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.

Last Night

I just awoke from my last night’s sleep in Ban Phrueksa 36.

Ingrid is not here to share the moment with me as she is already in Northern Thailand, preparing to move into our new place up there.

And so we are now in that in-between zone-having finished our work in one part of Thailand and not yet started in another. Another transition.  A period of time when one is extremely busy on the one hand but feeling a bit non-productive on the other.  And I use the term non-productive in the sense that we’re not directly engaged in what we came to Thailand to do.

The transition is hard because we have invested heavily into relationships with people here—and now we’re putting some distance between those while having not yet developed relationships in the area we’re moving to.



One of the interesting things is that our neighbor and closest friend, Pen (on left on the photo above) is from the next county over from where we are moving to.  She still has family that she visits about an hour’s drive from where we will be living.

Still, it is hard to say goodbye.

• Goodbye to our neighbors.
• Goodbye to our home.
• Goodbye to the narrow, pothole-laced roads along the canals.

But it is good that we will replace the goodbyes with hellos.

• Hello to friends we haven’t met yet.
• Hello to cool, smoky, winter mornings.
• Hello to narrow roads winding through the hills.

But whether Chachoengsao or Wiang Kaen, some things remain the same.

• I’ll still wake up next to my best friend each day.
• God is present in both places.

The Word

I’ve never considered the concept of having a “word for the year”.

But two days ago I read another missionary’s blog about her Word for the Year.

Then, yesterday we received an e-mail from another missionary about her word for the year.  That same day she commented about a facebook  post of ours, referring to our present house-hunting trip to northern Thailand as a “vision trip”.

And so now I have a word-a transformational word that has been planted in my brain, which spun my whole day around and removed the haze that was obscuring the bright sunlight.  It may be the word for the moment, the word for the day, the word for the week or maybe even the word for the year (but I don’t know that I will repeat this annually, so I hesitate to call it that)…

Vision

In 2007 we went on a Prayer and Vision trip to Thailand.  At the time, we were not thinking of becoming foreign missionaries, not even at the conclusion of the trip.

But a vision was born, none-the-less, and a few years later we found ourselves in training with MB Mission.  At the end of that, were we asked to consider moving to Thailand.  And so, in February, 2010, we made a vision trip to Thailand, to see what our work there might look like.

And so we developed a vision to be on a church planting team in northern Thailand.

So we moved to Thailand in the spring of 2011.  But, about a year into our our stay, we were asked to put that vision aside and consider a new vision: form a new team to move to Isaan—northeast Thailand—to bring the good news of Jesus to that part of the country.

After several trips to Isaan with our team-mates, a new vision was born in us—to bring the good news of Jesus to a region desperately in need of it.

But then, due to some health issues with our team-mates, we were asked to lay that vision down.

And then we were asked what our vision was.

And we made a proposal.

And we were asked to think of something else.

And I found myself reluctant to dream again—reluctant to develop some new vision out of fear that I’d just have to lay it aside.  I’m not a great visionary in the first place, so I don’t just pull these things out of a hat.

Vision is important.

I have a problem in my eyes that makes it hard for me to see details.  I especially notice this when I try to take photographs.  I often cannot tell whether something is in focus or not.  It may look OK, but when I take the photo and enlarge it, I can tell that it was not in focus. 

But it is not just in photography where bad vision leads to poor results.  Our lives need clear vision to get good results.

We read in Proverbs: Where there is no prophetic vision, the people are discouraged (Proverbs 29:18, ESV, alternate rendering).

And we definitely felt discouraged after having having to lay aside our vision so many times.

But someone else had a vision.  A Khmu believer in northern Thailand had a vision to move to Isaan to bring the good news of Jesus there.

So then we developed a plan—I hesitate to call it a vision at that point.  The plan is to join with this person who has a vision to see if we can develop that vision together.

We really don’t know how this will work.  We believe God CAN do something with this—we also know that WE don’t have the wherewithal to make anything happen with it.

And so now we are moving northern Thailand.  Right now we are headed to there to look at possible places to stay.  We have a lot of questions.  Since we don’t know exactly what the ministry will look like at this point, we aren’t sure what the best location is.  We do have some ideas.

But what we really need to do—more so than find a place to live—is to form a vision.

And so, we will pick up our friend’s comment and call this a Vision Trip.

It makes a difference what you call it.

A house-hunting trip sounds like work.

A vision-casting trip sounds exciting.

SO my word of the day—and my word for this trip—and perhaps my word of the year is

Vision

Vision of Northern Thailand

Top Twelve 2013

I thought it would be fun to look back over my year by picking out a favorite photo from each month.  When I first thought of doing this it seemed a bit daunting because I have several thousand photos to pick from covering quite an array of activities.  And the object was not to pick out my best photos, per se, but ones that stand out to me for one reason or another.  So here it goes.

January-Egrets

It was with a bit of trepidation that we had moved to Ban Phrueksa 36 in rural Chachoengsao in December 2012.  It is not far from Lat Krabang, which was just over the line in Bangkok province.  The thought of living in such a tightly packed subdivision was a bit overwhelming.

But as we toured around, we discovered that there are a lot of birds adapted to the rice paddy/fish pond environment that we found ourselves living in.  So we started to enjoy bicycling, walking and driving around just to see the rural landscapes.  Often, on the way back from church, we will take a scenic route, where the roads are less crowded and the driving more relaxed.  And I usually keep my tripod in the car in case a photo op comes up.

At other times, we just hop in the car, go find us a cold coffee somewhere, and drive back along the back roads.  It was along such a trip we happened upon these frolicking egrets (mostly little egrets--Egretta garzetta--similar to snowy egrets).  The reason I liked this one, of the many I took, was the way the one egret flew with his legs hanging down.

Little Egret-Egretta garzetta-Ardeidae-นกยางเปีย

Little Egret-Egretta garzetta-Ardeidae-นกยางเปีย

February-Consultation

In our kid's clubs and other activities, one little fellow really took a liking to us.  This young guy, Toon (or perhaps his twin--I have a hard time keeping them straight) would tool around the neighborhood on his mini-bicycle with training wheels.  If we were outside the house, he would usually stop by to chat.

He happened to be visiting with Ingrid on this occasion.  I grabbed a camera quick and snapped the shutter.  If I had more time I might have set things up for a better exposure.  Still, I think this one came out really nice.

Ingrid and Toon

March-Rice Rat
We were taking a scenic road home one day when we happened upon a combine harvesting rice.  We thought it would be great to grab a few shots of the brightly colored combines that they use here.  But it was while doing this that we noticed what we found was a common practice here--alongside the rice harvest there is also a rat harvest.

It seems to be the practice when they harvest in the dry season (the ground is too wet for this in wet season harvest) that some people will walk alongside to combine carrying sticks that they use to kill rats that are flushed out of the field by the combine.  This is not for pest control purposes--it is for dinner.

In these parts there are even roadside stands selling BBQ rice rat.

Harvesting Rice Rat

April-Frog Legs

On one of my coffee runs, I decided to take a round about way home.  There was a rice paddy that was flooded between harvests, awaiting being tilled.  Birds love to hang out in these kind of fields.

Amongst the many photos I snapped that day was a Javan Pond Heron eating a frog.

My camera's auto focus was not working well and my eyesight is not so good anymore, so getting an in-focus shot through my telephoto is sometimes a bit of a challenge.  But this one came out reasonable.

Javan Pond Heron eating a Frog

May-Snake Roots in Khao Yai

In May, Ingrid's nephew moved to Thailand to begin teaching in an international school.  When he first arrived, he stayed with us for a few days before moving to Bangkok.

While he was here we took a trip to Khao Yai National Park, located about a 3 hour drive north of here.  On our way to Heo Narok waterfall, we detoured down to the river that feeds it.  There was this interesting tree with snake-like roots that were reflected in the ponded water of the river bed.  It seemed like a scene out of some fantasy movie.

Tree along Heo Narok River

June-Courage

My June photo is actually not one that I took--that's because I was more involved in the process of getting it set up.

In June we had a team from Heritage Bible Church in Bakersfield, California, come assist us.  There were three adults and 6 young people.

The first week they were here, we held an English Camp in a nearby school.  One day I noticed this big strange-looking beetle crawling on the floor.  I was thinking that with many beetles, they are similar in to a Saint Bernard--because of their size, Saint Bernards can be quite intimidating, but the only danger from them is if, in the process of kissing your face, they knock you over and you get hurt.

Using that line of reasoning, I reached down and let it crawl on my hand.  After I let it crawl on my hand a while, I asked if any of the young people wanted to give it a try.  ONLY ONE volunteered--a young woman named Dani.

I was really impressed by this act of courage.  If I was a young man looking for a potential spouse, it is this kind of behavior that would land someone in my "possibiities" list.  (Thirty years ago, I did, in fact, marry a courageous woman like that.)

I think the photo was actually taken by Bri, another young woman on the team.

Dani and the Beetle

July-Making Cupcakes with Neighborhood Children

For much of the time that we lived in Ban Phrueksa, Ingrid has given baking classes. Typically, he students are adults, but sometimes the young people want to get involved as well (mostly because they want to eat the results.)

This particular day, we had two groups.  The adults were working one table and the kids on another.  I like this photo mostly because it reminds me of some of the fun time we had with the neighbor kids in the house.  You can tell by the photo that not all of them actually participate in the work.  Mostly it is an excuse for them to hang out together and have fun.  And eat cupcakes.

Making Cupcakes with the Neighborhood Children

August-Double Rainbow Over Mill Lake

We had only recently arrived in Abbotsford and had stopped to visit Ingrid’s brother and sister-in-law.  We weren’t planning on staying long at their place, but they asked if we wanted to go for a walk.

It was late in the day and the sun was getting quite low.  I didn’t think that there would be many photo ops, so I didn’t bother to reach into the car to get my camera.

Then, as we’re walking around Mill Lake, just at sunset, there was a beautiful double rainbow.  Not only did I not have my camera, but Ingrid did not have her phone (which has a reasonable camera).  So I used my old Samsung phone with it’s 640x480 camera and snapped about 5 photos with portrait orientation, which I later stitched into a panorama using Adobe Photoshop Elements.  It is not the greatest photo in the world, but it is a nice remembrance of the awesome rainbow that we saw.
 

Double Rainbow over Mill Lake

September-Columbia Icefields

After we were finished with all the necessary meetings at our office in Abbotsford, it was time for some vacation.  Ingrid's parents had driven down from the Edmonton area.  We drove back with them, taking the scenic route through the Icefields Parkway in Banff and Jasper National Parks.

While we have been through these mountains many times since we got married, we had not actually gone down to the Columbia Icefields.  When I was a child, our family had stopped here on one of our cross-country trips, during which time we had gone out on the icefield in one of the Snow Tracs.

This time we decided we had time to walk around a bit.  The place where we parked to walk up the terminal moraine was pretty much the edge of the glacier when we had visited there in 1970.  Now were were able to walk along that area which had been buried by ice back then--and we never even got as far as the tip of the glacier.

This photo was take with my little Fuji Finepix--the only camera I had brought along.  I used the built in panorama ability to capture the photo.

Columbia Icefields and Athabasca Glacier

October-30th Anniversary Trip to Monterey

October marked ur thirtieth anniversary.  Because of all the changes that have gone on in our lives the past few years, we never even made the big trip we wanted to take for our 25th.  Now, for our 30th, we still had little time or money to make much of a trip.

We decided to go to Monterey for a few days, only this time we stayed close to the beach in a better facility than the Motel 6 in Marina that we have typically stayed at in the past.

Our main activity was to walk along the beach and shoreline.  It was on one of these evening strolls that we happened on these brown pelicans on the rocks below.  I braced my little Fuji camera on the guard rail as I zoomed in in order that the picture would be somewhat sharp.

Brown Pelicans in Monterey

November-Birthday Trip to Morro Bay
This was a hard month to pick photos for  because we visited our two most favorite places in California: Lake Isabella and Morro Bay.

In the end I picked this photo taken from the trail to Valencia Peak, showing my favorite person in the world and Morro Rock and the Sand Spit in the background.

We have climbed Valencia Peak many times, but often the fog obscures any decent views.  We were happy to have such nice weather and an unusually warm day.  This was the first day I have been to Montana de Oro State Park where I did not wear a windbreaker while walking along the bluffs.

On Valencia Peak Trail in Montana de Oro State Park

December-Two Heads are Better than One

As our time in North America came to a close, we finished off by spending Christmas week with my sister and her family.  Her daughter and son-in-law and grandkids were there that week as well.

I spent a lot of time playing with the twins.  I tried to get some photos of them, but it was hard as they were little balls of energy--seldom sitting still long enough to pose.

Then, on one occasion, they were sprawled out on the floor, so I sprawled out on the floor in front of them to grab this photo.  In the photo, it looks like the twins share a single body with two heads coming out of it.

The Twins at Christmastime