialects through the increased interaction with other villages.”

Pausing thoughtfully, she added, “There is much more love than there used to be.”

She first learned about God while visiting a Karen village. “I saw a video about Abraham, explaining how God worked in his life – how he stopped Abraham from killing his son. I was interested in finding out how God would work in my life. Then I began to study and learnt to read the Lawa New Testament, which I found easier to read than the Thai translation.

Carrying a burden

“I came to Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus talks about a burden – ‘Come to me all who are weary…’ – and I realised that we in my family were carrying a burden. It was the weight of spirit worship, with its sacrifices of animals and all the fear that goes with it.

“I spoke to my mother – my father was already dead,” she explained, “and I suggested that they try this new way. My mother was very happy to change. It is now 12 years since I first believed.

“I had been meaning to study the Bible for a long time but it didn’t happen – until this year. I spoke to the elders of my church and they encouraged me to come to the Bible School. They said it didn’t matter if you were a man or a woman, just as long as you can work in the church and encourage people.”

Peoples of the Earth

She went on to give an example of why she was so happy to have the Bible in her own language.

“In John 3:16 in the Thai Bible (1971 translation) it says, ‘For God so loved the earth that he gave his only son…’, whereas in the Lawa Bible it reads, ‘For God so loved the peoples of the Earth that he gave His only Son’.”

The Thai Bible has been the only translation available to these people for many years until it was finally translated into Lawa. She only had introductory lessons in Thai lettering and had to learn the rest herself by looking at other people’s Bibles. Now she can understand much more in the Lawa language.