Engrained

I bought a length of PVC pipe today and I was tying it to the roof of our truck.  I was thinking, “a clove hitch would be ideal for this,” but it had been years since I had tied one.

Yet, almost without thinking, there it was.

Engrained.

Clove Hitch

The clove hitch was one of the first knots I learned.  All this goes way back to my childhood.

Many years ago in a town called Otis, Massachusetts, the Girl Scouts had a camp called Sequina.  My mom was heavily involved in Girls Scouts and every year our family would make the long drive up route 8—long before the expressway  existed and before all the dams were in along the Naugatuck and Farmington Rivers—in order to set up the tents in preparation for the summer camping season.

The tents were set on platforms and attached to the platform with a rope secured with a clove hitch.  Though I was too small to reach the cross beam to which the ropes were fastened, my dad told me the name of the knot and showed me how it was tied.  He also used this knot when our family would go camping and that is where I first actually attempted to tie one.

Later, it was while I was in the Boy Scouts that I learned to use the knot on my own.

What is so strange is that now I still don’t really have the confidence that I know how to tie the knot correctly.  Yet yesterday, when I needed the knot, I could tie it—and I knew I had it right because the rope did not slip on the pipe when I was finished.

So, somehow, this process of early exposure and later practice and use got something so well engrained in my head, that I could do something without thinking about it many years into the future.

We read in the book of Proverbs: Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.    Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

Here in Thailand, we have become involved in various kinds of children’s ministries.  As I was curious about the clove hitch and wanted to learn about it when I was a child, these children are often eager to learn, whether it be English, or Bible stories, or even new games to play.  Sometimes I have wondered how much we are getting across, and how much is sticking with them.  My experience with the rope yesterday encourages me to keep pushing forward.

"Training Up" children

Rice, Part 1: Eat Rice

(Note: I’m calling this Part 1, because I will probably add more blogs about rice at some point in the future)

Rice with kap khao
(กับข้าว-food that goes with rice)

Rice is an important part of Thai culture.


Rice is by far the most important crop grown in the country, and until some bizarre government policies changed things a couple of years ago, Thailand had for years been the worlds leading rice exporter.

The importance of rice shows up in how the Thai people view eating and even the way the word rice is used.

The phrase eat rice (กินข้าว kin khao) is synonymous with to eat a meal.  When Thai people greet each other, instead of saying, “How are you?” like we might do in America, they will often say “Have you eaten rice yet” (กินข้าวแล้วหรือยัง kin khao laew ruer yang).

The Thai people often eat rice, in some form or another, three times a day. For morning it might be rice soup.  Then it might be soup with rice noodles for lunch and steamed rice or sticky rice for dinner.

For many Thai people, unless they have had rice, they feel like they have not eaten.  One of our missionaries tells of an occasion when the youth got together for a pizza party.  When it was over, it was time to go eat because—you guessed it—they had not had rice yet.

Eating Pizza-Not Real Food

Today I was at a store with one of our co-workers.  The store had two main eating establishments—a KFC and a food court.  The food court had many individual booths each selling some variety of Thai food. Since it was lunch time, I asked our co-worker if she wanted to eat at KFC or the food court.  She said she wanted to “eat rice”, implying that she wanted to eat at the food court (the french fries at KFC just aren't same, I guess).

So I went to one vendor and got some crab fried rice.  She went to another and got noodle soup.  I mentioned to her that I’m not sure I will ever understand Thai people.  Here she did not want to eat at KFC, but instead she wanted to “eat rice”.  But then she ends up getting soup. (By the way, there are some rice options at KFC.  You can even get fried chicken with rice, something many people will buy on the street.)

My take home from this is that for some people, the phrase “eat rice”  may mean eating the kinds of food they are used to as opposed to foreign food.

As for us, we are okay if we don’t eat rice three times a day, in fact, we have rarely ever done so.  Also, when we buy food on the street, we will often not get rice with it.  Rather, we will cook our own brown rice at home which has a bit more nutritional value than the steamed white rice or sticky rice sold on the street.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.  (1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV)

Happy eating.

A Drop in the Bucket

Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.  James 1:4 (NIV)

These days, the skies at the Changing Life Center are not only filled with the smoke from all of the fields being burned at this time of year, there is also a lot of dust.

The dust is associated with the lining of the banks of the Mekong River with rocks on the outside of the bends in the river.  This is to keep the riverbanks from washing into the river, which was eating into the banks up to several feet a year.

It is easy to understand why.  The Mekong River is the largest river in southeast Asia.  It originates in the mountains of the Tibetan region of China.  By the time it gets to the Changing Life Center, it already has a couple of thousand kilometers behind it!  The banks at the Changing Life Center are more than 50 feet above the water level.

It is a gargantuan task.  These large trucks come down the road, laden with huge boulders.  It looks like a lot of rock.

But then they dump the rock in a huge stock pile, and the pile of rock is so large, one hardly notices the difference that it makes that this load of rock has made.

Eventually the rocks in the stock pile make it down to the river, were they are dumped and then scooped into the river with an excavator.  The rocks seem to disappear without making any difference at all.  And then you look at all that has been done and all that remains to be done and one wonders how the task will ever be completed and at the expense of how many mountains that have to be removed in order to get enough rock to complete the task.

Yet steadily, day after day, the work goes on until the task is done.  One only need to look at the parts that are completed to know that it is possible.

This process reminds me of the task of learning the Thai language.  We keep studying Thai, yet it seems like we are hardly getting anywhere.  When we listen to someone speak, sometimes we catch so little we wonder what difference all of that studying has made.  After three years it seems like we have made so little progress.  (I think if I had made as much effort studying the Haitian language when we lived in Haiti, I would have spoken it better than the natives.)

But like the putting the riprap along the Mekong River, there are signs that progress is being made.  We just have to look back at the part that is completed now and then, and not just at what remains to be done, to see that this is the case.  And then we need to persevere at the task of learning the language. And perhaps we will live here long enough to see the task completed.

A partially loaded truck (they don't fill them when moving them from the stockpile to the river)

One of the many stockpiles

The backhoe taking the rock from the truck

The not so large excavator

Fragrance

One of our senses that can really make or break an experience for us, but which is hard for us to convey to others, is the sense of smell.  I think of places I’ve traveled or experiences that I have had where the dominant sensual impact was to my nose.  It can be hard to convey to others what the experience was like because they have not SMELLED it and I have yet to find a camera that will take “scratch and sniff” photos.

So, without being able to adequately describe it, I would like to say that our new home in Wiang Kaen is, so far, one of the most pleasant places we have ever lived.

The reason for that is the abundance of pummelo orchards here.

Pummelo Orchard

For those who are not familiar with them, a pummelo is similar to a grapefruit in appearance—only larger—at least on the outside.  The pummelo has a very thick skin and the inside may actually be smaller than a typical grapefruit.

Pummelo Fruit

The flesh between the membranes is generally sweeter than a grapefruit, but it can be quite variable.

Fruit Tray with Pummelo Sections on the Bottom

But it is the scent of the flowers that seem to grab our attention right now.

Pummelo Blossoms

If there were only a single pummelo tree, you would probably only notice the scent if you were really close by.  But here there are thousands—and it changes the fragrance of the whole area.

We who believe in Christ are also to be a pleasing fragrance to those around us.  We read in 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 (NIV):

¹⁴ But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.
¹⁵ For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.
¹⁶ To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?

If there were only one of us in a community, we would not have much of an impact.  But if there are many of us, we can have a positive impact on a large area.

The whole idea of our work in Thailand is not so much that we see a few individuals come to faith in Christ, but rather that we create communities of faith that are able to positively transform the area around them.  In the end, one would like to be able to go to an area and know that there are believers there because there is a fragrance of life present in the air.

But it is not an easy task.  As Paul writes, “who is equal to such a task?”  Certainly not us.  At least not without God’s help.  And not without the help of others who believe in Him.

But I can purpose to be the fragrance of life to those around me.

Pray with us that God will plant not just trees, but lots of orchards throughout Thailand.