Off to South Thailand

Today we are heading down to Bangkok to extend Lisa and the children's visas tomorrow. We pray that everything will go smoothly and then we won't need to do this again until May next year. After that we head off to South Thailand to visit this family working in Pak Panang. They are working alone in this city and OMF would like us to consider working down there with them.

Please pray for God's clear guidance as to whether he wants us here or in Lampang (North Thailand) or somewhere else. Well be staying together in a single room so please they that the children sleep ok.

Aids Temple - Wat Prabat Nampu

Last week I went on a cultural assignment trip to Wat Prabat Nampu which is a temple dedicated to the care of aids patients. It was only about 10 minutes drive from where we live. It was set up in 1992 by a Buddhist monk as hospice care for HIV/AIDS patients. I have never been to a place like this, even though I've worked in hospitals where there have been seriously ill people, this was a surreal experience. We gave the patients bags with instant noodles, vasoline for their lips and lollies but that felt like so little for people with a death sentence.

The temple's museums you have to see to believe. One had body parts in jars. The "life museum" had dead bodies with some sort of preservative pumped into them so that the their skin had dried up. Next to these bodies was the name of the person and a short biography about how they contracted AIDS. I have photos but they are a bit too gruesome to post.

HIV/AIDS is a real and growing problem in Thailand. One source of the problem is that many Thai men see going to a prostitute as normal social entertainment and have no moral problem with it.


Here in the photo above are approximately 10,000 bags of ashes, of people who had died at the temple but had no relatives to come back and retrieve their ashes.

False Teacher visits Lopburi

Two Sundays ago we went to meeting organised for a visiting healing preacher from Singapore at a local Lopburi hotel close to where we live. Many of the churches in Lopburi decided to not have their normal Sunday morning services and go to this healing service instead. They didn't organise his coming, but since he was already coming they thought it might support it. Although I didn't understand some of what was going as things were in Thai, the sermon I had no trouble understanding as it was in English and translated in to Thai. The main message of the preacher from a passage in the book of Samuel concerning sacrificial offerings was that we had to give offering to God so that he could bless us and give us miracles. He seem to make out that God needed our offerings to enable his blessing to occur. Jesus was hardly mentioned and of his all sufficient sacrificing and offering of himself which is the most important and significant sacrifice. I could see where the sermon was leading to ... the appeal at the end with offering bags all nicely laid out at the front of the stage. The urge was there a number of times to shout out "Don't listen to this man - what he is teaching is not true". Unfortunately, I don't have the Thai yet to say this, and no one really knows who I am so they'd think I was the crazy one. We didn't have the opportunity to stay around to talk to this man as we had to get the children home. I felt so sad for the Thai Christians getting such terrible teaching and for the Thai pastors who let their congregations sit under this teaching. Please pray that the people who listened to this man have not been lead astray on his account and pray for the Thai pastors that they never let this happen again.

Day in a Life - 9am

By 9am I'm usually in my first lesson. This is my current teacher. She has been working at the Language Learning Centre (LLC) for over 7 years. In her job interview she when was advised that this was a Christian Centre, she replied, "That's o.k. Buddhism and Christianity believe similar things." The missionary language supervisor at the time firmly replied that they definitely were not. Some time later she became a Christian through the witness of the student and Christian teachers at LLC. She is currently preparing me for my module 5 language check on Friday! She is a very good teacher and I've enjoyed studying with her.

Day in a life of a new missionary - 8:50am

Over the next couple of weeks I want to show you some pictures of a normal day for me at the moment. Perhaps you could pray for them (and for me) that we may be able to have the opportunity to have deeper conversations and hopefully become friends.

This is my sticky rice lady at the local market. I pretty much go her stall every morning after I drop off the kids at childcare and pick up 5 packets of dried beef and sticky rice and 1 packet of dried pork and sticky rice. I eat one when I get to school and leave them on the morning tea table to share. It costs about 20 cents each. I've had a few conversations with the husband/partner of this lady who also works at the stall but when they are busy selling it is hard to find the time for more than a quick hello and a smile.
Here is my half eaten package from this morning. Very yummy.

Walking

This is A walking with the help of a walker. Hopefully won't be long before he walks.

Today I (Rich) had a conversation with the lady selling iced coffee. Invariably the first question they ask is whether I am Japanese. She asked me which language school I go to. A dreaded question because the school is not in a well known street so difficult to explain. I buy my iced coffee from the same place so hopefully we will be able to further our conversation on another occasion.

Please pray for more opportunities to develop friendships with people we meet.