Summer Cole, who lives in Southeast Asia with her husband John and their four boys, steps out of the wooden long-tail boat and walks along a narrow path dented into the straw.
Behind her, Mo Kham, a national believer who works with the Coles, jumps out of the boat and runs to catch up. Stepping carefully through a maze of broken clay pots, scurrying, chickens and bleating goats, the women make their way to potter Thant Lin’s home in the village where people of the Tai people group live.
At the house, an older woman places a steaming pot of tea on the table and Lin serves a cup to Cole and Kham. While they sip tea, Lin lines tiny figures on a low-lying table in the center of his paneled home.
Assembled in a cluster, the fragile clay pieces depict Christ’s birth.
These tiny figures provide Cole access to Lin and his family. She visits Lin’s home a couple of times a year and helps to develop his business while sharing the gospel with him.
Setting down her tea, Cole speaks to the excitement of discovering nativity sets in a market in a country that is 80 percent Buddhist, “I was amazed that in a staunchly Buddhist country there was this little nativity set, and I wanted to find out more. So I went and found what village they come from.”
“I realized they did not know much about the figures they were making,” Cole said. “So I made a plan to come back.”
Included in the return plan was the one-hour plane ride, one-hour taxi ride, and two-hour boat ride required to reach Lin’s village.
When she returned, Cole brought a children’s Bible so the family could look at the pictures as she shared the Christmas story. Though they listened carefully as she told the story, Lin and his family did not fully understand the heart of the message, never having heard the gospel before.
“This is something that they’ll probably have to hear many times to begin to catch the significance of it and understand why I would be so interested in these [sets],” says Cole.
