Too-American Outbursts

1. This morning, while walking to the office, I saw a small form behind me about to pass me. In my head, I thought it was a little kid running fast to school. But as she passed, it was an elderly lady who came up to my waist only! I accidentally loudly exclaimed, "Wow!"

2. Yesterday at the Thai graduation ceremony of my Thai roommie and co-worker, a Thai professor was speaking. In the middle of a long run of Thai words, he said "burn-out" in English! We call it Tenglish when they don't have an equal Thai word so they use English. It always makes me laugh. It let out a small hiccup of a laugh before throwing my hand over my mouth.

3. The other day, while watching a movie at the theater, I forgot where I was. This gross part came on the scream involving throw-up, and I screamed "Disgusting!" Then, I remembered I was in a movie theater! In Thailand, where everyone is quiet! Aaah!

I will continue trying to think before speaking, but I just can't help it sometimes!

Being Invited to the Table

Before I came to Thailand, I thought it would be easy to make friends, be invited to their house, and eat with them. Yet for various reasons including feeling inferior as a Thai person to a foreigner, being invited to the table is a slow process.

Last night at Mahathai, I was invited to the table. Bong, the cleaner for our office and a great leader for the community, is my age. That's a big plus here for friendships. And she and her friends, the cool group, have been allowing me to hang with them in the evenings after my kids activities there. Last night, I got to eat with her, her husband, kids, her mom, and her friend. Little fried fish, big noodles with vegetables, some pork dumplings, and mango. So fun. We just sat at this pop-up table on the side of the road out in the open and shared together. I could only contribute the 8 baht (25 cents) I had in my pocket.

Thank the Lord for a few relationships developing here. Pray for this friendship as well as with Ming, that they may grow and that God may be glorified!

Illegal Pillow Fighting

During our John Bible study last night, we were playing a fun game on the couches. The girls were blocking their faces with pillows so we couldn't hear them discuss the answer. So, I grabbed another pillow and hit them all right on their heads in the middle of their little circle.

Then I realized the mistake I made. I touched their heads! In Thailand, heads are very "sacred" parts of the body because they are the closest to the heavens (forgive me for not explaining so well). So, we don't touch heads at all. If someone's hair is pretty, you don't dare touch it or play with it. Nope. If you go to the hair salon, the stylist will apologize first before touching your head. It was three good Thai friends of mine, so I'm sure they forgave me. But for a few moments, they were red faced from embarrassment.

Aside from the Splinter in my Head....

The Mills family invited Rachel, Preston, and I to Khao Yai National Park. We spent the day hiking, seeing monkeys and water buffalo,. I was attacked by only three leeches and a spiky tree. I was looking down for leeches and didn't duck. I had to have splinters pulled out of my head!

Me and a stuffed baby elephant
Emmy and I on a suspended bridge...holding on to each other for dear life and cause I think she's cute.
Preston, Rachel, and I chillin' over a view of the mountain range.
These are concrete barriers on the trail, though they look more like Aztec ruins (but wrong side of the world). Ten elephants, or so, babies followed by their mothers, accidentally slipped off the cliffs and fell down this waterfall about ten years ago. This barriers prevent that from happening again.

Beautiful rainbow shown through the waterfall.

A Seemingly Romantic Gesture?

While I was visiting Ming, her husband brought home orchids with a few groceries in a bag. I thought to myself, how sweet! I asked her if he bought her flowers. Ming said no, they're to be used on their Buddhist altar upstairs as they earn merit. I apologized, saying I thought he was being romantic. A big blunder on my part! The different belief system continually blows me out of the water! And many times things come out of my mouth that should have stayed in.

Do continue to pray for Ming, her husband, Boy, and their daughter Fan Fan. May our relationship grow and help us to continue to converse about our different beliefs.

Learning to Hunt and Peck

This Saturday, my English student and friend, Ming helped me learn to type in Thai! Each key on the keyboard has two functions, for the 44 consonants of the alphabet, the 5 tones, and the various other signs and vowels. Pretty fun. My efforts led to a two line email showing off my skills to my former Thai teacher at language school. The typing feels the same, but I keep thinking of the English letter that corresponds to the Thai sound and then type the wrong key. Fun new challenge, thought I'd show you my skills.

Fuzzy Wuzzy

Just when I think I can only sit and stare at my Thai friends, because I can't think of anything else to say in Thai, things come to me. Two weeks ago, it was origami- origami dogs, birds, and random boxes. A random activity back in elementary ed days. And just this week, I taught a couple of my friends "Fuzzy Wuzzy." I hear it was great entertainment for many to hear him rehearse as much as he could remember later. He taught me some wierd Thai ditty about foreigners visiting a beach here and sitting on rocks. They find clams but can't crack them because they don't have anything to crack them with. They don't realize they could use the rocks they're sitting on.

Wait, Stop Back There.

I was laughed at again just yesterday, can you believe it? I was on a motorcycle, headed back to the office. And somehow we passed right by the church office. My friends were inside laughing at me pointing at the office but the motorcycle taxi driver didn't stop until four houses down. Then I got off, paid him, and then started walking back. When he realized his mistake of not understanding where I wanted to get off, he laughed at me too. But, I love riding motorcycle taxis!

And they call this work?

Its hard to have come from a teacher schedule to a missionary schedule. I mean, I'm real happy to not wake up before the sun anymore, but I struggle with feeling productive since it's different here. There's a lot of hanging out happening at night. I can be a night owl again.

A few weeks ago, we went out with a couple guys that are great friends of ours, and are showing interest in Christianity. We went to Sizzler to eat the salad bar, because it was cheap but special. Wierd American logic. Well, we each went back to the salad bar between three and five times. Team, on the far right, confessed at the end of the meal he wasn't even a fan of lettuce! I ate my first quail eggs. Yes, they're normal, but just the name made me slightly hesitant. I'm not sure if the Thais were full at all afterwards, but it was a good time together. Then, we watched a movie together.

Pray for Wit on the far left and Team on the far right. Pray that we can help them understand Christianity and their interest grows. Many people become friends with us for a while and then disappear. May our time with them show them God's love!

Rockin' Karaoke

About half of my English students from my Monday night class came out for the evening. The group included a high school student, a college student, and a few business women. It was our first outing as a class. I didn't know that because the Karaoke Place was open until 1AM meant we would be staying until then. Highlights of the evening were the Titanic song and me trying to read Thai fast enough to sing along. My voice was gone! The relationships I'm beginning here are so fun.

Hong and Daa smile for the camera. You can see our Karaoke TV behind them. They had a great selection of Thai and English songs, a lot of 80's and 90's.
Ming Kwan plays her small air guitar. :) Karaoke really shows a crazy side of her! She's one of my closer Thai friends here so far. She's a mom too, so I visit her and her one year old on Saturdays and sometimes we meet at the park. Pray for that relationship to deepen. Our English program is a great way to begin relationships which will lead to great conversations about our faith. Most missionaries here teach at least one class.

Mahathai Community Center

Our church is helping the Mahathai community build a community center. Inside, we hope to have community events held like kids clubs and one day, Bible Studies and Prayer Meetings! After some cleaning together, we only have the electricity and concrete work left. One of the main reasons for the center is the location of Mahathai, it floods all the time. Its land that belongs to the government, built above the swampland. All that green stuff you see is swamp algae above water, not grass. Yesterday, we met together to decide who has what responsibilities for it.

We have to throw ten truckloads of rock in the swamp water in order to concrete it. I'm learning a lot. And man, was it fun to do it with the kids and women from Mahathai together. We hope to dedicate the building in the next two months.

Fish Babies!

Our Girls House has two fish. Right after Ying bought them, we noticed the mom fish looked pregnant. I mean, we couldn't really be sure, who's really seen a pregnant fish before? But, just after three weeks, she had the babies! They look like twenty little tadpoles swimming around the bowl. With lots of friends I know having babies now, God gave us babies to celebrate even in our house. I'm not sure what we'll do when they get big enough to need more bowls? Anyone want some little Thai fish for pets?

When my five year old neighbor visited, I joked with her by asking her if she wanted to eat our pet fish...she said YES!

Two Words for You

Octopus Bacon

What's Pink and Hairy and Grows on Trees?

Yes, surprisingly, FRUIT! This is my favorite Thai fruit presently. Yesterday I bought a kilo at the store for about 30 cents. To eat them, I have to pry them open with my thumbs between the funny hairs, or stab at them with a spoon. Then, just split the shell in half. After that, there's two choices. Pull out the fruit and nibble at around the almond like seed, or pop the whole thing in your mouth and spit out the seed. Thai people can do that, but I can't really do that very well.

When I came to Thailand, they'd show me this fruit and tell me the English name for it. But how is there an English name if we don't even have them in our side of the world? Anyway, English people call them Rambutan. But the Thais call it, Ngaw.

Life is like a Chopped-Up Hot Dog

This time at home, school would be over for another year. I’d have cleaned up the room completely, and headed out the door for my summer. What a feeling that was! What a life it is to look back on. Back then, I dreamed of these distant places. And today when it took ten extra minutes to explain that we didn’t want the hotdog chopped up and put in a bag, but we actually wanted it on a hotdog bun, I thought about how I desire to be here. I asked that to Rachel, and she says, God called us to be here, it wasn’t our want. And she’s right. I’m here because God wants me here. Man, that’s gotta be God inside of me, because it’s plain crazy that I’m here.
All I once held dear, built my life upon, all this world reveres and wars to own….all I once thought gain, I have counted loss, spent and worthless now, compared to this.
This. This being here. This when today at the park I just swang a billion children over my shoulder and got stared at by the Thais. This where a kid screamed “Farang!” (the Thai word for Foreigner) at the playground and I replied, “Khon Thai!” (the Thai word for Thai people). Yep, that was a weak point, I have to confess. What a crazy life I'm living.

Karaoke with English Students

Highlight of the evening: Screaming like Aerosmith at the end of "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing." Yes, in our small karaoke room, I broke loose while singing Aerosmith into the microphone. Yes, I think I might have slightly scared the English students hanging out with us that night. But that was a moment I felt like myself here, that and when I was playing soccer barefoot on the beach on my birthday. No, we didn't stop with Aerosmith, Rachel and I also scared them when we dueted Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" too. But, hey, the rest of the time, we laughed at the videos while trying to follow the Thai words of the Thai songs.

Good times with English students. These are the same ones we spent a long weekend with on Elephant Island. I recently checked out in our registration book, how many new English students showed interest in learning English through the Bible, and I have about twenty names. Please pray for us to wisely consider how to start another Christianity class, and when, and that God would recruit many more English teachers to our team.

Our MTW Thailand Family

Here's the latest picture of our missionary team here in Bangkok, Thailand. Right now, we have three families--the Veldhorsts, the Mills, and the Henrys--as well as four singles--me, Rachel, Preston, and Mary. It'll change soon enough, with Preston headed home next month and the Mills going home for home assignment in August. But it's always changing.

AND, don't forget our wonderful Thai part of our team. We just got three new interns guys from the seminary downtown, as well as those already on staff--one family, four girls, and two guys. I am blessed with this family!

Word and Deed

Visits lately to Mahathai include helping the kids with homework, discipling some of the kids out of the Bible, and just playing. Kieow is shown discipling Boss for the first time. He wanted to learn about the Bible with her last Thursday for the first time. Som-O is showing me her homework of learning how to write the Thai alphabet. The boys are showing off their bicycles and Ott is showing his sweet smile. Last week, Ott asked me how old I was, but he used the word in Thai that you use when you ask kids how old they are. He thinks I'm a kid like him. :)

Using My Head

I was given permission to use my head while playing volleyball yesterday! We've started playing at the park some evenings with a bunch of old and new friends. Right beside us, they play a sport that we don't have in the States. Its a combination of soccer and volleyball I'd say. The most awesome banana kicks of all times are shown there. And last night, the guys then came over from that game to play volleyball with our gang. They said I could use my head! So, instead of lobbing it over with my hands (which never really works), I used my head! Pretty fun!

When I was playing soccer in high school, my mom found an article in the paper about soccer players getting bad SAT scores from too many headballs....well, no more SAT's, so I'm clear!

How do you Eat a Waterfall?

Yesterday we had "nam tok" for dinner. In Thai, we ate a "waterfall." Really, its spicy beef or pork cooked with onions and vegetables. We shared it with Yu, which can eat thirteen peppers alone in her papaya salad. So, my spicy-ability level had to increase. I kept wiping off my hands and then blowing my nose with the same tissue. Because every time I eat spicy food, my nose runs. And then not only my lips were burning, but so was my nose! Hilarious! Maybe that's why its called a waterfall...

How do you eat a waterfall? With two tissues, and lots of perserverance!

The Month of Tuna

This month in Thai is "Mee-too-naa-yon." Back in language school, it sounded like I was saying "tuna." "Mee" in Thai is a verb for "to have." Therefore, when I say the month, it's like I'm saying "I have tuna!" So, I like to change the name of the month to "Mee-too-naa SANDWICH!"

Probably no one got that joke unless you know Thai, but I think its funny.