Sia Dai

A friend of ours from Laos wrote this--which I thought beautifully summed up feelings all of us have had as we’ve been forced to fold up our companies and leave Laos…..

 

 The Lao have a saying -- "Sia Dai."  Literally it means "Lost & Dead" and means "Wasted" or "What a pity."  Just this morning I watched seven cargo trucks loaded with our people-food mill going across the Mekong river to Thailand and just thought "Sia Dai" or "What a waste"!   All the money people invested and all the volunteer work to see this happen. Just the day before yesterday I was in the rafters handing down extra screens for the seed cleaner and saw a little four inch auger that an elderly farmer in Stronghurst, Illinois donated to the project.  My mind went back to the many things given, some small and some large.  I thought "Sia Dai" about all the time and money people in the States donated for this project.  "Sia Dai" that we have to leave and the whole country of Laos does not have a company that can produce the food supplement that WFP needs to buy. 

 

Just a few days ago Michael said it was like a drink offering being poured out on the ground.   Just think of it.  All the work to make a glass of wine (the grapes had to be grown, the juice squeezed out, and processed) just poured out on the ground and it soaks into the dirt.  It's gone, useless.  What a waste.  But wait a minute.  It was not wasted because it was poured out as an offering to God.  The physical wine was lost to the person offering it but God accepted it as a pleasing expression of thankfulness.  It wasn't "Sia Dai" at all.

 

More than that Peter and party are buying the mill.  They have been poured out as a thank offering to God, which has been "holy and acceptable to God," and they are going to continue to be poured out. Hopefully, we all will be until we can also say, "I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure." (II Tim.4:6-8) .... AB, a friend in Laos