mikesblog.infinitehorizon.org

So we made it to Carey’s sister’s house. We’re now in Louisville, Colorado, which is in between Denver and what the locals refer to as the People’s republic of Boulder. Not sure what we’re doing today but the conference starts tonight.

I also wanted to talk about the sports camp, which happened the Friday and Saturday before we left Thailand. Nearly 400 Thai elementary school students came to Grace International School. The camp included sports and one craft. I wasn’t feeling particularly well so the hardest part for me was staying awake through the 30 minute long announcements and Bible study, all in Thai. As you might imagine, the kids’ favorite was soccer, but my favorite was water polo in a 3 foot deep pool. I rose up like a phoenix and was able to score a goal from just outside our own goal.

Near the end of the camp, 129 of the students signed a form wishing to become followers of Christ. (that’s normally the way it’s phrased in other countries, I’ll explain another time)

So I’m having fun now with my new Wordpress app for my iTouch, and blogging from a hotel in Richfield, Utah. The family and I are halfway to Denver to spend a little over a week with family (my dad and Carey’s sister) whilst I simultaneously attend a pedagogy conference in Boulder.

Over the course of this trip Ill try to fill in some of the gaps from the last week of the Thailand trip, while they’re still fresh in my head.

We flew home last Tuesday the 22nd, and went to LCC for the last time the previous Wednesday. We made at least 3 great friends who attended the opening party at Baan Kanun, connecting with the workers who will be there long after we leave. As it turns out we made a great impression at LCC and hopefully paved the way for future teams to help out as well. We found out they are invited one of our 2 year people to teach a class in business English. Pretty awesome.

Anyway, Carey will be back with dinner soon and it will be time for me to put on the trunks and get my swim on. More info tomorrow.

Sorry for the big blank there.  We lost our consistent internet connection in a move, and I became very ill on the plane ride home.  I’m mostly okay now.  We’re (the whole family and I) going to Colorado perhaps on Sunday, and so I will continue to fill in the events of the last few days of the Thailand trip.  Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes!

After a worship service here at the dorms on Sunday morning, many of use went to an Umbrella Factory in Bo Sang, a town about 30 minutes away.  There we bought some high-quality handicrafts and had them custom painted by some truly talented artisans in the back of the store.  From there we went to the world famous Walking Street, where every Sunday night a major road through the middle of Chiang Mai is shut down to make a kind of mega-flea market.  Everyone in Chiang Mai comes down, and the night comes alive.  Tribal dancers, blind people playing music on the street for money, random smells, and women who might not actually be women are among the highlights.  I picked up lots more junk, way more than I need.  My personal money is pretty much gone, but I’m all good.  Everyone in the family’s getting more gifts then they thought they would get.

Today we went back to LCC, but since the first period was cancelled due to an examination, some of us on Crew 5 took the opportunity to investigate Wat Jet Yod, which in 1477 hosted a world council of Theravada Buddhists to revise the Triptaka (Theravada Buddhist scriptures).  It has a Bodhi tree (the tree under which Buddha found enlightenment), and I found myself walking around it a whole bunch while enjoying the various structures that make up the temple.  Clarity?  Perhaps… closure?  Not really.

The official team update:

“Everything is still going very well, and everyone is in excellent health.  Our seperate crews continued to help out with their seperate tasks, but Saturday was unique.  The school that I and crew 5 had been visiting for English help is closed on Saturdays, so we joined crew 2 for a day of sports for children in a village about 45 mins. outside Chiang Mai.  I found that in a game of Tug-of-war, I am equal to 20 Thai first graders and three westerners combined.  However, my skills in Duck-Duck-Goose are sorely lacking.  The Thai students figured out pretty quickly that if they selected me, they would be pretty much guaranteed to make it safely around the circle before I lumbered to my feet and could chase them down.

The other crews took the orphans they had been working with either to the Chiang Mai Zoo, or to a nearby lake for some water fun.  I’ll be sure to pass along any compelling stories they tell me about.  We’ll be continuing in the jobs we have now until Wednesday, then the CBU will be switching over to a sports camp.  We’re fairly excited about hamburgers for dinner tonight in the dorms, then tomorrow is our worship service.  Our devotions have been lead by a Pastor from the mountains of North Carolina who is truly Godly, even if he pronounces “this” as a two syllable word. 

- Mike”

On a side note, we had a lot of fun last night making fun of Adam for his youtube videos, and played “Candy Mountain” for everyone who wasn’t understanding our constant mocking of Charlie.  If I knew how to find them on youtube I’d put links, but I’ll have to do that at some other point.

So, for the last two days we’ve been going to LCC and helping them with English.  Yesterday they had bands playing in the cafeteria during lunch, exactly like what happened at Irvine High (my alma mater) when I was in High School.  Today, they had some sort of cultural event/talent show at lunch, and it involved (among other things) a man in a dress with a strange wig dancing around.  Another reminder that the last the thing to translate between two cultures is humor. 

We almost have the new office painted.  It will be called Ban Kanun (House of Jackfruit, I may explain the name in another post), and it will host free English classes and be an outreach center.  I also had a great conversation with a medical student at CMU named Saran at Wawee on Nimmanheimen Soi 9, and got to have a long discussion with Bay about the possibilities of future church or school groups coming to help his work in Chiang Mai.

Everything is going swimmingly….

Here’s the official team update:

”
Everything is going very well, and everyone on the team is in great health.  After lots of cultural immersion this last weekend, the rest of the team from International World Changers came in on Monday, and our ministry efforts started in earnest today (Tuesday).  We have 5 teams of around 10 each.  The CBU team is dispersed throughout all the crews.  Crews 1 & 2 are helping rebuild a single woman’s house in a local village near Chiang Mai.  There have been many people in this village open to the gospel and many of them saw their first farang (Westerner) just a few weeks ago.  Crews 3 & 4 are helping at a Christian orphanage outside the city, doing some maintenance, painting, and playing with the kids.  Crew 5 (the one that I happen to be on, along with Saskia, Corinne, and Charlie from CBU team) is teaching English at a commercial college in the city, and then helping to launch a new ministry platform that the Chiang Mai team is starting in the afternoon.  This includes some painting, and initial outreach in coffee shops in the city.

Please pray for continued blessings, for continued team unity, and for many more opportunities to share our testimonies with the Thai people!

- Mike”

Lots of fun today.  The students at LCC (Lanna Commercial College), like most Thai students are super friendly and young (both in spirit and appearance).  They act at first impression like a 5th grade class with no class discipline, but they have an amazing ability to listen attentively in chaos and learn effectively in an environment that would annoy most Western teachers/professors.  We had a planning session today to go over the activities we’ll be doing to help them with their English, and I’ll give a report tomorrow on how it went.

We went to the coffee shops where we’ll be doing the English Conversation corner, and we’ll see tomorrow how successful it is.

The High School students with the IWC team (and there’s a few MKs living in country as well) all seem very sincere, but they’re out of control and… well, they’re high school students. 

I forgot to mention in my last post that I ate my favorite Thai dish, Mangos and Sticky Rice at the walking street, along with one of my new favorites, fried baby squid.

This morning, the rest of the IWC team came in at about 10:30 or so.  We had lunch, and I met my team (team 5) for the first time, which has 3 people from the CBU team and a bunch of others that seem great.  We went up to Doi Suthep, which is the most popular temple in Northern Thailand both for Buddhists and tourists alike.  Had a fried banana waffle on a stick afterwards, which was cool.  We stopped at a waterfall on the way down from Suthep mountain to debrief, then back to the dorms. 

We had a kahn-toke (Northern Thai folk-style) dinner which involved rolling out mats, sitting on the ground and eating communally from a central table with our fingers.  The meal was fried chicken, pork rinds with a kind of dip, cucumbers, and vegetables.  Of course, sticky rice as well.  It sounds gross perhaps, but eating sticky rice and everything else with your hands communally makes everything taste great.

After the dinner we had kids from a local Christian orphanage come to the dorm and gave us an amazing show of Thai dance, and some performances they use to spread the gospel around Thailand.  One of them involved the kids all in black with white gloves, performing in front of a black light. 

Our projects (including one at that very orphanage) start tomorrow!

I had an amazing conversation with Goal (the ex-monk I believe I mentioned in an earlier post).  He told me that he meets with monks in parks to study the bible, but that Christians from America tell him that he must attend a church building.  They don’t seem to get that this gathering he has of disciples are his church, and that their attempts at guilt aren’t going to effective.  He also said that he never stopped meditating, and that meditation aside from the rituals of Buddhism is a great thing for Christians.  I would have to agree.

So today we lead worship at the dorm, and I shared my testimony.  Karina said that she didn’t want to share her testimony, because she would rather share it with Thai people.  I felt more comfortable sharing mine I suppose, since I think many of the details of my testimony (debate team, junior college, etc.) wouldn’t translate well anyway.

From there we had lunch at Big C, which is kind of like a monster Wal-Mart with a food court and a mini mall inside.  I had Kopi ancient coffee, which is served very strong, with what looks like a shot glass of tea and a packet of sugar for you to balance it out to your taste.  I also had Tom Yun Goon, one of my favorite Thai dishes.  It’s a kind of Shrimp curry soup, but like many Thai dishes it has all kinds of crazy things in it to add flavor, and balances many different kinds of tastes.

From there we went back to the dorm, and several of the guys went to a nearby field for ultimate frisbee.  It started raining (we are in a rain forest climate) and we just kept on playing.  We went from there over to Grace International School, which apparently houses many past and future CBU students.  The school was built on property which was originally some sort of sports club, so the school has the largest and nicest pool I’ve ever seen.

After a little downtime, we all went to Walking Street, which is a market that happens on Sunday night, stretching down a single street from Thae Pae gate on the east side of Chiang Mai to Wat Phra Singh, which is almost directly in the middle of the city.  I didn’t buy too much, but some people came home with all kinds of stuff.

It started pouring again about 9pm, when we were ready to leave, and it was interesting to see how quickly the people at the market could cover their goods with plastic and quickly store them for safety.  We all ran through pouring (POURING) rain to the Song-tao (kind of a pick-up truck taxi) and rode home with Charlie and Adam on the back, in the rain.  Lots of fun.

Okay, I’ll start with the official update, and then append as necessary:

”
Greetings from Chiang Mai!  First, my apologies about the lateness of our first update but the internet wasn’t working in our dorm for the first few days, and we have been very busy.  In preparation for 40 more high school and college students arriving here on Monday, we have been trying to immerse ourselves in the city as much as possible in order to be helpful as leaders during the two week projects that will start on Monday.

We have visited three of the major temples in the city, giving us the chance to speak to many different monks.  We were able to attend “Monk Chat” on Friday night at a major temple, in which each member of the team was able to personally interview a monk with excellent English skills about the details of Thai Buddhism, and the monk’s own story of faith.

Yesterday, the team completed a scavenger hunt around the city in four teams, having to get their own taxis and ask local Thais for the answer to a series of questions.  I was on a team with Karina and Alysha and am proud to say that we were the only team that completed the part of the scavenger hunt that called for the participants to eat some insects sold from a local market.  Apparently, Alysha was influenced by an episode of “Bizarre Foods” on the Travel channel in which the host traveled to this very market in Chiang Mai.

Last night, we heard an ex-monk who has since joined the family tell us stories about how he encountered Jesus in a dream, and how westerners who came to Chiang Mai kept giving him bibles.  He told us that he disciples many monks who are reading the bible, but they are afraid to profess faith for fear of leaving the temples.  He meets with them in public parks around the city to help them in bible study, and uses his credibility as a former monk to help them understand what they are reading.  An incredible testimony.

Later this morning, we will be leading the music at a service here at the dorms, and making final preparations for the rest of the IWC team coming in tomorrow.  I will be sending many more updates, hopefully more often.

- Mike”

The truth about the bugs is that Alysha ate one that was about 4 inches long, and I ate something that looked like a little wasp.  But they both count! 

The scavenger hunt was a little bit “Amazing Race”… our catchphrase was, “This isn’t a race, but there will be winners.”

I have once again been reminded that Thai food is amazing, and it’s not really that it’s different here, just that there is so much more selection and the ingredients are much more fresh and tailored to a Thai person’s sense of what is legitimately spicy.  Most of the time, they give us the somewhat spicy, safe for westerners version of whatever we order.

Charlie got a shrimp curry dish on Friday night that brought us all to tears… it was so…. okay, it was just super spicy.

I love how when everyone’s pulling in one direction, out of their element, and leaning on God for everything that everyone gets along and little problems just float away.

Many more updates to come.