The Asia Report Part III - Thailand

An Explosion of Divine Graces!

November 19-22, 2005

In Vassula's previous visits to this country she had been invited by a Catholic Bishop to speak at a Retreat held close to the Burmese border, and at Meetings organized in Bangkok. Since then, in a country whose population is predominantly Buddhist, with a small percentage of Christians, TLIG Prayer Groups have spread and now welcomed her to witness once again in Bangkok and in 2 new cities, Sriracha and Chiangmai.

Bangkok

The TLIG Association of Thailand and over 500 people in the Holy Redeemer Church Hall in Bangkok, anxiously waited for Vassula's flight from Bangladesh to arrive for her Meeting that same evening; unfortunately the plane was hopelessly stranded at Dhaka International Airport due to mechanical problems. All alternative flights from Dhaka to Bangkok were unsuitable and we therefore had to accept our flight's 6-hour delay. To remedy the situation, the Thai organizers very efficiently led a Prayer Meeting and projected a video of Vassula's, and to appease the crowd's disappointment, they promised to hold Vassula's talk the following evening. Amazingly, the majority stayed to watch the film, abiding in peaceful meditation. Vassula's 3-day stay in Thailand had already been filled with Media Interviews, and 3 main Meetings.

Edgar Dante of TLIG Association Thailand writes: "Vassula came to Thailand for the 4th time in November 2005 as part of a month-long Asian tour. True Life in God is not new to Thailand, the Messages have been promoted and translated to Thai since the early 1990s, long before Vassula's first visit in 1998. The printed versions were available since 1999, and so far, over 5,000 copies of the 5 volumes in Thai have been disseminated in Thailand. In addition, the first three volumes of the handwritten version are now widely available. Behind this is the TLIG Thailand Association which meets weekly for the TLIG Prayer Meetings and coordinates the translation and printing of the books, as well as arranges Vassula's visits."

Sriracha

Afternoon Meeting in Assumption College Church, Sriracha, 150 kms south of Bangkok:

Left: Before the Meeting with some of the Thai organizers. Right: Fr. Paul Vira, SDB was honored to finally meet Vassula in person.

The bookstand at the Church entrance displaying True Life in God books and DVDs in Thai and in English

Vassula is introduced by Peter Larsen, one of the organizers, while Rachel Daengsvang translates the talk in the Thai language

Speaking to an audience of 200 people

For this first visit to the city of Sriracha, the TLIG Thai Association succeeded in gathering a mixture of people, most of them had never heard of Vassula nor the Messages. This assembly of 200 was composed of many priests and nuns, Catholic and Protestant laypeople, both local and foreign. Many young students from Assumption College attended and carefully listened to Vassula's witnessing, delighted with her experience of her Angel Daniel. Everyone is always curious to know how Vassula receives the Messages, she therefore went into detail describing how she hears an inner voice called "locution", distinctly discerning the Persons of the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. She is also given interior visions and a light of understanding into her intellect, without utterance of speech.

Vassula went on to explain that these evil times we live in today had been predicted by St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, Ezekiel 28 and Daniel. The 2 signs of the End of Times (not the end of the world) are the Great Apostasy and the Spirit of Rebellion. The apostasy of our times is great because it has spread all over, it is generalized; people do not believe in God, they have chosen to reject and deny the Divine Truth that had been given to them. They believe in the idols of materialism, rationalism and modernism. There is a spirit of rebellion in men's hearts that seeks to question the Divinity of our Savior Jesus Christ, presenting His True Presence in the Eucharist as merely symbolic, aiming to establish that His Resurrection also was symbolic.

Satan's hour is here, but as evil gains power, God increases the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. God does not leave us, the Holy Spirit brings forth the 2nd Pentecost to renew His Creation. In Apocalypse 21, St. John speaks of "the new heavens and the new earth," and of the new Jerusalem. This is the work the Holy Spirit is doing in many souls; transfiguring and renewing them, raising them to be Apostles of the End Times. There is a blossoming of prayer groups in the world today; many charismatic groups are alive with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as individuals whom the Holy Spirit has touched, who have changed their lives, and who are given the fire to do God's will and bring His Word to all they meet.

Vassula's simple but profound witnessing sends the powerful message to all who hear, that God's Desire is for each of us to become intimate with Him by daring to approach Him with the innocence of a child, trusting in His Love for us. By His Grace, He reveals Himself to each one who seeks to know Him and love Him. Through her experience we are able to relate to the Almighty, to our Creator, but who is also our Father and our Friend, our Holy Companion. True Life in God is His Hymn of Love to His Creation, calling us to our rightful place as children of the Most High, and asking us to return to living holy, for He is holy. In the Messages, God Himself teaches us to pray from the heart, the only prayer that reaches Him. He brings us back to the Church and its sacraments, explaining and re-spelling Holy Scriptures so that we are able to understand and live them. After citing many Messages and sharing the other themes in True Life in God, she ended with the Prayer for Healing and Deliverance, asking the Lord for the healing of all those present.

There is a big expatriate community of retired people in the neighboring city of Pattaya, a famous vacation resort. Vassula was interviewed immediately afterwards by an enthusiastic Austrian journalist for the German-speaking newspaper in Thailand, the Pattaya Blatt. This was followed by another interview by a local TV celebrity, which was broadcast all throughout the province of Chonburi, including Pattaya City via TV and Radio.

Left: Interview with Austrian journalist, Ms. Elfi Seitz. Right: Another interview followed in a Sriracha hotel for Mr. Sanya Mankorn's TV show.

Evening Meeting in Bangkok's Holy Redeemer Church Hall, Ruam Rudee Road:

Extraordinarily, Vassula accepted to hold 2 Meetings in the same day, to make up for the Meeting she was unable to attend the night before. The crowded hall was filled with joyful praise music, creating a warm atmosphere for Vassula and the listeners who eagerly returned to hear her speak. Many in the audience, including several priests and nuns were familiar with the Messages and had heard Vassula speak at other times in this same Church hall.

Fr. Joseph Wichitr Likhittham introduced Vassula to the audience of 500 people

Vassula always begins her Meetings with a prayer, usually with the Our Father in Aramaic. Through this important prayer, she introduced the Person of the Eternal Father, describing her first encounter with Him wherein He teaches her, and us, to speak to Him from the heart. The tone of His Voice, so paternal, shatters the distorted image many of us have made of Him as being solely a judge. It awakens us to the truth that we are His children and that we belong to Him. Jesus describes Him in the following Message: "...My Father is a King, yet so motherly, a Judge, yet so tender and loving, the Alpha and the Omega, yet so meek..." (August 10, 1994)

The Lord wants prayers, fervent prayers for the conversion of the world and the unity of families, people and the Church. Satan deceives the world with the same lie he told Eve - that we do not need God, that we, by ourselves, can be god. The world now rejects the Divine Truths, leading it into this Great Apostasy. Our Holy Mother says:

"the world has grown cold, icy cold, and the parents turn against each other, the child turns against his parents for lack of love; the mother refuses the child's pleadings for love; the world is dead to love, it lies in deep obscurity because hatred, greed, and selfishness dominate the earth all the way to its core;

I am shaken by terrible sights, with the iniquities of this dark world and the apostasy that penetrated in the sanctuary itself; the disasters, famine, afflictions, war and plague, all these are drawn by you; all that comes from the earth returns to earth. The earth is autodestructing itself and it is not God who gives you all these disasters as many of you tend to believe; God is Just and all Merciful, but evil draws evil;

Pray hard, pray with your heart for the conversion and the salvation of your era; children of Mine, pray with Me, I need your prayers, pray and I shall offer them to God

I assure you that I am with you wherever you go; I never leave you, you who are My children; I bless you all" (May 15, 1990)

God asks us to convert and change our indifferent hearts to hearts burning with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Through His Mercy, He sends the Holy Spirit in a 2nd Pentecost, setting souls on fire to transform them into apostles. Many today are seeking God, desiring and yearning to taste His Sweetness and change their lives. All this is due to the action of the Holy Spirit in our times. Conversion is a constant movement, like climbing a ladder, penetrating more and more into God and understanding Him more to know His Will. Vassula continued: "...what is the first step to know God's Will for us? Most people say one must call on the Holy Spirit to give us His Light...but the Holy Spirit cannot come on someone who is in debt to sin, filled with vices and iniquities! The first thing to do is to repent and truly be sorry for your sins, emptying yourself by repenting and confessing to make space for the Holy Spirit. The fruit of Repentance is Reconciliation which leads to Unity."

"We are God's sanctuary and He dwells in us. He created us to love and serve Him, and in serving others, we serve Him." The Lord would use everyday occasions to teach her many lessons, among them is this anecdote which is precious learning for us: In the beginning, when He had brought her from Bangladesh to Switzerland, where her family lives, she was constantly enjoying the Lord's Presence under dictation with Him. One late afternoon, while she was deep into her work with the Lord, her mother happened to call, unable to go to the store, and asked her to fetch some bread before it closed. Vassula's work with the Lord was not finished and she was obviously torn between her priority and attending to her mother's request. The Lord, in his extreme delicacy, motioned her to pause and give her time to her mother, declaring: "in serving her, you are serving Me." Vassula interspersed the subjects in her talk with passages like this, witnessing on the simplicity of God's pedagogy.

"The Holy Spirit's call for our times is Unity. The division in the Church is a sin, we are living in sin as long as we are divided and continue to uphold this division." The Lord makes her understand that natural catastrophes, disasters, wars, killings and terrorism happen because the Church is divided. When the Church decides to unite using the keys of Humility and Love, all evil will stop. We are responsible to pray for Unity, TLIG Prayer Groups are formed to pray specifically for this. The world has to change, and this is possible only through our prayers and the transformation of our lives.

The audience very quietly listened until she finished, taking in the sweetness and simplicity of the Lord in His Messages. The peaceful silence during the Prayer of Healing and Deliverance showed the intentness of their pleas to receive His Healing Grace and His Blessing.

People standing, invoking the Holy Spirit for healing and deliverance.

Chiangmai (Vassula's first visit):

Leaving Bangkok the next day, we took the noonday flight to Chiangmai with the TLIG organizers. Chiangmai is a major tourist destination known for its natural beauty, rich culture and cool weather, and is located approximately 800 kilometers north of Bangkok. For TLIG, Chiangmai was a new area for evangelization.

Left: At Bangkok Airport, TLIG organizers Joan and Rachel Daengsvang, Justine Roxas and Edgar Dante checked in boxes of books for the Meeting. Right: Books for sale outside the Conference Room in Chiangmai's Park Hotel.

Evening Meeting in Chiangmai:

Peter Larsen of the Thai TLIG Association introduced Vassula in the Thai language to 150 new people attending this Meeting. Among them were Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Buddhists. Vassula tries to cover all the themes of the Messages in her talks, but since her audience was entirely new, she gave much of her time to the beginnings of her experience.

During the Meeting that evening

After a short prayer, Vassula started: "Many people are like me, they forgot their Creator, although He is always there. I was born and baptized a Greek Orthodox, I believed in God but that He was up there, somewhere faraway..." Vassula gave them a short background of her life before God intervened. "First the angel came - each of us has a Guardian Angel, others have more than one - My Angel helped me through my Purification, showing me my sins through God's Eyes..." To see one's self the way one really is can be a terrible experience: little, seemingly unimportant things were monstrous, bringing her to shed repentant tears for 3 weeks, filling her with horror and disgust at the realization that she had gravely offended God. She was at last given the grace to see that she had never praised or adored God, and had not ever thanked Him for all the good things that He had given her, citing that our families, our good health, the work that we do, the roof over our heads, the food we eat, the clothes that we wear are blessings from Him and that we ought to show our love and gratitude by thanking Him.

Once Vassula was purified, she experienced hearing the voice of the Eternal Father, which seemingly lifted her up from a deep sleep. His Presence and the tone of His Voice invaded her whole being and brought her to the truth that she is His child and that she belonged to Him from the beginning of time. He asked her to pray the "Our Father." Remembering this prayer, the only prayer she was obliged to learn at the Christian school she attended way back in Egypt, she heaved a sigh of relief and recited it. He was not happy so He asked her to say it again, and again... and again, from morning till night. The thought that He was probably asking her to make up for all the "Our Fathers" she neglected to say all these past years, crossed her mind at one point. But this was not so, once she began to say each word from her heart, meaning each phrase by realizing that she was speaking to Him and not to a wall, the Father was pleased, nodding His approval. It was the first step in entering into Intimacy with God, she knew He was there and was listening. She approached Him like a child would do, with the knowledge that she was nothing and that He was everything, her soul had finally recognized her Creator.

"We are living in a time when good is turned to evil, when love for God has grown cold. The world does not glorify God but glorifies itself, making its own commandments which oppose the Lord's Commandments." The Father says:

"My Heart pains me, My child, for I see to the ends of the earth and what I see is not according to My Heart's desires...your Father rules everything, but not your freedom... and man has perverted his freedom... Beloved, pray so that those who are dying will have time to redress themselves - every drop of love is used for their salvation. Many beneath the rubble are still breathing - so pray for them that I refresh their soul..." (October 18, 1994)

Our Lord Jesus first came to her as the Sacred Heart, exposing the depth of His burning Love for each of us and His Desire for us to find our place in His Heart. The Sacred Heart is a Catholic devotion unknown to other Christians. The Orthodox know Our Lord in His Divine Heart or as the Pantocrator, the Judge. By revealing Himself to her, an Orthodox, in this way, He taught her that He makes no distinction and yearns for all His children to adore Him around one single tabernacle. Our mission for Christian Unity was born through the fact that in True Life in God, the Sacred Heart speaks to all His children and chose an Orthodox to bring His Message to Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants alike. His plea is to remove the walls of division and build the bricks of Unity in our hearts through the keys of Love and Humility. This division among brothers is a scandal, it is the greatest obstacle to the triumph of God's Kingdom on earth, and the cause of much suffering.

Edgar concludes: "Vassula spoke to about 150 people in the meeting room at Park Hotel. Among them was a senior staff member from the Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture who was interested in the Messages and the mission of True Life in God. One Nepali, who happened to be at the hotel, came to the meeting and learned of the Messages for the first time. After the talk, the organizers eagerly recruited some interested people to start a TLIG Prayer Group in Chiangmai. The Messages are making their way through Thailand, thanks to the Holy Spirit who calls God's people and His people who answer."

"...realize how I, Yahweh, have leaned down all the way from above to clothe you and everyone else who turned an ear to Me as well, with majesty and splendor; I wished to revive the faith of this generation, curing your so deplorable state, with tenderness and compassion..." (June 1, 2002)

The Holy Spirit led us through this beautiful country of gentle people to bring healing, strength and nourishment for its spiritual growth. Many thanks to Vassula for her generosity in witnessing, to the organizers and TLIG Prayer Groups who will help spread the seeds of salvation. May the Lord and Our Lady bless the work of True Life in God in Thailand.

Submitted by: Cecilia Lutz, and Edgar Dante of TLIG Thailand Association