A great temptation for the local population is split in the Christian environment. Pointing to the many denominations, to the absence of agreement among them, the Buddhists say: "Following Christ does not bring peace, love and unity". This contradiction in the Christian environment is felt by the Thais very sharply. Division among Christians is the rock on which stumble many of Thais who traditionally value peace and harmony highly.2
2 Oleg (Cherepanin), the Abbot. The mentioned work. P. 226.
In the article of the year 2008 the Deacon George Maximov said: “Thai people are friendly and they appreciate the courtesy, the harmony of human relations, seek not to offend the interviewee (the world “no” is almost never used in their language). However, they are the people, living in the vast majority in paganism, – you can permanently see on the streets miniature temples – “houses of the spirits”, on which hung sacrificial wreaths, in religious places (Buddhist monasteries) there are idols, before them are smoked incenses and put the same wreaths. When I was there, I saw the life of the Thai people, talked to them, heard stories about them, I unwittingly caught myself feeling that I got to the era of the Acts of the Apostles. The pagan life encompasses not only material phenomena, it has its own expressions and ideas about morals and religious concepts.
In the Christian culture, including Russia, many things related to faith, are clear and obvious to all. Even atheists who deny God, however, have a very specific idea of what they deny – that is, even people who are far from faith, have some minimal ideas about God, for example, that by this word we mean the Single Almighty Eternal Creator, who created this world, and so on. But the Thais have nothing of it. The message about the one God the Creator is really new and difficult to understand for them, requiring a lot of efforts to assimilate it. And it is so with many other things. For Thais, raised in the Buddhist tradition, many things connected with the faith of the Orthodox Church, are not obvious and require thorough study and understanding”.3
3 Maksimov G., Deacon. The Orthodox mission in Thailand. Pravoslavie.ru>CMИ>39379.htm (date of access: 03.08.2014).
Speaking about the difficulties of the mission among the Thais, the Archimandrite Oleg (Cherepanin) noted the following: “There is the Bible in Thai language, there is a prayer-book. The Thais who want to learn the foundations of religion, come and talk to me and our second priest the father Daniel or with our deacon the father Seraphim. And they gradually become Christians through a visible way. Although the theory is important too. Now we are finishing our joint project with the Tomsk diocese – the translation into Thai language “The Law of God” of the Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy. The Archbishop Rostislav, the Archbishop of Tomsk and Asinov, supported it very strongly. We want to time the presentation of this book to the consecration of the monastery in Ratchaburi. This book was translated not only by the specialists in linguistics: we have several baptized Thais who speak Russian language; in addition, there are a few Thai people from our parish who speak English. And, as you know, “The Law of God” was originally written in English by the father Seraphim.
