Pattaya

I find Pattaya a hard place to be. There is such a concentration of the worst of human issues – the sheer sadness, the loneliness, the lost-ness, the entrapment, the darkness of mankind – thinly covered by a veneer of fun and smiles and shrill laughter. After my first trip to Pattaya, I was to say to a friend: ‘If ever I doubted the existence of that malevolent evil we call satan, I no longer do.’ There is a lot of good in the world, and the goodness points towards its Source. The same is true of evil. Pattaya is heavy with it.

I spend time with precious people, people like Stephen and Ying Fulton, people like Nella Davidse, who have the courage and the fortitude to stand, as beacons of light in this vast darkness. I see them, and I am astonished by their beauty. Light always shines more brightly when it is really dark.

I ask them how it is that they find grace to live in Pattaya. Again and again, the story is the same…. For love. For love of God and for love of His children, They saw what I see, years ago, and it catapulted them into action. Not away, but towards. I look at these people and I am awed by the simplicity of their message, a message they live as well as speak: Love overcomes. Light shines. Goodness changes people. They hold out the Word of Life, day after day after day.

Is it worth it? Some say no. They look at the statistics and say the problem is growing.

But look into the eyes, as I do, of just one changed person, one person who has exchanged a life in sorrow and darkness for a life in Light and say it’s not worth it. Can you? I certainly can’t. The core of Heidi Baker's life message is very evident here. Love is when we stop for the one.