Did you miss me?

Hello all!

I’m not going to break with my mini-tradition, so I’ll start off with some Thailand Tips:

#12
Don’t dog the king. Ever. Don’t make fun of him, or talk bad or even condescendingly about him. (This includes talk of the old movie ‘The King and I.’ Apparently that movie is highly offensive because of the way it portrays the king. That king was historically an incredible man, and they revere him and his son as some of the best kings they’ve ever had. I don’t know about the more recent remake ‘Anna and the King.’ I’ll try to find out, discretely.) They LOVE their king. I’d heard this, but I didn’t know how true it was until I arrived. There are portraits of him everywhere, and wherever you look someone is wearing yellow in his honor. It’s actually kind of cool to see people who actually like their monarch. (Apparently the corrupt government happens at the local level, but everyone adores the main man.)

#13 If you are shopping for a shirt for a man’s XL or larger, start praying now. All the clothing sizes run one (or more) size small. If you buy a Thai XL, you’re really only getting a large. And on top of that, they shrink! So really a Thai XL is more like a medium after you’ve washed it once. I guess my solution to this problem is to suggest you buy a watch instead.

Sorry that it’s been a while. We’ve been busy. Nothing incredibly earth shaking, just the day in, day out life on the field. Jonathan’s doing the English thing, and I’m covering a lot of ground on the computer. We did have a day yesterday though. It was the Queen’s birthday and a national holiday, very similar to our Mother’s Day. All over the country, everyone it seemed was wearing light blue shirts in the Queen’s honor and doing nice things for their own mothers. (Instead of the normal yellow to honor the king’s 60 year reign this year.)

Anyway, I spent the day at Carol Hart’s (the founder of ZOE) home, helping her prepare a beautiful dinner that we gave to the Thai house mothers.

An aside: The way ZOE children’s homes work is that the missionaries are there to support/train/EMPOWER the Thai staff who live with the children and are their ‘parents.’ Yes the missionaries interact daily with the children, but it’s the house parents who are the real front lines In countless ways, they accomplish what the missionaries cannot and should not do. They know the language, culture, country, subtlies and intricacies of Thailand, things it takes a lifetime to learn. . And these people are so sweet, so caring and so loving, I know that they are doing an incredible work by helping these kids.

So anyway, we set out to honor them, specifically the mothers. We prepared a formal dinner, making sure we ordered food they would like and we served them. (‘We’ was myself and the other women missionaries. We did make two of our missionaries sit down to be served because they were mothers also. We had to lovingly force them not to help.) Afterwards we asked if they would like to go and get their feet massaged, and after a few minutes of discussion we discovered that most of them had never been shopping at Night Bizarre. We were in shock! Night Bizarre is one of the first places tourists go to, it’s a conglomeration of shops and vendors, selling everything from throwing knives and weird instruments to shirts (see above Thailand tip) to baseball hats made out of Heineken cans to idols to delicate flowers carved out of soap. Basically, everything a tourist could ask for, and just a lot of fun.
We asked them where they would rather go, and they all said Night Bizarre. (Two later changed their minds and got massages anyway, but the massage place was at Night Bizarre so it wasn’t a problem)

They had a blast (I think. It’s hard to tell sometimes. ) The whole night really blessed them, we could tell. They said they had never been served by ‘the adjans’ before. (Adjan means teacher, master or headmaster, and that’s what they call all the missionaries. ZOE Missionaries asked not to be called that but the Thais said it would be culturally inappropriate to not use that term.) It was beautiful to be able to serve people who are so used to serving themselves, they didn’t know what to do. They were so grateful and I do hope, pray and believe they were blessed.

That night Jonathan was at the children’s home holding a sort of seminar on how to write a sketch. When we were first getting to know the kids, they discovered that our background was theater and they practically begged us to teach them new skits. We asked if they had ever written their own and they fell silent. Apparently the idea had never occurred to them before. We told them that they were better equipped to reach their people, and they would know how to communicate to them than we would. After talking about it with the people over us, we scheduled a night and spread the word.

Only about ten kids showed, but Jonathan said any more would have been too many. He went over plot and characters, conflict and resolution. He also spent time on themes (the idea behind the sketch or skit) and then had them start writing. We gave them the freedom to write in groups and in Thai, so we have only a basic idea of what they wrote, but it seemed to go very well. We’re going to get one of our friends to translate it for us, and then discuss what our next step should be.

At this point all I know about what was written is that one group wrote a skit containing five characters: a doctor, three missionaries and a Buddhist monk. I’m curious, just knowing that.

Well, my brain just stopped working for some reason, so I think I’m going to go take a nap. Days off are great, aren’t they? I’m going to try to get a bunch of pictures up in the next few days. They’re ones I took at the beginning of our trip, but just haven’t been able to get up yet. I’m hoping to show the inside of the children’s home, so you’ll be able to better imagine our surroundings. Let me just say that we haven’t been suffering.

We love you all and hope things are going well on your half of the world!!!