Sadness and Joy

We only had a small group at our house on Saturday for English club, but it was still good to meet together.

The tone was a bit muted as the King of Thailand died only two days earlier.  We took the opportunity to remember the life of the King. The youth had more questions than usual and the conversation led to talk about different traditions regarding death and funerals between our home countries and theirs.

One things we found interesting was that they were surprised we use the same words "die" and "death" for everyone.  Here in Thailand they use a special language when they talk about the King and it was hard for them to grasp that we don't.

Earlier in the day we had found out it was Kook's birthday.  So while Ingrid was playing games with the youth I went out to get a birthday cake.  Nice to live in a place where you can go out, get a cake custom decorated, and be back home in 20 minutes!  So the tone of the gathering eventually changed to one of celebration.





At the end of our time together, there was a bit of sadness.  Since this was our last gathering before we head out on MINA we realized we would not see Gomeen and Kaeo until after we get back.  (Kook lives next door, so we will still see her around, but the others live in a village 12 km away.)

We are grateful for the opportunity to share God's love and stories about Jesus to these young people.  I'm not sure who benefits more from our meeting together.  They learn some English and learn about God.  We, on the other hand, are made to feel that just because we are "old" doesn't mean we are irrelevant.

Thank you, God, for putting these wonderful people in our lives.

Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep.
Romans 12:15 NLT

Milestones

One day this past week brought the concurrence of two significant events.

First of all, it was my birthday.  Another opportunity to look back at the past twelve months while also looking forward to the next.

A nice spin for my birthday this year (though a day early) was a surprise birthday cake brought by some of the teenagers who study English and the Bible with us.



One of the young women in the photo above, while she would not yet profess to be a Christian, is eager to hear stories from the Bible.  She and one of the others will be graduating this spring and are hoping to go on to university in Chiang Rai.  We've missed them some these past weeks because on Saturdays they have been going to Chiang Rai to take college entrance exams.  Pray that our time with these young people will be of benefit to them not just intellectually, but also spiritually.

Another event that occurred on my birthday, though I had not planned it this way, was that I finished reading through the Bible in Thai for the first time.

A few years ago, I figured that reading the scripture in Thai would be helpful for both ministry and for language-learning.  So I just started where I was in my regular reading, and tried to read a chapter a day (some days I did not get through a whole chapter).  I typically read on my computer, as I can make the fonts big.  (I have issues with my eyes that make deciphering the small curly-q's of the letters in the printed versions a bit difficult.)



It is interesting that the completion of this reading was marked with a beautiful doxology, which makes a fitting close to the end of one year and the beginning of another:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith-to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.  (Romans 16:25-27 ESV)


What a great doxology!  It talks about a message of good news (the gospel)...made known through revelation (scripture)...to all nations...so that God may be glorified.  That is why we are here in Thailand.  May this be my prayer and continued focus of this next year of my life.

hacer faire ทำ fè

Other than English, I have studied, to one extent or another, four languages in my life.

And in those four languages (French, Spanish, Haitian and Thai) they combine two English words in one.

make, do=hacer faire fè ทำ

Today we were trying to explain the difference between these two words.  Generally it seems fairly simple.  Do is usually used with work or activity.  Make is usually used with things and intangibles, such as "make peace."  But it doesn't always seem so cut and dry.  Even we can mix it up a bit:

   What did you do today?
      I made a list of things to do.
   Did you do anything on the list you made?
      No, but I made an attempt at some of them.
      I even made an appointment to do some of them.

And then there are other subtle nuances.

Making a bed has a much different connotation than making the bed.

(I didn't try to confuse them with that one today.)

Then if you combine the two words, you get something else altogether: I'll make do with what I have.  (The Haitian language has a wonderful word with connotations similar to make do: Dégajè is such a handy word, it was hard to get used to not having it when we left Haiti.)


It was great to have a large group of teenagers in our house today for the class.  Even though there were more people than we expected, we made do and had a good time.  It was even hard to get them to leave when we were done.

Watch out for the little guy…

It was probably a couple of weeks ago that a little virus taunted my 6 foot tall, 180 pound body saying, “Watch out, big guy, you’re going down.”

To which my body replied, “Says who?  You’re so small you make a grain of sand look like a mountain!”

“Don’t be too brash,” said the virus, “I got people.”

And my body brashly replied, “Where, I don’t see anyone?” 

At that point the virus found a nice comfy place in a mucous membrane, and self-replicated until there were probably a few million of them, wreaking havoc on my throat and sinuses.  So my body is using most of its available resources trying to quash the rebellion—leaving me not much energy for anything else.

Watch out for the little guy—with friends.

There was once a little guy named David.  When David saw the giant, he ran fearlessly toward him with his sling.  David wasn’t afraid because the giant made fun of his God and he knew God would give him the victory.  So David let loose the stone and the stone hit true and the giant fell in a heap. (1 Samuel 17)

Watch out for the little guy—with a friend named God.

There was once a working-class man from a part of the country that was looked down upon by the rest.  Being a fisherman, this guy didn’t have time to invest in a quality education.  When he spoke he had a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, so much so that, on more than one occasion, Jesus had to rebuke him for speaking brashly.

But then the day came when Peter stood before a huge crowd and people marveled at the preaching of the uneducated man from Galilee.  And people were cut to the heart and many responded positively to his words. (Acts 2:1-40)

Watch out for the little guy—with a friend named God.

Last Saturday, three high school girls listened in rapt attention to this irrelevant old white guy as I struggled to tell them, in Thai, some of the things that Jesus has done for me and the reason we came to Thailand.  I’m sure if there were a Thai language instructor present, his face would be all distorted from the constant wincing and biting of the tongue.  But somehow, in spite of me, God was able to keep the attention of these three young women.’'

And so my prayer is, “God, don’t let my Thai language abilities get so good that I think that I can accomplish something worthwhile in Thai without your help.”

Some of those who listen to our teaching in spite of us.

A New Word

God.

How can we describe God?

How can we talk about God to a people who don’t even have a word for God?

I mean the kind of God who isn’t just a minor being like us, but that we can’t see.

Not the kind of god that can be confined to a building.

Not the kind of god created by a craftsman.

But the God who created the craftsman everything else in this world and who is over everything in the universe.

THAT kind of God.

We had the opportunity to introduce God to some school children last week during an English camp at Wannasorn Wittaya school in Wiang Kaen.  Many of these children have no sense of God in the way that we would.  An Action Team of six people helped us with this (Kelly, Samyo, Samson, Josh, Kim and Lorren).  Ingrid’s sister and niece (Ruth and Kaira) also helped out.

One of the ways we teach English is by telling stories.   Listening to and retelling stories gives people a chance to see how words connect together to convey ideas.   This is especially important in a country where children are taught lots of words but cannot think for themselves to create a new sentence.

The story we taught this last week was the creation story.  It’s a good teaching story because it has a nice pattern (Day 1, Day 2, etc) that help the children be able to put it back together.  AND it also tells them about a different kind of God than ones they have heard about.

Christina taught the creation story.  She was helped by Samyo and Lauren from the team.

Samyo, Christina and Lorren telling The Story

We also taught using music, since music helps people retain words.  Samson and Kim did a great job getting the kids singing and dancing to English words.

Kim and Samson following the lyrics

Ingrid and Ruth helped the children do crafts.  The children learned new words and got to practice using them in sentences (e.g. “May I have some scissors, please?”).  Pat, our office administrator in Wiang Kaen, also helped out.

Ruth, Pat and Ingrid helping with crafts

Children also were able to practice English in the context of playing games.  Josh and Kaira took the lead here with some help from Boonsert, a intern from Laos who knows a little bit of English (along with Lao, Khmu, Korean and some Thai).

Kaira and Josh supervising games

At the end of camp, we had a closing ceremony.  Even the teachers couldn’t help but join in as they danced to the lyrics of the Chaa Chaa song.



In the end, about 180 school children, along with their teachers, got to have fun while learning English.

And they learned a new word.

God.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1

Get Organized

After living in Thailand a while, I’ve become used to the level of organization not quite being what I am used to in North America.

But there are exceptions.

And a great exception to this was the recent English Camp we put on at the Muang Yai school across the street from where we live.

This was the first major outreach event we have put on in our community.  We wanted it to go well, but there were a lot of uncertainties going into it.  A big unknown was that our organization had never done anything at this school before, so we did not know what to expect from the teachers and staff.

Another unknown for us was the team from Northview MB Church SOLA (young adults)—lots of new faces in that group and we had no idea going into this what level of participation to expect.
But all expectations were exceeded.

So many thanks to all those who helped pull this off.

Seksan (เสกสรร) and the teachers and staff at Muang Yai school.



Our first contact was with the principal of the school, Udom Buddi (นายอุดม บุดดี).  But since it was English teaching, he handed most of the organizational part over to Seksan.  But everyone performed admirably.  The teachers and students were there early.  We had lists of names of students which helped us to organize the teams.  The classrooms were ready to go.  Great job, teachers.

Northview MB Church-SOLA.



It was a hot day, even by our standards, but these young people from Canada poured out their hearts (and sweat) for the young people at Muang Yai school.  They even took all the pictures so we missionaries could be free to concentrate on the things that we needed to do.

Christina Davis



Christina has a lot of experience putting on English Camps in this area.  So she was a great help with ideas for the teaching stations and she also had lots of teaching materials to use.  She even took a lot of time out of her already busy schedule to help.

Ingrid



Every team needs someone who is good at remembering all those little things that need to get done to make something happen.  And while Ingrid and Lie did a great job at organizing and teaching the crafts, most of what she did happened before hand.

Me



I had the easy job.  I got to use my computer skills to organize schedules and produce materials in a nice color-coded fashion to try to help all the volunteers be in the right place at the right time.  And the icing on the cake was that I got to do the story telling—a simplified account of creation in English.

All in all, it seemed like it went well.  The kids were having fun, and people got to know who we are.  Already we see the difference in how the kids in the neighborhood react to our presence.  A few of the young children seemed to have adopted Ingrid as a grandma as well.

In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. Romans 12:6a (NLT)

Thanks to Jon Stevens for the pictures 

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