Remembering Dad

We are spending Easter weekend in Bang Saen so we can participate in some of the Easter services at our mission churches.  Last evening (Good Friday) we were able to participate in a beautiful time of worship and prayer at The Life Center.

Good Friday service at The Life Center

While we are here at Bang Saen, we are staying at Samiya Guest house.  At Samiya, there is a shaded area outside where they serve breakfast.  In the eating area there are lots of little statues, including a cluster of pink elephants.

Pink elephants at Samiya guest house

Whenever I see elephant statues, I think of my dad, who had a collection of then on a shelf in the living room.  I don’t know how he actually got started on this, but I always assumed it was because he was such a staunch Republican.  (One time I brought him back from Haiti a  rather garishly painted donkey to add some balance to his collection.)

I didn't have a perfect father, but he was a good one.  One of his values was that all people should be treated equally regardless of nationality, skin color, language, or whatever.  That probably had a large influence on our family hosting exchange students from other countries and hosting black people from a nearby city.  And perhaps that is one reason I am so comfortable traveling to different places and being around people who aren't like me.

So here we are—for the second time in our lives we are living in a country where not only are we part of the minority, but where we look and speak distinctly different from the majority around us.  And while we find it difficult because we can neither speak nor read the language at this point, we are comfortable being here and calling it home.

So, thank you, dad, for teaching us to love those who aren't like us.

Being Honored

Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12 (NLT)

It was Songkran (Thai New Year) celebration in Bang Saen—the last big day.  Pickup trucks carrying drums full of water had traffic paralyzed on the main roads.  Revelers in these trucks and on the street were throwing water at everyone possible—including themselves.  Even the driver of the van we rode from Bangkok had to take back roads just to arrive somewhere near the van station.

Traffic at a standstill in Bang Saen during Songkran celebrations.  Traffic in the right hand lanes is supposed tobe going the other way.

To stay dry and to keep our faces from being plastered with clay, we were walking the back way from where our van dropped us off to our guest house.  (We would have used public transportation, but it wasn’t running due to the traffic situation.)

Children preparing to throw water at us during Songkran celebrations.

One route we had hoped to take was pretty much clogged with partiers, so we decided to back-track half a mile to take a different route.  The hot afternoon sun beat down on us and we were getting weary.  Suddenly, a group of boys came running toward us bearing cups of water.

We were prepared to get doused.  But, instead, the boys had us hold out our hands while the gently poured water over them in a Songkran tradition of honoring elders.  (It is this tradition that has morphed into the present-day water-throwing festivities.)

The water was icy-cold.  Truth-be-told, I would have appreciated it if the boys had dumped this water on our head.  But amidst all the drunken revelry of the New Years celebration, we were honored as elders.  And indeed, we felt honored and blessed by the actions of these children.

Ingrid showing honor to an elder at Wattana church by pouring scented water over her hands.

In Thailand, many people feel that the old Songkran traditions are getting lost and replaced with wild parties and festivities—much like the traditional Christmas in the west has become lost in the hype and materialism of our present-day celebrations.

The Bible tells us to honor our parents.  This commandment seems like an odd one, stuck between the first four commandments about loving God and the last five about loving our neighbor.  Paul calls this the first “commandment with a promise” (Ephesians 6:2).  Clearly, honoring parents has high value to God.

We in America seem to have lost this concept of honoring our parents and elders a long time ago.  Age is seen as an enemy.  Youth and looking young are worshipped.  Old people are sent to homes where they are often forgotten.

This week, an older person, whom I respected very much, went to be with Jesus.  Harold was a gentle, humble man who loved the Lord.  His wife, Marianna, continues to faithfully serve and follow Jesus.  They had recently celebrated their 66th anniversary.  These are two people who deserve to be honored by having water poured over their hands.

Thank you Jesus, for sending people our way to remind us of something that is important to you.

Soi

(NOTE: I normally would not assemble 2 blogs within a day, but with language school starting next week, posts may become more infrequent.  It helped that but Ingrid wrote most of the last one.)

Soi is a term used in Thailand which is hard to define.  Our address is Rachaprarop Soi 14, which means it is a soi off of Rachaprarop Road.

But what is a soi?  Is it a street?  It could be.  But a soi is not always wide enough for a car.  It is usually wide enough for a motorcycle.  (In Thailand, everything is wide enough for a motorcycle—it’s pedestrians that don’t count.)

A soi is a narrow street or passageway.  If it is a street, it may be only wide enough for one car at a time.  Typically there are no sidewalks on a soi.  A soi may go through to another street or soi or it may be a dead end.

On the soi, pedestrians, motorcycles and cars vie for the right of passage.  The general rule is the bigger the object, the more right-of-way it possesses.  So the dog yields to the pedestrian, who yields to the motorcycle, who yields to the three-wheeled vehicle that yields to the car that yields to the truck.  (This is true on sidewalks as well as sois and streets, though in our western way of thinking, a person would have some right-of-way at least on a sidewalk.)

A soi is often full of life.  Vendors set up stands on the side or in store fronts.  There is constant movement.  People buying, people selling, people just passing through.

The soi is where we will meet people.  A soi near our apartment has a fairly sizeable market where vendors hawk fruits, vegetables, meat, cooked foods and dry goods.  We will continue to do a lot of our shopping there.  It will be on the soi that we will practice our Thai and hopefully begin to build some relationships.

A soi is a challenge for me (Edd).  Though I am generally laid back, when I get on a road or a trail I become very destination oriented and I don’t tend to spend a lot of time on the sides.  But a soi is not just a way to a destination, it is a destination.

In some ways, the soi is a picture of our life.  Our life has a destination (either the grave or the return of Jesus), and we will all get to our destination.  The important thing is what happens along the way—all those interactions with pedestrians, vendors, vehicles and other creatures and things we meet on the soi of life.  As we travel the soi, we are to bring life to it with God’s word:

 Impress (the commandments) on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deuteronomy 6:7 NIV)

Some soi scenes:

Life in Bangkok

Many people have asked what life is like for us here in Bangkok.  Following is a description about where and how we live.

We live about a mile east of a major landmark in Bangkok called the Victory Monument.

Victory Monument

The area where we live can be viewed on Google maps here:


We live on the 22^nd floor of a 24 floor “tower” building that also has some smaller buildings attached.

Our apartment is one of 4 on the 22^nd floor with a shared front patio overlooking Bangkok. The patio has a variety of potted plants and shrubs so there is a bit of a backyard/patio feel to it. Our apartment is about 500sq. ft., has 2 main rooms: front room with windows overlooking the patio and a bedroom with a small balcony overlooking the neighborhood to the back. There is air conditioning. Sometimes when its cooler we can open the screen doors to the front and back and enjoy the breeze. There is a bathroom with a full size tub and shower, with flow through water heater.  Most of the time cold showers feel just fine!

The apartment is furnished with a couch and coffee table in both the front room and bedroom. There is a king-sized bed, a wardrobe and a buffet/TV stand type of 2 piece cabinet in the bedroom.  The “kitchen” is very tiny, with tiled floor, walls and counter and stainless steel sink with cold water. The kitchen did not come with cabinets or stove. (no room for it anyway). There is a small fridge.  We bought some shelves and a hot plate and have a large toaster oven.  Most people cook outside, so an indoor kitchen is a luxury here.
Our apartment is close to the elevator and stairs. We leave our front door, walk across the patio a few steps to the right and into another door to get to the elevators.

There are coin operated washing machines on the ground floor or you can get laundry services.  There is a small fitness room on the 6^th floor as well as a good sized pool, which we can use 4x/month for free, and pay to use it after that.  The fitness room has no air conditioning or fans, so you could say free sauna included. 

There are a couple of minimart type shops, a hairdresser and a restaurant in the building on first and/or 2nd floor. 

We see a fair number of foreigners that are living in our building as well as a lot of nurses.


In addition to the shops and services in our building, there are many street restaurants nearby as well as small shops and outdoor markets where we can buy fruit, vegetables and household necessities, etc.

Many buildings have a grey grimy look to them from the pollution and humidity, but ours appears to be fairly recently whitewashed. In the neighborhood there are some big hotel buildings, some smaller apartment buildings and shops, and a big temple complex with lots of small narrow streets connecting them. There are sidewalks, but they are shared with street vendors and motorcyclists coming from all directions. The sidewalks are often made from cement tile which are uneven and loose due to tree roots, drainage, driveways, etc., so you really have to watch your step.  Even at pedestrian crossings there is little respect for pedestrians. There are cuts in the curbs for motorcycles but if you were in a wheelchair you would be hard pressed to get around.

We live a 20 min walk from the sky train (BTS) station at Victory Monument.  From the sky train there is access to the subway and boat taxis along the rivers.  For us to travel to school we take the BTS to the second station to the south, and the school is less than a 5 minute walk from that station.


Locally you can always hop on a motorcycle taxi , regular car or 3 wheeled taxi (tuk tuk).  The car taxis are metered but once in a while you come across a driver who will tell you (once you are on the way) that the meter is not working and will ask some exorbitant price.  Usually taxis are very reasonably priced.  Three wheeled taxis are convenient because they are small and fit into places normal taxis cannot. The drivers are also more like the motorcycle drivers who think that whatever traffic rules there are don’t apply to them.  So they have no qualms about driving the wrong way in a lane or even where there is no official roadway.

There are a lot of high end malls, easily reached by public transport and also many local, less pricey indoor/outdoor malls.  So—no lack of places to shop.


Even though Bangkok is a big city it has several nice parks, including one about a 10 minute walk from here.  It is amazing that you can go into these parks and see very few people and forget that you are in a city of 10 million. 



Most of the buildings have shrubbery or plants growing on balconies, on top or even inside. Even on small narrow streets the shop owners usually have a number of potted plants by their entrance.
Today, we visited and orchid farm and bought an orchid to add to the foliage on our patio.  Makes it feel even more like home.

Pray for us as we live in and move about the city of Bangkok.  Pray that our travels would be safe and that we would begin to make some friends among the millions of people here.

The Sea

My world has turned topsy-turvy.
    



Only one night ago we were sleeping in a building rented by the Mennonite Brethren Church in the fishing village of Ang Sila.  The rickety wooden upstairs—with no insulation and gaps in the siding that you could look through—offered little protection from the almost endless sounds of motorcycles and humanity at night.  And the mosquito net seems to offer little protection from other life forms that are active at night.

 

Fish-tile



Yet relief was just minutes away—just a short walk down a narrow street, dodging cars and vehicles—and I would be in the shade of a gazebo at the end of a pier—a pier that amazingly was blocked from vehicular traffic.  Here, in the quiet stillness, I could marvel at the life happening in the shallow waters of the sea around me.

Wind the clock forward a day.  I wake up in a sturdy concrete room on the 22nd floor of Rachaprarop Tower Mansion.  It has been a quiet, restful, night.  The glass windows and the vertical distance from the concrete soil below offer some respite from the sounds and hustle and bustle of life.


Comon Greenshank



   

Yet a short walk (and elevator ride) from here is a stark contrast to Ang Sila. Here I find myself in a convoluted maze of of concrete canyons.  A sea of a different type, with two-legged and two-wheeled and four-wheeled creatures swimming around in patterns that seem almost random, but that from a distance seem to take on the loosely organized movement of schools of fish.  No quiet stillness here.

(For a view of the traffic from our apartment, click here)
  

Crabs



Yet God is concerned about both of these seas.  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:26 NIV)



“God, give me Your perspective, that I might find the same restful stillness in a sea of humanity that I find in an tranquil bay.  And help me to have even more concern for the life-forms I see here than I do for the fish and crabs and birds and other creatures of the sea.  You have told us how valuable people are to you, I want them to be just as valuable to me.”



 

View from our Bangkok apartment