By Ab Mol, missionary worker in Thailand
You expect all sorts of things in missionary life: cultural differences, incomprehensible traditions, maybe a snake in your shoes, questionable food. But no one warns you about a spontaneous hug from a drunken villager who smells like she has just completed a rice wine tour. While the mosquitoes had already opened their dinner buffet on our legs, this spectacle suddenly became the main act.
She staggered a little and was obviously firmly under the influence. She stumbled into the room and, judging by the smell, she had apparently just finished a long encounter with Lao Khao (the local rice wine). Her eyes were red and watery, her smile broad and her physical approach to Pastor Arm and yours truly was overenthusiastic. She seemed to find it completely logical to greet and hug us warmly in ways that are at least uncomfortable in hierarchical Thai culture.
I observed the chatter of the other villager. Glances were exchanged, heads shaken. 'What is she doing here?' they said. 'If you're that drunk you'd better stay home.' Their disapproval was almost palpable and I had to admit that my own discomfort was not exactly invisible either. But during the Bible study, it happened: in the midst of her faltering life chaos, she nodded, "It's for me too, isn't it?
It was a moment that made me pause. Luke 5:30-32 flashed through my mind. Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners, much to the annoyance of the religious elite. He said: 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, that they may repent.' There it was, as true to life as you could possibly experience.
I looked at her, with her messy hair and her tears of awkward, perhaps alcohol-driven emotion. And I saw myself. How often, in other ways, am I not just as broken, awkward and in need of grace? While the villagers had their judgements ready, I saw in her something of what the gospel is really about: that Jesus does not have a guest list of perfection, but rather invites those who feel out of place.
When the Bible study was over, she staggered away again. But I was left with a lesson I will never forget. When she asked, "It's for me too, right?" came the real shock - not because of her question, but because she was literally combining Lao Khao breath with theology. And fair is fair: how many missionaries can say they have ever seen how rice wine brought a Bible text to life?
Photo for illustration. It does not include the people described
