• 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: 0

    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 to the village from another village to do do M work in this totally Buddhist/Native religion village. There was already a place of meeting there on the hillside and two houses—the shepherd’s house and the family that just became path followers. These were located a small distance away from the village.




    The dear old local shepherd


    This little girl was incredibly cute and we had fun playing with her. However, after some time, her favored means of recreation became to throw the tennis ball as hard as she could at one of us that was least expecting it and then she would giggle with delight as we quickly ducked.




    The place of meeting


    Native shepherd reflecting


    After relaxing there a bit, we hopped back in the SUV and headed down the steep, rutted road to a neighboring village in which nobody was a path-follower. We went hut to hut visiting people, singing for them, talking to dad for them, and giving candy to the kids and shampoo to the parents. An older dude came out with a huge knife (looked just like a machete, but I don’t know what they call them over here) and cut three roses and gave one to each of the girls and me.


    The neighboring village


    Threshing rice


    Sifting rice


    Hogs


    Satellite TV is amazingly common in Karen villages

    We then went back and visited people in the village in which the meeting place was located. We saw a most unusual sight: a cross between a pig and cow! It was so absurd and amazing we just stopped and stared. It was pink all over, had a pig’s nose, and was rooting in a pit of sloshy mud. However, it also had horns! Gee informed us that we were looking at water buffalo! Somehow they look a bit different than the Serengeti Africa water buffalo on National Geographic films.


    The pig-cow–Thailand’s water buffalo.

    We then went back to the shepherd’s hut and ate supper. We ate sitting on the floor on rice mats. The dishes sat in the middle and everyone used their own (Oriental style) spoon to serve themselves. We had rice, crispy dried fish, and a broth to go over the rice.

    That night we had the meeting in the shepherd’s house because the meeting place didn’t have lights yet. Darrell spoke for 10-15 minutes about being the light of the world and a city set on a hill (the meeting place is on a hill overlooking the village). We taught them some English songs: “Building up the Temple” and “He’s Got the Whole World”. We also sang some “choir songs” (as Gee called them) including “Have you been to [elder brother] for that cleansing power” which they sang back to us in Karen in 4 part harmony!

    That night we slept on rice mats on the floor. The ladies slept in the next room with only a thin wall between us. That night there was a ferocious thunderstorm that shook the whole hut on stilts.

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  • Chiang Mai, Thailand Sky

    11Jun
    Categories: Photos Comments: 0

    The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky displays what his hands have made.
    Psalms 19:1 (GW)











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  • Quote of the Day

    03Jun
    Categories: Personal, Quote of the Day Comments: 3

    “Too much Thai food.”
    –a Thai street vendor at the night bazaar as he pointed at my stomach. Being fat is not considered a bad thing in this culture.

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  • Chiang Mai Sunset

    30Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0


    Chiang Mai Sunset from the IGO roof


    Chiang Mai Sunset a few minutes later

    Different qualities (First sunset):
    Medium resolution, high quality (3000×573, 398 KB)
    High resolution, low quality (11,534×2204, 895 KB)
    High resolution, high quality (11,534×2204, 14.4 MB)

    Different qualities (Later sunset):
    Medium resolution, high quality (3000×614, 421 KB)
    High resolution, low quality (11,028×2256, 917 KB)
    High resolution, high quality (11,028×2256, 5.69 MB)

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  • Two IGO Tidbits

    30Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Shelly hilariously and truthfully wrote:

    You know you’re living in Chiang Mai when………
    – You’re taking a shower and yell, “Hey! Who took all the cold water?”
    – You realize you’ve been dreaming at night about pancakes and french fries.
    – You can’t remember the last time you wore a pair of shoes for more than 15 minutes.
    – You’re totally convinced the “manna from Heaven” in the Bible was pizza.
    – The temperature in the dorms gets down to 80 and you feel like you really need a blanket.

    I’d like to add my own:
    – Most everyone bows politely to you and says “Sawati Krup”
    – When you are down in the kitchen at night getting a drink and you hear a noise and see a shadow flicker past the window and you whirl to look, it is one of your Mooban’s (neighborhood) security men patrolling on his bicycle
    – Your Buddhist neighbor brings tropical fruit to welcome you to the neighborhood
    – Whenever something glass breaks, you yell “5 baht!” (Because that’s how much the Coke bottles cost.)
    – You can never remember which way to motion with your hand for a taxi (song-taew)–one is an appropriate way and the other way means… well, something else
    – When taking change from a clerk, your left hand always comes rushing up to accept the money in addition to your right hand because you forgot yet again that you’re supposed to handle money with two hands, because it has the picture of the king on it
    – There are two times as many fans in the room as lights
    – You are treated to the intriguing sight of a small fan bursting into flames (and subsequent frantic activity) on someone’s bed because they forgot and plugged a 110 fan into a 220 outlet
    – You hear a frog croaking and you look around for a little lady selling stuff and rubbing a stick on a wooden thingamabopper
    – You hear a constant stream of complaints from a certain person who was unfortunate enough to receive his tetanus shot in his posterior, much to his continued discomfort

    –

    A large roach/beetle (a big bug!) started crawling up the wall behind two females. This precipitated about 15 minutes of urgent activity by some noble male rescuers who embarked on a mission to capture the bug in a Coke bottle without touching it or slaying it. Darrell captured some hilarious video of the ensuing endeavor.

    (By the way, if you are at all interested in life in Thailand or in IGO, be sure to be reading the IGO blog aggregator.)

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  • Thai Cultural Lesson of the Day

    27Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    If you are trying to cross the street at night and there is an approaching car that blinks its lights at you, it doesn’t mean they’re letting you go ahead, like it would in the States. It means they are warning you that if you step out into the street, they will run you over.

    Don’t lick stamps. They have pictures of the king on them.

    (btw, we are getting our Thai cultural lessons from our TESOL teacher. He (Nevin Bowman) has lived in Thailand for a number of years. We are very fortunate to have him. He has a Masters in English and is a former professor of English at Syracuse University.)

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  • The Positive Side of Incarnational Living

    24Apr
    Categories: Christianity, Personal Comments: 0


    Row of sandals… Incarnational living… No shoes inside…

    No A/C is the uncomfortable side of incarnational living, but no shoes inside is the comfortable side.

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  • Currency and Temps

    23Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    I must now switch my currency conversions from “colones times two, chop off three zeros” (Costa Rica) to “baht times three, chop off two zeros” (Thailand). 515 colones = $1 and 35 baht = $1. Ahh, the mental agonies of standing in a marketplace with your head cocked toward the sky and one eye shut in concentration trying to multiply and divide and arrive at that American-dollar based, Mennonite trained sense of value.

    Last night I was shocked to discover that the temperature at night in the men’s dorm was 94 degrees! We have no A/C, as I might have mentioned before, but it is surprisingly comfortable. I am amazed at how fast one’s body adjusts–of course I had the advantage of being in similar conditions in Costa Rica for two weeks–and I am becoming convinced that A/C is a nice, but unnecessary, luxury.

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  • IGO Blogs Aggregator

    23Apr
    Categories: Blogosphere, Tech Comments: 0

    I have put up an aggregator for the IGO blogs.

    If any techie person wants to apply this patch to the planet planet source code and email it to me, I would be very delighted. Obviously we all here are on GMT+7 and UTC is somewhat less than satisfactory.

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  • Updates from Thailand and IGO

    23Apr
    Categories: Blogosphere, Personal Comments: 0

    I don’t have time right now to give any Thailand updates, so I’ll refer you to some fellow students who have been doing a good job blogging it. Kelly has been doing the best job so far. Huber has some sweet pictures of the Arctic. There are some more that are blogging it too:
    Phil & Becky Stoltz
    Val Yoder
    Arlin
    Shelly

    There should be a couple more showing up on the IGO Xanga blogring.

    I’m looking into setting up an IGO blog aggregator… Stay tuned…

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