Term 2 at Kids Club 2011

Since the start of the new term at Kids Club at The Lighthouse, we’ve had to restrict the number of children to a maximum of 35 kids and start a waiting list as the number of people in our team has decreased.  Kids Club also moved from a smaller room (which now is the English teaching room) to this larger room.  In January there will be more changes as I start helping with Kids Club and Peter takes over my Saturday English class for January and February until an English teacher from Singapore arrives in late February.  It’s great to have so many kids but it looks like we those on the waiting list will have to wait until at least February to get in.

Baptisms at Mae Moh Church

 The Mae Moh Church at the Baptism Ceremony of 8 new Christians

Two weeks ago we had the blessing of witnessing the Baptism ceremony of 8 members of the Mae Moh Church. “Baptism” is the Christian ceremony proclaiming publicly that you have new life in Jesus Christ and that he has washed you of your sins. We prayed for these 8 people that God would protect them and help them in their new life.

Flood crisis worsens in Bangkok

 Don Muang Airport 1 week ago

The same airport this week

 

Cars parked illegally on the elevated motorways sometimes leaving on 1 lane each way

 A underpass completely submerged and now a swimming pool

Please pray for Thailand.

Flooding & moving

There are severe floods affecting Thailand right now. Here are some pictures. There are many things I’ve experienced for the first time in my life in Thailand.

An industrial district in Ayutthaya flooded

The main highway from Ayutthya to Bangkok cut off

The kitchen from the house we moved from last week

Moving Thai style.  I'm on the back of the pickup holding on to the furniture so that it doesn't fall off the back

Rain rain

At our middle's son's birthday party.  His party clothes didn't last all of 1 minute

It has been raining most days for a few months now. It is definitely the rainy season. Fortunately it doesn’t rain all day. Mostly the rain comes in the late afternoon. The playground near our house has been flooded for much deeper than in this picture. The rain means that it is not quite so hot which is nice.

Teaching Civil Servants

Last week I started teaching English to civil servants at the Sala Klang (สาลากลาง) Lampang. The topic for the evening was eating out”.

We had a lot of fun as we role played conversations at a restaurant. “Do you have a reservation?”

Bring out the creative side while interacting with God's word

How we help one another to grow in Christ

What radiates from God to us

In preparation for our Organic church meeting this week, we encouraged one another to express our creativity as we read through the book of Colossians during the week. These were two of the creative expressions from Lisa and Trish and it added more than just colour to God’s word. I’m so thankful to God for the ways in which he is helping us understand the riches of his word through community.

Hit and Run in Lampang

 Temporary fix it job

Yesterday I took our cat to the vet to have her leg x-rayed. My car was parked on the street when I heard what sounded like my car alarm. When I went outside it indeed was my car alarm. I turned off the alarm but the people on the street started telling me something and kept on showing me a piece of paper with a license plate number on it. I saw broken glass on the ground and piece of plastic but I couldn’t see how it involved me at all. When I picked up the piece of plastic I saw that it was a broken side door mirror. Then I noticed that my right side door mirror was bent forward at an odd angle. Then I realised what the commotion was about. Some car had swiped my right side door mirror and had driven off. I asked my neighbor what I should do. Then rang the car insurance agent. They wanted me go to the police and file a report and submit a claim on my 1st class insurance. It ruined the rest of my afternoon as I had to find the right police station and get all the documents together.

 Then this morning I had to find the insurance agent in Lampang before going to the garage. The insurance agent was a bit bemused when I refused to lie about what had happened to the front bumper of the car. My neighbour had advised that since I have 1st insurance I should get any other damage on the car fixed at the same time (I was going to lose my no claim bonus anyway). So I asked the agent whether it was legal to have the front bumper fixed too at the same time. He said “sure”. But then I said I didn’t know how the scratch go there in the first place. It probably happened when another missionary had borrowed our car on home assignment but I wasn’t sure. He wanted me to say that I had the car parked outside the house and someone swiped it. But I said that as I Christian I wouldn’t lie like that. He said that if I paid 1,000 baht I could claim this damage without stating what had happened, but why would I want to do that? Why lose money when I didn’t have to (by lying). I said I’d just pay the 1,000 baht and he took it shaking his head.

 Unfortunately, the smash repairers are really busy and they won’t be able to fit my car in for at least another week. Then they rang and said that it might take up to 3 months for the side mirror to come from Japan! They said that they’d try to source it from somewhere else if they can. In the mean while I bought a 10 baht vanity mirror from Tesco to stick on the right side mirror. It is really hard to drive a car without your ride side mirror!

I could really do without this additional hassle ... but it could always be worse : )  At least my parents will be here with a car so that we won't be without a car for a week when it's being repaired.

The Princess is coming to Lampang

The Princess of Thailand is coming to Lampang on Friday. Above is the huge sign announcing her coming outside our son’s school. She will be opening one of the new building at our son’s school as well as visiting other places such as the School for the Blind. Our school is undergoing large changes to how it looks, with large banners purple and white draped everywhere. Parking at the school has become near impossible when dropping off and picking up our son. Fortunately I can zip in and out by motorbike. Today at the end of school we get a letter saying that the school is closed for the next 2 days in preparation for the Princess’ visit.

Thammasart University Lampang

 Playing Blokus

Perpetual Commotion or "Dutch Blitz"

For the last 3 days we have been at Thammasart University, Lampang Campus with the Dutch Team to teach English. Thanks to Judith and the other English lecturers for letting the team do activities at the university. I was able to bring some board games to the Self Access Learning Centre (SALC). SALC is used to encourage students to practice their English. We hope to be back there in the future sometime.

Visit to Orphanage

James 1:27
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

This week our team had an opportunity to visit a local orphanage in Lampang. The temple where our team members teach English on Sunday afternoons was being used for the national elections so we couldn’t teach there. So it was suggested to our team that we go visit the orphanage instead.

It’s hard to believe but I’ve never been to an orphanage before in my life. That really surprised me. Why haven’t I ever visited an orphanage? It’s not as if it’s hard to miss the Bible’s emphasis on caring for orphans (or the fatherless).

It was hard to imagine these beautiful children not having a mother or father. My heart went out to them. I’ll be looking to make more opportunities to visit this orphanage in the future and hopefully adding a little to their lives for the brief time we are there.

Christians and Taekwondo

I didn’t think anything at all about my children’s involved in Taekwondo until last week when someone said that I should look into from a Christian point of view to see if it was still o.k. for my children to be doing it.  This person had been involved in Karate and he had to repent of it because of aspects of Eastern mysticism in it.  Before this I didn’t even realise that a Christian’s involvement in martial arts was even a controversial issue.

I did a google search “Christian response to Taekwondo” and was able to get an idea of some of the issues.  There is an element of meditation in Taekwondo which could possibly be a problem.  It would depend on what the teachers are asking them to do when they meditating.  

There are Korean missionaries in Lampang teaching Taekwondo for what it’s worth.  So obviously they don’t see a problem in it.

Taekwondo seems to be the least problematic for Christians in terms of its links to Eastern mysticism.  From my very brief reading, I’m o.k with sending my children to Taekwondo, though I’ll be listening much more carefully next time they are asked to sit still and mediate.

Does any one have any thoughts?

Buddhist House Warming Ceremory

Couple of weeks ago we were invited to our friend's new house ceremony.  The invitation said that the ceremony would start at 9:09am.  There were 9 monks at the ceremony. Have you guessed that "9" is an important number?

It was the first time for us to go to such a ceremony.  Many of the parents I know from our son's Taekwondo were there which made it fun.  The food was very tasty and lots of it too!  It wouldn't be a Thai event without ear piercingly loud music (and some dancers too).

It was a good cultural experience for us.

New school term

 Our oldest son's new classroom.  1st day at school

 Our middle son's 1st day at new school

Our daughter and son at the new school.  Our daughter must be the only child to cry when she has to go home.

The boys have started a new school year. Our middle school changed schools (again) but it has been a good change. It suits him much better than his old school. We wanted to enroll him in this school last year but we arrived back in Thailand 1 week too late and they wouldn’t accept him. There is a lot more play based learning and much less sitting behind a desk which we love. The teachers seem caring and nice. He is not in uniform right now because it is their summer program. Each morning at the school he is greeted by two ladies, one who puts antibacterial cream on his hands and the other who measure his temperature (so he doesn’t have a fever). He is still clingy in the mornings and yesterday I had to leave him crying and being held back by 3 teachers but when I picked him up in the afternoon he was happy and the teacher said he stopped crying pretty soon after.

Our oldest son has entered P.1 which is the equivalent to 1st grade. It is the same school as he went to last year but things have changed dramatically. His timetable starts at 7:30am with Chinese and he has another 8 periods of 50 minutes before he ends the day at 4:10pm. He has two 10 min breaks and 40 minutes for lunch. We received two notes in the last week, advising of additional classes now on Saturday 10-12noon for additional Thai and homework class from 4:10-5:00pm. We need to supplement his Thai schooling with homeschooling so that he doesn’t fall too far behind in his English to fit back into an Australian school some time in the future. We think his timetable is far to much for a 6 y.o. So we take him to school at bit late most mornings (around 8:15am) apart from two homeschool mornings where we send him at 10am. We pick him up early on two afternoons when he has English as his last period.

At the moment he seems to be coping though he’s pretty tired by the day and in the mornings. He hasn’t complained too much about school yet which is good.

Flood (con't)

 I’ve recently received the photos that our team mate took of our house when it was flooded. The above photo is of our kitchen.

This is the back of our house.

From the watermarks left on the wall, the flood waters reached just over 40cm in the bottom section of our house. Apart from dedication and commitment of our househelper who stayed overnight at our house and help from our team mates and neighbours we would have suffered a lot of damage to our furniture and household goods. At one stage our househelper and our team leader Nick lifted our large fridge up two steps (with food in it) onto a higher level as water was pouring into the house (we had 4 people move it back down into place). We only suffered water damage to some cupboards and the laptop battery. Major electrical items which were underwater, we allowed to dry before turning on and praise God that they were working!

Apparently there were about 5 eels swimming in our house at one stage which our househelper’s husband caught and cooked up for dinner.

According to our neighbours there was a worse flood about 10 years ago which reached about 1m in our house!

So another first in my life, I felt an earthquake (though very minor) in Lampang a few months ago and now I’ve experienced a flood. What’s next?

flood

 Nick (left); Samon (second from right) and Neighbours having a laugh about the flood in the middle of our flooded street.  Our house is below the level of the street.

We were on holidays in South Thailand about 1000km from home in Lampang. Around midday I check my phone and I have 6 missed called from our house that morning (2 on Lisa’s phone). i figured something must have happened at home and that it was fairly urgent that it couldn’t wait. I call home but no one answers the phone. Finally about 15 minutes later, our househelper calls me telling me that heavy rain has flooded the outside room at the back of our house which has our washing machine and is used for storage. However, water had not entered our house yet and the rain had stopped so there was no pressing need to return right away since it was the last day of our holiday anyway. The next morning at 6am I get a call from our team leader Nick and half asleep I answered the phone. He said something along the lines of, “Sorry Rich, but I think you’ll need to come home right away. It rained heavily last night and water had flooded the bottom floor of your house”. I thought he was joking at first but after a pause there wasn’t a “just joking Rich” and then I realised he was deadly serious. We quickly finished packing but then when I tried to start the car the battery was dead. Luckily another one of the guests knew how to jump start our car so that I could drive it to the nearest car dealership to get the battery replaced. However, this all took time and cost us at least an hour and half of the morning, time which we could ill afford as we had to drive back to Bangkok (300km), collect our son’s passport from the Australian Embassy and then renew our visas before the immigration department closed at 4:30pm. We reached the Australian Embassy around 1:30pm, had the passport by 1:45pm, drove to the otherside of Bangkok to the OMF head office to get the visa paper work and reached the immigration department by 3:00pm. Our OMF visa person was waiting for us and had already collected a number for us in the queue. By 4:20pm our visa renewal had been completed. I caught a taxi to the airport and then the final flight to Chiang Mai. Then taxi from Chiang Mai to Lampang. I got home just before 10pm.

This was the sight which greeted me apart from a strong moldy smell. I was relieved to see that the flood waters had gone out of the house. After eventually getting through to my wife I went to bed ready for the cleanup tomorrow. More about that tomorrow and the rest of what happened.

 This was our downstairs toilet

Jesus must be from Chiang Mai

I was at a meeting of missionaries working with Northern Thais.  At the meeting a missionary shared about an experience they had showing the Jesus film in Northern Thai to a group of people.  At one point in the movie when Jesus spoke the whole crowd burst into laughter and they said jokingly that Jesus must be from Chiang Mai.  Apparently the Jesus spoke in a with a very distinct Chiang Mai accent.

I never thought of this kind of problem before.  I guess the Jesus films I've seen in English, the actors always had a pretty neutral accent (never American, British or even Australian). 

Wife's Birthday and Songkran Fun

My wife’s birthday falls right in the middle of the Songkran water festival, Thailand’s biggest and most popular festival. Lisa got to open her presents this morning and I went to the market to buy jork (rice porridge). I was planning to make scrambled eggs but we had no eggs (they were all boiled up for the Easter egg decorating for the kids at our Organic church meeting). Lunch was with Mr Kawano, the owner of the taekwondo school our son goes to along with a family from our son’s school. Then we all crashed for the afternoon and slept until around 4pm. Then it was off to have more Songkran water fun. Unfortunately, Lampang has full on water spraying on 12-13 April so today it was very quiet.

Yes, that's me on the left completely soaked and our two sons

We did find a family near the clock tower round about splashing cars as they went by so we joined in and had fun with them. Tomorrow we might be off to Ann’s parent’s house who is one of the English students at the Lighthouse.

Day in a Life of a Missionary

This morning went with my son to the Pattamasaevi (ปัทมะเสวี) Mini Summer Camp to teach English for an hour. Taught Colin Buchanan’s song “Remember the Lord” with the message that God is always watching and working for the good of his children. It’s a very “Aussie” song with lines like “miss your breaky” and “busted for something you didn’t do”, “dad is crusty and your mum’s in a flack”. Anyone wanna “av a go” at trying to explain “your mum’s in a flack”?

After English teaching went home to drop off my son and then went around town to do some jobs. Stopped off in front of the post office for lunch and ate this great noodle and dumpling soup for all of 35 baht (just over AU$1. Would have been 30 but I asked for the “special” - which means you get a bit more than normal, much more than the extra 5 baht you pay). Add a bit of dried chilli and fish sauce ... yuumm.

Collected the mail and then back home to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson.

Prayer night at our house tonight.

Funny Kids

Our kids are a handful some of the time (no most of the time). It is the long summer break now so they won’t go back to school until mid May. It’s not all fun and games though as they are catching up on homeschooling during the holidays. Our middle son will change schools for the third time. The last school he watched a bit too much T.V for our liking and he was in an international program so not picking up as much Thai as we would like.

Meal at Phii Jee's

Our Lighthouse team and some other English students at a lovely dinner at Phii Jee’s (front row 3rd from right) house on Monday. We had a great time with lots of food, eating and chatting.

Unfortunately, our daughter vomited up most of her lunch just as we were getting ready to go so she and Lisa couldn’t make it.