It’s not a good sign when you have aquatic plants as your front lawn. But such is the case for many poor people living on this back road in Ang Sila.
The rainy season is supposed to end by Loy Krathong (a festival which fell on November 28 this year), an old fellow told me. And it couldn’t be soon enough for some of these people.
I took the picture above several days before Loy Krathong. Several days before some of the heaviest rains we’ve had.
This was the neighborhood where we held VBS a couple of weeks ago. The VBS program was held at the home pictured below. The gray-haired lady was our host. An MB Mission team had helped fix up her flood prone home. They raised it a little bit and gave it a concrete floor—although I don’t think they raised it enough to be above the current water level. The woman and several others have since come to Christ, though they don’t get to church much because they have no transportation to get them there.
Ingrid and I had come back to the neighbor hood to inquire about a girl we met during VBS. This girl had a chronic leg infection and Ingrid had treated it some and we wanted to see how it was doing. We did not know exactly where she lived and so we were traveling with Upa—another woman from the church who lives close by. But when we came to the flooded area Upa said we shouldn’t go into the neighborhood. She told us we’ll get a rash on our leg—and she should know—she lives on the back side of the same swamp in a house that is also prone to flooding.
It is hard to know what to do with situations like this. One wants to help, but how? This neighborhood is built on a depression—a low spot where all the rainwater collects. Upa said it would be a least a week until it dried up—and that was before several more days of rain. The original houses in the area were built on the few high spots in the area. If it were in America, no one would be allowed to put up a community in a swamp without doing something to get rid of the water (However frail it might be as we learned in the case of New Orleans). But here in Thailand, the poor have to live somewhere and the options are few. So they settle where they can, even if it is a swamp.
On the night of Loy Krathong, we watched the fireworks and flying lanterns that mark the holiday from the dry safety of our 6th floor apartment. (The orange star-like things in the photo are actually balloon-like lanterns the are set afloat in the sky.) We are grateful for such housing.
But we and the Thai believers from Ang Sila church still think about the plight of those living in the swampland neighborhood. Not only are they physically poor, they are also spiritually poor as well. During VBS, many children indicated a desire to follow Jesus. The Ang Sila church now grapples with how to follow up on this VBS. How do we bring the gospel of Jesus to this neighborhood? How do we not just tell them about the love of God but also show them the love of God?
The bigger question is, how do we not grow calloused after seeing this kind of situation again and again throughout Thailand? It is too easy to just throw our hands in the hair and say, “well, this is too big for me to deal with,” and so do absolutely nothing. We pray that we might find ways to show our gratefulness to God by doing things that others can be grateful to Him for.
As James writes:
14 What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone?
15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing,
16 and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
James 2:14-16 (NLT)
