First off let me just tell you that Songkran festival is one of the greatest events in all of the world. Rivals with the Olympics...it has to. Where else in the world would you be able to throw ice cold water on complete strangers and not have thousands of fist fights break out? Not in the U.S. that's for sure. It was such a blast. I will have to admit that I was very hesitant at first and didn't really feel like getting wet but once it happens you just roll with the punches. Unfortunately, some of the water was nasty moat water that has been festering with bacteria for months. Great! One of our girls actually got sick because of such water. Needless to say we scrubbed like never before in the showers and washed our clothes (by hand!!) multiple times.
The bad part about Songkran is that it is a national holiday so literally everything shuts down. Restaurants, shops, everything is closed! It was so hard to just find some place good to eat. This also highly affected our ministry as well. Since its such a big festival the universities that the students we would work with also shut down for the week. This means the place we are going to teach English, The Centre, is also shut down. No students means no class which means no relationship ministry. We were bummed but we kept busy. We had plenty of work projects around the place to help with. Danielle and I got to pick out and plant flowers in their flower boxes as well as clean practically the whole place. Some of our girls were tasked with picking a room and then painting it according to whatever theme they desired. They decided to paint a water landscape with a castle that had hundreds of lanterns floating from it in the sky. If you have seen the movie "Tangled" just picture the scene with the lanterns...thats the look they were going for. It took four days and a lot of paint but it turned out amazing! I wish I was able to upload some pictures of it so you could see it.
As for teaching English, we haven't even started yet. We just arrived at a bad time to be frank. With the holiday and summer classes just starting at the universities students are hard to come by. This week has been adventurous still and we have seen more and more people coming in to sign up for classes. Next week there should be about 6-8 classes compared to the 2 that we started with this week. We are all excited and can't wait. In the mean time we are keeping busy around The Centre by passing out flyers and coming up with fun nights for the students to just draw more in and establish the relationships we are seeking. Tuesday night we are having a Pasta Night and then Friday we are planning a Mario Kart Party! Today was interesting as well. We got to go and visit Doi Suthep Temple. It is one of the holiest temples in all of Thailand and actually arguably the most holy. It is said to contain a bone of Buddha in its pagoda. We went to observe their worship rituals and to pray over the city (the temple is on top of a mountain looking over the entire city of Chiang Mai). Rob, the director of The Centre, really wanted us to closely observe the acts of worship and try to find similarities in our practices and theirs. Finding that connection is highly crucial because the mindset here in Thailand is "If you are Thai then you are Buddhist." So, by maintaining their cultural practices but turning it towards God is a goal for many missionaries here in Thailand so the Thai Christians can still hold onto their Thai culture and not be completely westernized. Just walking around that temple seeing the people worshiping useless artifacts and paying money to lifeless causes made me quite angry. I just wanted to scream out to them that they don't need to be paying all this money and time trying to gain salvation...it has already been paid in full! And then to see foreigners blindly participating in these rituals just made me furious. They have no idea what they are doing and the significance of their actions. Everything inside of me was just turning and I felt like I was going to burst out in anger and cry at the same time. But God is greater and He will overcome all of it.
One more side note. Sorry for the randomness of this post. There is just so much to catch up on. Amy, the school leader for our DTS, made a pastoral visit this past week to just see how things are doing. It was great to have her here. She really enjoyed her time here and we enjoyed her even more I think. Tuesday was her last day so for dinner we went out as a team and splurged. We went to get western food! Very special because it usually is too expensive. We ended up going to Sizzler which is just a steakhouse type restaurant. We each got an entree and then they have a salad/soup/pasta/dessert buffet that comes along with any entree purchase. We must have looked like we haven't seen food for the past month the way we attacked that buffet. I have never felt so full in my life but it was SO good. Not to say that Thai food isn't delicious but rice does get old after awhile. It was just a good treat and change of pace. After gorging ourselves on 'western' food we went to karaoke! I guess karaoke is a huge thing here in Thailand and everywhere you turn there is a karaoke bar. The place we went was set up where you rent an entire private room for either 1 or 2 hours. It was so much fun! Definitely something we will do in the future.
Next week we will begin the relation based evangelism we were seeking in Chiang Mai. Pray for patience for our team. Thai people are unique in that they are discipled first and then they accept Christ so it can be a long process. Pray that we understand this concept and just love on the students fully knowing that we might not even get the chance to bring them to Christ.
For those of you worried about Danielle's health: She is fine. She just has random tummy aches every so often. Danielle is not one to be tied down or to miss out on an adventure so pray that these aches don't interfere with any ministry opportunities.
We miss you all! I want to give a special shout out to the Vriesland middle school group! Danielle and I love you all and miss you dearly. Keep pressing into God and seek him first!
Josh
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