Itsara

We went up to visit the village of one of the staff here this past weekend. Sean’s been to villages, including this one, a couple of times already, but this was my first time since we’ve been here. It was really fun and actually reminded me of Mexico in some ways.

We left Saturday afternoon with about 13 of the kids. Most of them stayed there until Monday, but Cindy and I came back early along with Matthew, the oldest boy (18 years old). Saturday night we had dinner with Prang’s family (Prang is the aforementioned staff whose village this is), worshipped with many people in their village, and then watched TV. Sunday morning we had church with the village, walked around and visited with a couple of families, had lunch, and that’s when Cindy and I had to leave.

The church services were definitely high points, and these are what reminded me of Mexico most of all. The church looked much like many Mexican churches I’d been to, except that everybody sat on the floor. When they prayed, which they did often, they did so simultaneously and loudly. After working with the teenagers who often (though not always) pray because they have to, it was refreshing to see Thai Christians with faith like this.

They asked us to share stuff with them. Fortunately they asked us before the services, so we had a chance to think about what we were going to say. I was so proud of Cindy, cuz she didn’t even think about it - she just did it, all in Thai too.

See, the village is a Karen village, and not everybody there speaks Thai. (I was actually a little encouraged. I was talking with the church’s pastor and I asked him if he spoke Thai. “A little,” he said. I said, “Good. Me too.”). We probably could’ve spoke in English, but it would either had to have been translated twice or the Im Jai kids would have been left out of the service. This was the first time we ever tried doing something like this with adults in Thai. It was scary, but it went well.

Cindy shared about how God helped her during some hard times - she even read out of the Thai Bible, which I was really impressed with because normally she’s shy about her reading skills. I shared Sunday about one special morning when God reassured me as Coast’s worship pastor and as a leader. The kids sang a couple of songs beautifully and we handed out gifts to many families in the village.

That was the highlight for me. Other smaller highlights included getting to watch Rambo 3 (I didn’t know it started with Stallone working alongside Buddhist monks building a temple in Southeast Asia), understanding more of Thai TV than I have to date (to the point where I could stay interested in the story a little), and getting to spend some time on the road with some of the kids, cuz there’s nothing quite like a road trip for relationships.

I have some pictures, and Matthew took a lot of good ones that I’ll try to get. I’ll try and have those up sometime this week, if I can.