A Taste of Im Jai, and Some Other Stuff
We got to hang out with some of the Im Jai kids a bit this week. Dave and Shirley are the volunteer coordinators at Im Jai, and it turns out they live in the same neighborhood as we do. So we’ve been going to church with them at Chiangmai Fellowship Church (a Thai church with headphones for us farangs). On Sunday they had a handful of the Im Jai girls over at their house to watch Cinderella Story, and we got to hang out with them.
Also on Monday we went with them to “English camp”. Right now, the Thai schools are on vacation, so Im Jai is teaching them English and Bible stories in the mornings. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the kids, and I took some pictures. Afterwards, we went with Dave and Shirley and two of the Im Jai boys (Jack and Boy) to get some ice cream. Jack of course speaks Thai (and a little English) and Boy is deaf, so he only signs. I’m used to not being understood, but usually I can get by with the few Thai words I know plus some hand signals. With Boy I realized that I couldn’t speak with him at all, nor understand what he was saying. The only words I know in sign language are “relax”, “weird”, and a few Christian words (like “Jesus loves me”). It was an unexpected language barrier, but we had fun at least.
Our schedule for the near future looks like this. We have a friend from Hong Kong visiting us probably tomorrow, and Ray and Kaoru are coming up here sometime in the next few days. We should be starting language school next week (I’m anxious to get moving on this), and we’ll hopefully start working with Im Jai on a more scheduled basis when they get back to school around May 15th.
In the meantime, I’ve managed to memorize the Thai letters (44 consonants and 32 vowels, sheesh) and have discovered that I still can’t read because there are rules I don’t know about. That’s not even counting the rules for what tone each syllable is. Sean is in Burma with some missionary team he hooked up with and will hopefully be back tomorrow or Friday. Cindy’s been doing her own Thai studies and keeping in touch with folks back home (among other things).
God’s been doing stuff too. For me, I realized that everytime I’ve worshipped here, I’ve had an itch to take my guitar and go worship outside somewhere. I can’t go far with my guitar on my scooter, but I hope to do that around the neighborhood somewhere. You can pray for that. I also have an itch to study the Word again, and I have visions of studying it with random people we meet too. I don’t know how that will work, especially with the language, but pray for that too.
On a completely unrelated note, I read this from Dano’s blog this morning and I thought it was hilarious - definitely the loudest laugh for at least a week:
I feel that I need to hand people this disclaimer when I meet them:
The person you are about to meet wishes to be kind, respectful and courteous. Yet, he is terrible with names and has extreme difficulty recognizing individuals of Asian descent. Therefore, he will likely introduce himself to you at least three times and he accepts no responsibility for name or face recollection for conversations less than a minute in duration.
The only problem is there’d be a lot of people telling me that I already gave them one.
I don’t want to mention names, but there was one Korean girl that I introduced myself to something like 4 or 5 times in college. I got so embarrassed I promised her $5 if I forgot her name again. Man, she started showing up everywhere after that. But I still remember her name; I have yet to pay her any money. I don’t know if you have the budget for that, Adam. But it helped me! ;)
It is good to see that things are finally beginning to happen, that is good. Itching to “get back” into studying God’s Word? Tsk, tsk, my son. I certainly would have hoped I trained you much better than that ;-). Speaking of learning languages, I have my Brazilian friends attempting to teach me Portuguese on MSN Messenge. Wouldn’t work for you because of all the tonal stuff in Thai. As you are waiting for things to really get going, remember those four focus areas we discussed: (1) God, (2) Cindy, (3) Others, and (4) your environment (getting familiar with it). Looks like you are doing some of that. Btw, your little bit of humor - just remember to individuals of Asian descent, you and Matt look like the same individuals - it works both ways.
Matt,
I’m terrible with names too.
Mark
Wow, what a cool image…Adam riding through the streets with a guitar neck sticking out of your backpack–then, sitting down somewhere and starting to play…you know, Ella and I recieved a huge blessing once when we heard a guy playing “blessed be your name” in a doorway, while some guy told us all kinds of Spirit filled words. It was allvery random, but the power of music is proven, especially music that blessed…it is the silver bullet for the werewolf world…it is the wooden stake into vampire culture…it is kryptonite for ….you get the idea…and before I start to talk about the corruptive power of the One Ring, annd how music is the Samwise Gamgee, I better stop and say that you should get your butt out there on the streets and scratch that itch love ya