• Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 10

    31Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 1

    We got up the next morning and had a wonderful breakfast of pancakes, cooked by our wonderful English hosts.


    The group of us with our English missionary hosts

    We then watched a documentary about the underground church in China. While we were watching, one of the wonderful Karen Bible school students washed our filthy SUV for us! He left it shining clean.


    Driving through a mudslide that had slid across the road


    The terrified girls in the back seat as Gee flew around the curves

    We then headed back to IGo! It was a several hour drive and as we got closer, the ladies go more and more eager to get back to IGo. When they found out that we were going to GTO to drop Gee off first, they were quite saddended. Then we began a nonsensical discussion about what we would do if God called us to go back to the Karen villages for another two weeks without going back to IGO. Nonetheless, we survived that intensely emotional time of reminiscing about Karen villages and looking forward to seeing everyone at IGo again. It wasn’t so much we were tired of Karen villages, but rather that we were tired of repacking every day, sleeping at a different place each night, and spending a bunch of time crammed into the SUV on the road each day.

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 9

    30Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos, Uncategorized Comments: 0

    We got up early, ate breakfast, shook hands with everyone and said “ta-bloo”.

    Let me take a bit of a detour and tell you what “ta-bloo” means. It is the Karen word for “Thank you” but it also is the standard greeting. So it is a very useful word. We learned it fairly early in the trip. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for native English speakers to tell the difference between an Asian “b” and “p”. We also learned “ta-ploo” means “crazy”. “Ta-bloo” has a rising tone on the second half. It sounds like “ta-bloop” with the “p” only barely suppressed. “Ta-ploo” on the other hand has a falling tone on the second half.

    While I’m on the subject, Karen shake hands as a matter of course. This is more familiar to us than the Thai bow. However, they grasp their right arm with their left hand right above the elbow when shaking hands. This is more polite than leaving their left hand at their side. Also, shaking with both hands is considered even more expressive of love, admiration, eagerness, and politeness.


    Pro-Burmese guerillas (DKBA - Democratic Karen Buddhist Army) shot this hole in the church in a cross-border raid




    We hopped back on the boat and went back to the big border village. We had an extra passenger for the ride back: a large snapping turtle one of the villagers had caught. They put it in the boat right beside me. It had ropes attached to its shell, but the ropes weren’t tied to anything. I was a bit surprised it didn’t take a hunk out of my leg, but not at all disappointed. They were taking the turtle to market to sell it for meat.



    Yours truly. I haven’t shaved on this trip because mirrors, much less stellar shaving facilities, are in short supply.


    We got back to the truck, repacked our things in our backpacks, and headed back toward the main road. Before we got there, we stopped at a Bible school. The Bible school is for Karen students to learn theology, Bible, English, and agriculture. They have a four year program. It is headed by a missionary couple from the UK that have been missionaries since the 70’s. They spent many years in Laos, Hong Kong, and Thailand. They have had this school for three years now. They have Karen professors and they teach as well. They also have short-term two week teams that come in from the UK to help out and expose the teams to missions. There is a large community of students and Christian families here centered around this school. It’s an awesome place! School is not in session right now, but will be in a month. We are staying at the missionaries’ house for the night. They have toilet seats with tanks and showerheads with hot water. It’s the first hot shower I have taken in two months! We had a wonderful time sitting in their living room talking with them about missions. Also, a young lady from PA had just arrived that very afternoon to teach English for several months. She had spent time before teaching at Grace International School in Chiang Mai, the place we go twice a week to play volleyball.

    That evening after a lovely supper (with forks!) with the missionaries, we went to a Christian youth hostel several miles away. We spent the evening singing and doing skits. The kids were very much into it and we had a great time. After the service they all lined up to eagerly shake our hands. Two of the giggling seventeen year old girls that wanted to shake my hand both stuck their hands in at once and I had two hands in my hand! Most of the kids were in the 6-12 age range, but there were a number of high-school’ers as well. They left their parents in their village (which has no school) and come to live at the hostel. Six Christian staff take care of them. There is a “dad” and “mom” that are in charge of the hostel. They go to school each day, then come back to the hostel where they have study periods in which staff assist them in learning their homework. All but two of the students living at the hostel are Christians and come from Christian homes. However, students in the past that have come that aren’t Christians have gone home Christians. They have devotions and Bible studies on a regular basis. The parents mostly support the children, but Compassion International also pitches in support in cases where the parents can’t afford it.

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 8

    29Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 0


    The view from our bedroom



    We got up very early and left.





    After a while, we got off the main road onto a paved road that soon became intermittently paved. It soon began to climb over a mountain range. We got to the top of the range and began to ascend into the valley below. As we were going downhill around a curve to the right, the driver miscalculated the sharpness of the curve. To our left was a steep wooded hillside. To our right was a cliff face going up. It had been raining earlier that day and the pavement was roughly paved with lots of gravel on it. He slammed on the brakes and we began to slide straight toward the small concrete pillars that stood between us and the tree-studded embankment. The ladies were shrieking and the men were gasping. Weirdly enough I was doing neither. Time slowed down and I analyzed the situation. When we were only a meter or two from the pillar, my mind cranked the wheel to the left toward the pillars and the embankment. Unfortunately, the driver did not and we lunged toward the towering rock face to our right as the wheels finally regained traction. He overcorrected several more times, whipping the skidding vehicle back and forth, coming to a gradually straighter, gradually slower heading. Most of the people were gasping for air, but apparently I was too stupid to be scared. I wasn’t breathing hard and my heart wasn’t beating fast. I’m still trying to figure out if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

    We continued on until we came to a large village on a river that is the border between Thailand and Burma. Just as we got there, Thai soldiers and U.N. personnel were escorting a truckload of Karen refugees that was leaving, beginning the long journey to Canada. These refugees had been displaced by the ethnic cleansing by the Burmese government against the Karen tribes. Also contributing to their refugee status is the guerilla war between the KNU (Karen Nation United) and the Burmese government. Part of a platoon (8-10) of Thai soldiers sat in a little sandbagged enclave overlooking the river.




    Refugee bus getting ready to leave


    Riverside





    I took a change of clothes and other necessities out of my large backpack and put it into two of my purses, one of which I slung over each shoulder. We boarded a wooden boat and headed up the river. The boat ran on a converted car engine and its propeller shaft stuck 3-5 meters out the rear. It was also deafening. My ears were numb 3-5 minutes after exiting the boat. Apparently the river is full of sandbars because the driver zigzagged all over the river. At one point we were only a meter from the Burma shore! I guess I’ll have to add that in gray to my list of countries visited. We took the boat to the night’s village. The village is accessible only by boat or motorbike during the rainy season (which it is now). (During the dry season, only a few very rugged trucks attempt the journey.)



    A wat (temple) up on the mountainside along the river



    When we got there, the boat driver took us up a steep path to the village. As we were walking along the concreted roads in the village, I slipped and almost ended up flat out on the ground. Algae were growing on the road because it was so little used because the roads into the village are nearly impassable!


    We relaxed that afternoon. Many of us wrote in our journals and read our Bibles. (This is the first time I have mentioned this, but we have done quite a bit of both on this trip during the relaxing times.)


    That night we had a church service. We had a special treat in that the pastor played bass guitar along with Gee playing guitar and another musician in the church played drums for us while we were singing “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” and “Here I Am to Worship”. We had a fairly normal service except Katrina was sick and wasn’t able to participate. Also Gee had a really bad cough and wasn’t feeling very good. Katrina gave him some echinacea, but surprisingly enough, it didn’t fix his problem in the 2 hours before the service. But Gee soldiered on (not that he had much choice unless he wanted to cancel the service; he was the only one that knew Karen and English), coughing and hiccupping through the service.


    That night, we sat around a candle and talked for a while. It was really cool. We talked about the trip and about myriad other things.

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 7

    28Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 0

    I took a shower this morning despite the fact it is better to take them in the evening (because you smell not so rank for church and your towel has time to partially dry before you have to pack it the next morning).

    We ate breakfast at the pastor’s house. We had a really good, sweet pastry for breakfast for the first time. It was a nice addition to the requisite rice.

    Next we visited people’s homes and prayed for them.

    They gave us scarves as gifts. Craig promptly fashioned his into a doo-rag.


    Craig with doo-rag


    A rice tractor–it’s designed to work in a foot or so of water


    Craig had a little… um, “accident”

    Next we visited the fields where this village worked. They were planting corn, so we helped them plant for a while. I think that is only the second corn field we have seen. After we helped them awhile, we visited and prayed for some more people.












    Elephant transport

    And then we were off. And off we were! At a high rate of speed! One time we got into a construction zone, only it wasn’t really marked as such. They were repaving and doing it only one lane at a time. However, there was one lane (the opposite lane) free. As we came tearing down the mountain around a curve, all of a sudden there was the hopper end of a paving machine standing meters from our front grille. Gee slammed on the brakes and swerved into the other lane, narrowly missing the distinctly SUV-sized maw of the black paving beast of a machine. Fortunately there was nothing coming the other way.


    A herd of water buffalo walking down the road

    We soon arrived at a Karen village quite close to the main road. It was paved road all the way. We met a good friend of Gee’s who is involved in youth ministries, like himself. We had a lunch of sticky rice, fried chicken, and COLD water! It was also around a table with benches!! It was amazing! The house also had a leather piece of furniture that was a cross between a recliner and a couch. The bathroom was an in-house-outhouse with a SHOWERHEAD! It was amazing! It also had a hot water heater attached to shower head, but I declined using it. (Maybe it was latent shocking fears from Costa Rica?) But the most amazing thing was a Western-style toilet seat! It had no water tank, but we didn’t care. We were happy to dip in the barrel to flush like “normal”.

    In the afternoon, we visited a cave nearby. It was a tourist cave with lights, steps, railings, and admission prices.


    The cave entrance


    That evening we had some deer skin for supper again. Tasty!



    When the church bell rang and we left for church, it was raining. So we all gathered our umbrellas and walked to church. When we got there, the only people that had arrived so far were a bunch of children and their Sunday School teacher (Gee’s friend). I befriended one little tyke and persuaded him by hand motions and encouraging noises to sit beside me for the service. I thought about it early in the service that I really should put my arm around his shoulder to give him some attention and love, but I didn’t because I wasn’t sure how he’d react. I later nearly regretted having him sit by me when he proved to be an absolute terror throughout the service, running up on stage, showing off to the congregation, giggling, and running up and down the aisles. I had no idea what level, if any, of disciplinary action I was supposed to take. I suspected that he was experiencing an attention deficit disorder—attention being shown to him, not him showing attention—and that if I showed him a bit of love, he would not try to garner it from the audience. One time when he ran past, I tried to smoothly transfer his kinetic energy into a smooth swing up onto my lap where I could lovingly hold him and prevent his roaming. However, my smooth, fatherly move turned into him digging in his heels and me not moving him an iota (let alone gracefully and smoothly swinging him into my lap). I quickly gave up, because I had no parameters for the encounter. Later in the service I persuaded him to sit in my lap (due to the translating SS teacher sitting behind me) and I held him for a while. When I had to go up on stage to sing and left him in his seat, he behaved wonderfully!




    We had a good and fairly normal service that evening. A couple of things stood out:

    1. The bad singing on our part. For some reason we did awfully. We could not harmonize for anything!
    2. The shirtless man who came up to help us do the motions to a song. Gee told the audience that this man had a “special shirt” on.
    3. The guy with the teeth that matched the brown shampoo bottle. Gee was sure to point this out to the audience too, holding the bottle up for comparison.

    Quote of the Day

    “You have to strategically aim the water in order to cover the entire appendage.”
    -Hans, defending the greater rinse effectiveness of dip showers versus shower heads

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 6

    27Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 0

    We had a breakfast of requisite rice and toppings. An added delicacy of which I partook was dried deer skin. It tasted just like one would think deer skin would taste: hard, chewy, and rather like leather. It was impossible to entirely break down into comfortable pieces, so at one point one had to merely take a drink of water and swallow it.


    Gee playing with a dried deer head that was laying around the place


    Me, examining my badly sunburned hand (from the motorbike trip around the mountain) and subsequent peeling

    We then went around to people’s houses and prayed for them. When we got to one person’s house, he asked us to change the language on his satellite TV receiver from English to Thai. We located that setting in the menus, but it inexplicably refused to change.




    The family from the house we stayed at


    Unique set of doors they had



    Gee changing the batteries in this old man’s treasured possession–an old, little, pink clock. He didn’t know how to change the batteries and get it to work again and he was so delighted when Gee got it working!



    A young lady who spoke English


    Right before they left, they gave each of us a Karen shirt. We were really kicking ourselves then that we had asked to buy shirts at the other village! People in this village had been visiting the other village, had seen that the other village had given gifts, saw that were interested in shirts, and then gave us shirts! Needless to say, we thanked them profusely.

    We then bounced back through the atrocious roads (they thanked us specifically for coming to visit them in such a hard to reach place) to the main road.


    On the way out, we stopped at the village’s fields




    We drove at a dizzying rate of speed around the mountain curves on the main road with tires squealing. Gee has driven the entire time. Katrina has been taking her daily dose of motion sickness pills. We also listened to several episodes of Adventures in Odyssey (which we have been doing throughout the trip). We soon came to top of a mountain pass and with a little lookout, so we stopped to take pictures:






    We soon came to a good sized town (Mae Hong Son) and looked for a restaurant to eat lunch. It was already 2 in the afternoon and some of didn’t feel like eating just before supper. So, some of us ate and some of us didn’t. I recharged my prepaid cell phone and the two star-struck lovers called their girlfriends in the States, waking them from a sound sleep. We then visited a Buddhist temple (Phrathat Doi Gongmoo) in the area (of a more Burmese style). We also went to a market to restock food and stopped at an internet café to check our email.


    Phrathat Doi Gongmoo




    View from Phrathat Doi Gongmoo




    Me, taking pictures

    We then resumed our journey on the main road, out of town. We passed a lady whom we asked for directions to the village. We went to the village and she arrived about 5 minutes after us. The village was just on the main highway, only several kilometers outside of town. She happened to be a Karen path-follower who was our host for the night. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the rice mats in their house. We firmly entrenched the Karen word for shampoo (which we were giving out in large quantities) in our minds that afternoon. It sounds just like the English phrase “Some will be cool.” It is sub-woo-bee-col. They were quite amused by our repeating the word “shampoo” over and over again. They soon fed us supper and off to the meeting we went.

    This organization definitely felt the urban influence of being so close to the city. The women were not as modestly dressed and one of the y@rp requests was the youth wouldn’t get into drugs and alcohol.

    One of the nicer effects of urban influence was the modern improvement of having an electric light in the bathroom! Very modern! The house that the ladies stayed at was even more advanced! They had an in-house-outhouse! It was an outhouse that was a lean-to the house.

    We guys stayed at the shepherd’s house.

    Quote of the Day

    “It was a privilege to be with. Keeping elder brother first! Y@rp forus. Dad bless you!”
    -Craig’s very scatterbrained entry in the organization’s guestbook (“Dad bless you!” was his only complete sentence with correctly spelled words. What made it funnier was that it was so totally unlike him. He is very intelligent, a good speller, and fairly meticulous with grammar.)

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 5

    26Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 0

    Today was Sunday, so we had five services at this village! The first service was at 5:30. We were not required to come to the first service, but Huber was quite insistent the night before that we should definitely go. When morning came, he was the only one that didn’t go. That service was basically a y@rp and logos reading service. However, they asked us to sing a choir song, which we did.

    Then we went back to our house for breakfast. Gee tricked us and told us that the only breakfast we were having was some roasted peanuts, some pork rinds, and other snacks we had along. So when the real breakfast of rice and various other foods came, we weren’t very hungry. We gave him a hard time, but he explained that if he was grinning when he said something, he was only joking.

    School started at 8. Katrina, Darrell, Craig, and Gee taught school. They did several skits (David and Goliath was so convincing that one of the children started crying) and sang songs and told word stories. The regular school teacher (who was there assisting with logistics) is the daughter of the M shepherd who first came to the village. School was 2.5 hours long! After an hour, at 9, Kelly, Huber, and I left for the ladies’ service. The service started with two ladies sitting up front behind the two tables that flanked the speaker’s stand. They read the book, shared, and led singing. Then Kelly taught/shared (Surrey Chai translated). After that, Kelly, Huber, and I sang a trio.


    The cute little girl who passed the hat





    A piece of candy for answering a question


    A young lady with a sweet hair-do

    –

    Here are some of my thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of speaking through an interpreter:

    Disadvantages:

    1. Much of communicating is knowing your audience, thus communication is hampered because:
      1. You don’t know the inner health of your audience
      2. You don’t know the inner maturity of your audience
      3. You don’t know the inner needs of your audience
      4. You don’t know the education level of your audience
      5. You don’t understand the culture of your audience
    2. It’s hard to follow the flow of the service
    3. Extra care must be taken to change from a few specific 12-letter words to many less-specific 5-letter words
    4. It is difficult to do decent quality translation
    5. You can’t fellowship with words after the service, except through a translator

      6. Advantages:

      1. Translator will act as a cultural filter and correct or at least explain cultural gaffes
      2. Pauses during translation give time to think
      3. Different cultures have different norms and you’re going to be doing things differently anyway, so it’s quite freeing to realize that many things that you think of as mistakes are not mistakes in another culture. Any mistakes you make that are considered such in their culture will be excused on the basis of cultural ignorance.

      –


      The shepherd’s house which the village built for him


      The new meeting place that is under construction because the old one is so small

      At the main service, which was around 11, Gee spoke and we sang more choir songs (which they absolutely loved!). We then had lunch and then another service in the afternoon. It was called the “youth” service, but everyone came. One of us spoke and we sang more songs.

      After the last service at the village, several of the organization elders gave us each a Karen “purse”/bag (which is used by both males and females). Later we asked if we could buy some of the awesome, red shirts that the Karen men wore for dress shirts on Sunday and some of the lovely white dresses (edged with red) the Karen girls wore for Sunday. They had some of the shirts which we purchased for the smaller guys in the group. However, the big guys—Darrell and I—found no shirts which fit. As we were driving out of the village, the pretty young lady who is the school teacher came to our vehicle and insisted on giving us another shirt. We felt badly because we did not at all want to hint at more gifts, we wanted to pay her for it, and we tried, but she insisted.


      The school teacher is standing to Katrina’s right, your left; Katrina is the one standing right in front of me

      Then off we went to the next village (about 6 km away) with one truckload of villagers from that village in front of us and one behind us.




      As we pulled into their village, we drove right past the school. Several teenagers were playing what they call lacrosse, but which is nothing like what is called lacrosse in America. After we unloaded our things, I went back to watch. It’s like volleyball, only the net is neck-high, they can’t use their hands, the ball is a small, hollow, woven reed thing, and they spike with their feet and heads. They are amazing! They did standing flips to spike the ball with their feet!

      Thai or Karen lacrosse
      Karen lacrosse

      Thai or Karen lacrosse
      Karen lacrosse

      Thai or Karen lacrosse
      Karen lacrosse



      I then went back to my hosts’ place (who had been visiting the previous village while we were there, so we kind of knew them already) and ate supper.



      Supper


      I then went out and took a shower. While I was in the shower it began to rain and I then heard the meeting place bell ringing. I hurriedly finished my shower (in the dark!) and ran back to the house. The others had already left. It was raining fairly hard by then and I hoped against hope that they had left the SUV unlocked because my word, notes (I was talking that night!), and poncho were in there. Fortunately they had, and several minutes later I was standing in the back of the meeting quietly struggling to remove my poncho.


      The shower is on the left, the toilet on the right; this was a fairly typical Karen outhouse/showerhouse. It worked great! :-D

      This was another village in which they had no grid power, and the church’s solar panel/battery had a quite limited amount of juice. Taking up much of that juice were the electric guitar amps (this was a first for us in Karen meeting!) and the large sound system which had a bull horn that broadcasted the service to the entire village. There was only enough juice left to power two bulbs. Unfortunately there were three bulbs. They did some rewiring, with requisite sparking as they snipped wires, unscrewed screws, and moved alligator clips to make so that only the two front bulbs would be powered. They were all fluorescent bulbs, of course, so when the one circuit with two bulbs had juice, neither of the bulbs would light.

      After we got the power issues straightened out, we began our service. We did our normal service and when we came to the end and took y@rp requests, it was our turn to give out a y@rp request. Huber was very sick. Several men came up to lay hands on him and y@rp for him, but just about then he bolted out the door and nearly emptied his supper on the ground. After some walking around outside and after we y@rped for him, he was able to throw it all up which made him feel much better.

      When we were teaching them the songs with motions, Gee chose two grandmas (as was his standard operating procedure) to come up and help us with the motions. He did the motions faster and faster. One of the grandmas was totally crazy. She had fried her brain on betel juice and wasn’t all there. But she was incredibly hilarious. She would do rough imitations of whatever Gee did and did all sorts of crazy moves with a very serious expression on her face. People were rolling in the aisles.


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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 4

    25Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 0

    In the morning we went around to people’s houses, y@rping for them and singing. Y@rping for the sick, singing, and encouraging/sharing have been the three main emphases of this trip.

    We left quite early and bounced out to the main road. We flew around the mountainous curves at a high rate of speed (inducing some motion sickness in Katrina). We then came to a main town where we stopped at the market to replenish our food and to eat lunch at a restaurant.









    A sweet macro shot I got of my glass at the restaurant.


    A weird, kinda cool macro shot of the ever-present Germ-X bottle with brother Craig in the background sipping his strawberry shake


    On this picture Gee was confused whether he was supposed to look serious or smile

    Then we got on a side paved road and drove through a valley of strange beauty. Lush, green mountains were juxtaposed with a nearly desert valley of blackened stumps and sparse vegetation.






    Lunch!


    Stopped beside the road for a bathroom break and photography break


    Shooting beside the road



    We then went back in and up the mountains on a dirt road. This road was entirely incomparable to previous bouncy, dirt roads. Huge craters marked the path. It twisted through the mountains at steep angles. Heads hit the ceilings at four times the frequency of before. It was also a very long trip. After several hours passed, we reached a river. We crossed the river on a bridge that had a sign in front of it saying: “Danger! Mine. Blasting.” We proceeded past a bunch of miners and twisted up the mountain through a confusing set of redoubling, splitting and joining set of steep roads. We finally came to a dead end: a mine shaft. We turned around and took another Y. It ended in a steep drop off to the river below. We turned around and went back and Gee asked the miners for directions. When he told them the name of the village we wanted to go to, they burst into laughter. We had gone 15 km past the village! All at about 20 km/h. So we turned around and bounced and jounced with a vengeance as Gee made up for lost time. We stopped and asked two men (who were stopped beside the road doing inexplicable things with water barrels) for directions. They gave us directions and off we jounced again. We discovered at one point, when we got out to push, that our SUV was not all-wheel drive as we had thought, but was rear-wheel drive!


    A common impediment


    Gee looking through a leaf at me




    The mine at the end of the line


    We finally came to the Y at which we should have turned left. It had the name of one village on the arrow pointing down that branch, but it didn’t have the names of the two villages beyond the first village. When we finally crested the last rise, we saw a beautiful plateau spread out before us. It was nestled in a ring of higher mountains surrounding it. What was also quite beautiful to us Americans was the huge corn fields that adorned this plateau! Corn, squash, and many other traditional North American crops covered the very steep hillsides. It felt much like home. That evening when we got to the remote village itself, it felt even more like home! Several children cheerily called out to us, “Good morning!” (Even that small level of English had been rare in the other villages.) The village seemed incredibly clean and civilized. Everyone was happy and clean. We saw one man with a yellow “Livestrong” bracelet and another man with a Kingdom Book and Music (a path-follower bookstore in Chiang Mai) t-shirt.


    A little girl climbing a tree


    Exhausted after our long drive (including our extensive detour)

    It was only later that we learned that everyone in the entire village was path-followers. 15 years ago, there were no path-followers in this village. A native Karen M shepherd moved his family to the village and began to tell people about elder brother. Six years ago, he ordained a man who had grown up in that village and moved on to another village. There were actually several newcomers (two or three families) to the village who were not path-followers. Another very small village had fallen on hard times and was merging into this village and they were slowly moving in.

    We met a young man by the name of Surrey Chai who had attended logos school in Chiang Mai for several years. He spoke excellent English, actually a bit better than Gee’s. He had lived in Australia for six months doing language study. We stayed at his father’s house. We had a great time hanging out with him.

    No electrical lines reached this very remote village, but many houses had solar panels and batteries to run a light or two and a TV/VCD player. Throughout all these villages, there were always 5-10 houses with satellite TV.


    A view out the window

    I went to use the standard-issue outhouse/shower house. The door was closed so I knocked and waited. Hearing no answer, I pushed the door open. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a lady squatting there (fortunately her dress was surrounding her!). I gave a little surprised yelp and slammed the door. When she came out, I apologized and bowed repeatedly. When I asked Gee later, he said I had done the correct cultural thing in knocking and it was her fault that she didn’t say something. Needless to say, that added to my “joy” at using bathrooms without locks.

    That evening’s service was somewhat subdued as both we and the villagers were quite tired. Two truckloads of path-followers from a neighboring village came to the service. After we had done our normal service (sang songs with motions, sang “choir” songs, someone spoke, took y@rp requests and prayed, ended official service, taught them “Boogy, Boogy”, etc, etc) and were walking home with Surrey Chai, he remarked, “You can dance!” in relation to the Boogy, Boogy song.

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 3

    24Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 1

    We awoke to noise of roosters crowing and chickens scratching in the hut. Also, of course, the sound of our wonderful friend, the big black pig grunting under the floor.

    We also found that during the night, Craig had dreamed about cats. When he awoke (during the night) he found a cat sleeping on his head.

    We had a wonderful breakfast of rice, noodles, veggies, and sausage.

    After breakfast, we went to a number of path-follower houses, y@rping and singing for the people and talking with them:
    * the dear old man who was a new follower of our elder brother
    * lady who fell and wasn’t at service, but who was feeling much better after our y@rpers
    * a young lady whose husband was already working in the rice paddies, but who had a cute little 2 year old





    Gee’s dad






    The old meeting place

    I had a huge, external frame back pack in which was loaded my stuff, Craig’s stuff, and some of Huber’s stuff. I sat on the steps putting it on my back. However, right after I got the straps on my back, it fell over, leaving me laying on top of it, legs kicking wildly in the air. I struggled mightily to right myself. Craig lamented the fact that there was no camera handy, but I was not incredibly sad.

    After we went through the daily, laborious process of closing the trunk, we set off. As we went, we were in a crazy mood and had a jolly old time of singing country songs, southern path-follower country, and hymns in a cacophonous mixture of random attempts at harmony.

    We stopped at the same restaurant we ate lunch at the day before because it was the only restaurant between us and the next village. However, we got there at 10:30, so in a typically laid-back Karen way, we hung out at the restaurant for an hour until it got closer to lunch. We had our same favorite lunch of Khow Pot Gai.


    Eating Khow Pot Gai

    As we were driving along, we found some incredible views. So we ascended a side road to the peak of a mountain and spent some time taking pictures:









    The cows that shared the mountain-top with us



    We then bounced across incredibly rough roads—heads crashed into the ceiling and windows quite frequently—to the next village. After Gee knocked over a fence while backing and not watching his one mirror, we dropped our stuff off at a hut, hopped back in the truck, and headed for Gee’s home village. We went to the school and taught some English songs to the students.








    Then we meandered around his village, greeting all his friends and relatives.


    Gee’s grandma



    Rice


    Kids joyfully skipping home from school



    Gee, his nephew, and his grandma on the other side


    An older man sitting and doing some sort of craft


    Our faithful driver, Gee

    We then went back to the village where we had left our stuff. Kelly, Katrina, and I had a marvelous time playing with a bunch of the kids. They absolutely loved to have their pictures taken and then look at the picture on the digital camera. They liked videos even more! After doing that for a while, we played some simple games with them. After we played one of their games that they taught us (they spoke no English, of course) by example, Kelly taught them a game. We used Thai numbers instead of English or Karen (which we didn’t know). It was a good game for us to cement the first ten Thai numbers in our minds! Nun, song, sam, see, ha, ho, jet, bet, gao, sip.






    We then proceeded to the meeting place for the evening meeting. Craig had the message and talked about the body of our elder brother working together. We sang the body song. They gave many y@rp requests and we laid hands on and y@rped for them, while Gee translated. The most touching was a fairly young lady that was incredibly crippled by some disease. One man gave a testimony (which Gee, of course, translated) that he wishes he’d be more educated so he could serve dad better. He also said that he wishes he could go to another village to tell about our elder brother, but that he has a large family and must stay here. I responded to his testimony by saying that there are many ways he can serve our elder brother in his own village and that when brother chose the 12 students, he chose many uneducated fishermen.

    After the official service, when we taught them “Boogy, Boogy, Cha-Cha-Cha”, I Cha-Cha-Cha’ed right over to the door, knocked the door open, and the guitar that was leaning against the door fell out of the church! Of course the whole church erupted in laughter. Next Gee grabbed two old ladies from the audience to come up and do “Boogy, Boogy, Cha-Cha-Cha” in front of the whole audience. It was hilarious! Gee is the master of making people look funny without offending them.

    We had a wonderful special time of bonding, sharing, y@rping, and laughing with the people of this village in that service.

    That night as Huber was snoring and Darrell and I lay awake, I suggested to Darrell that he pinch Huber’s nose shut so he would breathe through his mouth and stop snoring. Darrell reached over in the dark and tried to pinch his nose, but he couldn’t find his nose in the dark. Instead he found other regions of his face, which woke him and accomplished the snoring cessation nonetheless.

    Quote of the Day

    “You are so happy and smiling, not heavy like the other people who come. Thank you very much!”
    -lady giving a testimony (in English! She is an English teacher.) at the close of the service

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 2

    23Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 1

    Huber’s sleeping bag happened to be humongous monstrosity of a sleeping bag designed to take sub-zero temperatures. Craig purchased his sleeping bag on a previous trip to China, thus it was designed for higher temperatures and was the size of a large Bible. They look quite absurd beside each other. So of course Gee juxtaposed them and showed them to the Karen people there. They all roared with laughter. This was also a portent of things to come. Gee absolutely delights in making fun of people—whether it’s others or himself.


    The hut we stayed in for the night


    A panorama of the rice fields


    Gee walking to the school

    After eating a breakfast of noodles, we went to the local school. We watched the kids sing the Thai national anthem and raise the Thai flag. Then we taught English for an hour or so. We also taught them some songs including “Building up the Temple” and “Boogy, Boogy Cha-Cha-Cha”. “Boogy, Boogy Cha-Cha-Cha” is a Burmese song that Gee taught us. He doesn’t even know what it means, but there are definite motions to go along with it. You have to see the video to understand. Needless to say, we practice the motions somewhat less vigorously than he. In a previous conversation about dancing, someone had remarked that Mennonites don’t have hip-bones. After seeing Gee do “Boogy, Boogy Cha-Cha-Cha”, someone else remarked, “Oh, that’s what those things are for.” After doing it ourselves, someone remarked, “I guess Mennos have hip-bones after all.” (Can’t you see the ad? Brand-new! Barely been used!)


    The school


    Kids


    Playing a game to help them learn the basic body parts in English

    We then proceeded to the next village. On the way, we stopped at a large Karen meeting place that Gee’s friend is the shepherd of. We visited him briefly and then squeezed back into the truck and bounced on our way. We arrived at a cute village set on the hill-side. Our house had a resident pig under it which grunted throughout the day and night, adding ambience.

    The valley below the village had a gorgeous set of rice paddies. (Dad, Mom, and family: This is the village I am planning to take you to when you visit.) We shed our sandals and walked along the paddy walls, watching the workers plant rice. We then had a siesta in a little hut out in the middle of the paddy. It had bamboo “bark” floors, a thatched grass roof, and the structure was bamboo. It had open sides and we had a lovely time simply gazing across the paddies and up at the brilliant blue sky studded with white, fluffy clouds.


    Darrell


    Up-close view of a freshly planted rice paddy


    Panorama of the rice fields; notice the team in the bottom left corner


    A wide panorama of the rice paddies. It has major perspective warp because of the wide field of view, but it still looks beautiful


    Looking back toward the village from the rice field


    Taking a break




    A young man playing in the paddy close to his father who was working




    Your’s truly


    Me happily posing with a coffee plant while Craig, who does not like coffee (he is prone to remark when asked if he drinks coffee, “I don’t smoke crack either.”), expresses his feelings that were somewhat unlike my feelings of adoration and love.

    When we got back to the village, I bravely embarked upon a first: taking a dip shower. The “bathroom” was a roofless, cinder-block structure which had no door. There was a warped piece of tin that could be placed in the doorway. Being a simple standing object meant to block sight, it obviously had no lock. While Craig was utilizing the facilities, someone tried to enter, nearly knocking the tin over. However, Craig’s squeals and pushing on the tin kept it in place. Another characteristic of the tin was that it was quite wobbly. Craig seemed to have a dearth of luck with that restroom, because another time while he was taking a shower, the tin simply decided to fall over, which it promptly proceeded to do. Needless to say, he rapidly replaced it. Another unfortunate characteristic of the tin was that its girth was substantially less than that of the opening. While taking my shower, I solved that by hanging my towel over the 5-inch crack. Others simply took care to remain in the unexposed half of the bathroom.

    One of the bathroom’s central components was two large metal barrels filled with water. Another central component was the “squattie pottie”. (I don’t really know what else to call it. It’s also somewhat of a self-descriptive label.) In each of the barrels was a plastic container used to dip (cold!) water onto yourself to take a shower. So, that is what I did. I was grateful for the baths I took in snow-melt lakes in the mountains of Montana while at Idaho Wilderness Boys Camp, the cold showers in Costa Rica, and the cold showers at IGO. Temperature of showers doesn’t seem to really affect me any more. I poured water on myself, soaped up, and rinsed off. It was so incredibly refreshing! I hadn’t taken a shower for two days, and it is quite hot and humid.


    Huber spending time with dad


    Reflecting and preparing for the evening message

    This village had a church, but it was so small, it could not hold all the path-followers, so they would meet in the path-follower’s house that was the biggest. This also happened to be the hut we were staying at. They had no bell and the specified time for the service was “after supper”. So people slowly trickled in. While we were waiting there, Huber was contemplating the necessity of taking a shower. While we sat there, we were, of course, the objects of intense scrutiny as white people in a village that had seen none or very few. So when in that contemplative process Huber reached down to sniff his shirt, the 10-15 people sitting on the hut floor all burst into delighted laughter. When he decided a shower was a necessary endeavor, then returned seconds later unable to find the bathroom, they burst into even more merriment.

    It was my turn to speak that night and I talked about the importance of the word of dad. I was a bit uncomfortable talking about that because many of them can’t read, but it is still very important and true. They come to the shepherd and he reads the book to them. I used two analogies which either really struck home or they thought were hilarious and absurd, I’m not sure which. The first was the verse about the word of dad “equipping us for good works”. I told them that they wouldn’t think about going to the rice paddies without the proper tools. The second was about the verse that says the word of dad is like a two-edged sword; it penetrates and divides soul and spirit. I used the analogy of whacking through the jungle with a big knife. In the same way the big knife cuts away the foliage so they can see, the word of dad cuts away the deception of the heart.

    We next took y@rp requests and y@rped for people. We y@rped for one lady who had fallen and hurt herself and wasn’t there that evening. (When we visited her in the morning, she was doing much better.) We y@rped for a dear old man who had been a path-follower only several months. We prayed for many other maladies as well and also prayed a blessing on the village and its crops.

    After the service, we taught them several songs, including “Boogy, Boogy, Cha-Cha-Cha”. We had a wonderful, hilarious time of fellowship and getting to know them. There was one older lady that simply could not stop giggling!


    The dear old man who was a young follower of our older brother

    After everyone had left, four of us went out and gazed at the stars for awhile. The beautiful, huge sky was ringed with palm tree silhouettes and outlines of mountains. The bright moon made the few little clouds glow like nebulae. We also saw what we thought had to be two planets they were so incredibly bright. It was a beautiful, cool night.

    We returned to the hut a lay down on our rice mats to go to sleep. The pig grunting underneath the house blending in perfect harmony with Darrell snoring lulled us to sleep.

    Quote of the Day

    “I will be your cow-pie guy.”
    -Craig, in a conversation about Khow Pot Gai—Chicken-fried rice

    Second Quote of the Day

    “I dream of UIs.”
    -Kelly, coining the title of a programmer’s love song during a conversation about the bad UI (user interface) of Huber’s Creative MP3 player

    Third Quote of the Day

    “It’s funny how the spirit always tells me to say ‘Um…’”
    -Hans, in conversation about how not being prepared for a speaking assignment allows the Spirit free rein to speak

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  • Thailand - Karen Village Trip Diary - Day 1

    22Jul
    Categories: Personal, Photos Comments: 0

    Our trip started on a note that was a portent of the rest of the trip—that note was minimalism. We were all packed up, but when our rental vehicle arrived, its trunk was too small to carry all our things, so we shed pairs of clothing from our belongings and combined bags to reduce our baggage. After a great dint of squeezing and pushing, we packed everything in the trunk. However, it was packed in such a way that an avalanche was sure to ensue at the reopening of it. A flight attendant’s warning to “be careful while opening overhead compartments as contents may have shifted during flight” was quite applicable.



    Let me take this opportunity to introduce those on this ministry trip. Darrell Hershberger is from Stuarts Draft, VA (Pilgrim). He is a computer programmer who has spent some time at Faith Builders. Craig Miller is from Partridge, KS (Center) and is somewhere between my 2.5 and 3.5 cousin. Ryan Huber is from an urban organization in Redding, PA. Katrina Nisly is from a native American organization at Sioux Narrows, Ontario (Believer’s Fellowship). Kelly Shenk is from the urban organization at York, PA (Tidings of Peace).

    I was still suffering from a very severe sunburn on my hands, arms, and face from spending the entire previous day on a motorbike. So I was very sensitive to the touch of others. Peoples’ slightest touch in my tender areas elicited a yelp.

    We drove our rented vehicle over to GTO Center where we met our guide for the trip: Geerasak—Gee for short. He is the youth secretary for the Karen Baptists and travels around visiting Karen Baptist gatherings in villages located in Thailand. We added his luggage to our already voluminous load and started off.

    However, before we started, I had to explain the concept of an automatic transmission to him. He had never driven an automatic before. Throughout that day and the days following, he was the recipient of little bits of (mostly solicited) coaching.

    We drove for a while and then stopped at a town with a market. We added food to our load: rice, chicken, dried fish, vegetables, fruit, and a couple of hunks of mystery meat cut especially for us.


    Some of the neatly arranged stacks of fruit in the market


    Our meat being custom cut for us. The device above the meat that rotates with an electric motor is a contraption to keep the flies away.


    Darrell!?! Tired already?? We’ve barely got started! We are going to see many more hours on the road than this!


    A somewhat more chipper bunch driving along.

    We ate lunch at a park an hour or two from our village for the night. We sat in the grass and ate sticky rice and fried chicken. We met Gee’s shepherd father at the park. He is a very little man—his legs barely reach the pedals on his motorbike. He is also a very sweet, joyful man. We then continued on to our village for the day. It was moderately back in the bush—most of the several hour trip from GTO Center was on paved roads and then another hour or so on intermittently paved roads (about 1/6 of it paved).



    We arrived at the church and met the shepherd and the single family that is a path-follower. The shepherd is an M shepherd that moved