Good-bye Thailand

I wanted to say a couple things before I wrap this up.  First of all, thank you so much to everyone who supported me financially and prayerfully.  I couldn’t have  done this without you guys. I am so grateful for the opportunity to travel to Thailand and see what God is doing and try to join him in how he is working there. I have learned so much and I pray that the lessons won’t stop with my return.  Because I have learned so much about so many things I am not going to try to write out all the God moments I had and all the things I learned.  If you truly want to know, email me, or better yet, ask me in person if you’re going to see me in the near future.  :D  I’d love to share.  I’m still processing a lot of the lessons, so it’s a little hard for me to just list them.  Questions would be better…

Also, I will not be blogging much, if any, for a while so good-bye for now.  Thanks for following along. I’ve LOVED having you. It was so exciting and encouraging when I discovered that another 20 people had cared enough to check my new post.  You guys have been great.  If I think of something else that’s necessary to share, I’ll let everyone know.

Until next time,

Elizabeth

Our Last Week: Part 2

Creating this post feels a little weird since I’m sitting at home, but I figured you guys might want to see pictures from the last few days.

After a debrief time Thursday morning with the missionaries, we did a little shopping then went to the Complex for our last day at the English club. From the English club the plan was to take a taxi to the Green Market and meet Doni and Jason. However, our Thai apparently wasn’t quite right because we got dropped off at a random little grocery type market and not the new, Green Market.  We were displaced.  We found a 7/11 across the street and tried without success to describe where we were to Doni and Jason.  Finally we ended up just having the very helpful 7/11 guy call us another taxi and tell it to take us to a meeting point with Doni and Jason.

It was a slightly sketchy area and it was starting to get dark, so this was definitely not my favorite experience in Thailand but hey, it makes a great story now.

Once we got back to Doni and Jason, we headed for the right market, before hitting up the movies to see Batman.  As you can see, at the market there was this awesome dance show going on.

Friday morning we saw Herbie outside the coffee shop.

We went to a Thai flower nursery for part of culture time.

These leaves had green tops and bright red undersides.  Really interesting.

After the nursery we had time to do whatever we wanted that we hadn’t gotten to do yet.  Emily and Jenna got a massage.

Guess what I did?

 

Boys, I know you don’t care, but bear with me.  I got my first manicure and pedicure, plus some nail art.  Yes, those are feathers on my finger nails. I was really excited haha

After the mall we went to one of the markets that Thai people actually shop at.  Instead of the big grocery store that we shopped at, most of the people of Khon Kaen shop at a little local food market like this one.

 

Please notice that everything is in little baggies

 

 

Fresh fish!

Friday night we went to the Thai Crusade chapel.  It was the Korean Crusade team’s last event with the Thai Crusade people so a lot of the night was devoted to various good-bye videos and heartfelt speeches.  We three American interns felt a little out of place in between all the good-byes. We did have to say our own good-byes when we left since we were leaving Thailand Monday.

 

 

We played an enormous game of musical chairs.

 

 

 

All the girls

Saying good-bye to all the Crusade students and staff was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  They have been wonderful and I’m so happy that I got to know them.

 

We babysat Debbie and Les’ kids for 24 hours Saturday and Sunday.  It was a ton of fun but I was pooped by the time we were done.  Being a mom is hard work.

 

A model in the making!

Sunday night we went out for dinner as a team for the last time (sniff, sniff) and one of the deserts we ordered was green tea cake. Not my favorite but a must try.

 

We love you Weimers, and we’ll miss you! Thank you for everything!!!!!

 

Debbie and Les – same thing haha you guys have been so great.  I really appreciate everything.

 

We took a break from packing on Monday to hang-out and say bye to P’Aw and Cleo.  I’ll miss you guys! I’m so glad I got to know both of you while I was in Thailand and I’ll definitely be stalking you on facebook!

 

And yes, just to clarify, I did make it home safely.  Thanks everyone for your prayers.  There were no major issues this time and I arrived home on time!

 

Our Last Week: Part 1

Our last week has pretty normal, but nonetheless great. Fair warning, the last couple posts probably won’t be up until I get back…which will be Tuesday night.

Emily and I went sunbathing on Monday.  I was hoping to be sun-kissed but turns out Thai sun is a little hotter than I gave it credit for and I got a little crispy…oops…that’s what aloe is for, right?

We went to Crusade’s English club but there was a miscommunication and they weren’t there.  We decided to have an adventure coming back and songtaew it instead of getting a taxi.  By the way, I’m drinking carrot and pineapple juice which is actually really good.

Tuesday morning at Starbucks before going to help out at the car wash

There were too many cars for us to teach the employees more English so we ended up re-doing the windows (which did need cleaned again).

We had a system going where if one of us missed a spot we would tap the window to communicate where.  So efficient of us

Dinner , well actually desert

Wednesday morning coffee! Debbie made these delicious and huge cookies filled with nuts, craisons, and chocolate.  So good!

We got gai yang (barbecued chicken), sticky rice, and green papaya salad from the stand close to our house.  Food there is so good.

final result

After going to the language club again Wednesday afternoon, we went over to the Weimer’s house for pizza.

After dinner we talked a lot about practical applications of the principles in When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity. Jason made some strong book recommendations for future reading about business as missions and other related topics.  I have a lot of reading to do… 

When Helping Hurts

I like to help people. I’m not entirely sure why, but I know that’s how God made me. Poverty is something I care a lot about and something I want to devote my life to working against. However, I’ve learned that helping is never as simple as it sounds.

One of the biggest take-aways from my time in Thailand will be a new understanding of what poverty is and how to fix it. If you have ANY INTERST at all in helping the materially poor, participating in missions (especially short-term), or development, then please , please read Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton, and/or When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert (if you only read 1, read When Helping Hurts, it’s sooooooooooooooooo good!)

I’ll keep this short so you will actually read it. Here’s a list of 10 thoughts from these 2 books that have totally rocked my world:

1. As Americans, we like to throw money at problems. Rarely do we check-up on the difference our money is making. GUILTY. I give, doing my good deed, and am no longer involved.
2. Poverty is not just about material wealth. While that is a part of it, the essence of poverty is found in broken relationships.
3. I am guilty of paternalism. I am especially guilty of knowledge, resource, and managerial paternalism.
4. 1. Relief 2. Rehabilitation 3. Development – each is an appropriate response to a different situation of material need. I am guilty of providing relief aid when development has been necessary.
5. Relief with its giver, receiver dynamic, should only be used in emergency situations where there is an immediate, critical need
6. Never do for someone what they can do for themselves
7. Short – term missions trips generally hurt more than they help because 1. The focus of the trips has become about the participants’ experience and not about what is truly best for the people being served 2. The sending church/organization does not put enough effort into truly finding out what/if there are needs for a short-term team to meet
8. What the materially poor feel about being materially poor: shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, depression, social isolation, voicelessness
9. Development is a very slow process with very few quick results.
10. When approaching a situation of material poverty, after the appropriate response has been determined, the next step is to NOT look at all the things in the community/individual that need fixed, but to find out all the things that are right with the community/individual – what assets they have.

I have hurt while thinking I was helping and that breaks my heart. I know some of you guys following along care deeply about impoverished people both in the U.S. and around the world. If that’s you, I would really encourage you to check out these books. They will challenge your thinking and stretch you in really good ways. If I’ve interested you, here’re links to buy both the books.

When Helping Hurts – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-helping-hurts-steve-corbett/1110784246?ean=9780802457059

Toxic Charity – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toxic-charity-robert-d-lupton/1103279332?ean=9780062076205

Quality Time

This weekend we spent a lot of quality time with people.  It was great! I loved it  Friday night – Sunday morning the Campus Crusade staff held a little mini retreat with the help of the Korean students.  We had other obligations for a lot of the weekend, but we came Saturday morning.

P.S. stay tuned for prayer requests at the end!

We got there just in time for some English/Thai worship, which was a really cool experience.  Next we broke out into 3 different workshops: K pop, body worship, and Korean cooking, all led by the Korean students. Can you guess who did what? Jenna did body worship, Emily did cooking, and yes, I did K pop.  I discovered it’s essentially the same as hip-hop, which means that it is really fun, but not my strongest suit haha

Emily made kim bop which was absolutely delicious.  After workshops we all hung out until lunch.  We, sadly, had to go after lunch, but it was so great to get to hang out with the Korean and Thai students for the few hours we were there.

We went to Central to meet Cleo, one of our Australian friends, for dinner. We got there a little early, so we shopped around at the market that had sprung up on the first floor, since we had last been there.

We ate at a Japanese restaurant that was very similar to MK.  We had a soup bowl in the middle of our table, and then nabbed ingredients from this conveyor belt that ran all throughout the restaurant.  It was a really fun, different eating experience.

I asked Emily to take a picture of the hand-washing area in the mall bathroom.  It’s a trough with a bunch of little water spickets in the top…rather different…

Cleo badly needed a new pair of shoes, and asked if we could go shoe sopping after dinner…naturally I didn’t complain

Sunday the entire team made a trip out to P’Yah’s house to install a bottle light, fix bikes, and just be with P’Yah.  P’Yah is the house cleaner for our villa, and for the houses of the two Encompass families, who have been really excited about their growing relationship with her. P’Yah lives a little ways out in the country in a typical Thai village.  As you can see, she had chicks.  The kids had so much fun with the little fuzzy guys.

This is P’Yah’s old house.

Here is her new house that she has worked really hard to save money for.  Once she had the money, she built it herself.  I used to think I was a decently hard worker but I’m not so sure now.  P’Yah set the standard pretty high…

Since the Encompass team is so focused on fostering relationships of mutual exchange, we did not bring a lot of material things to give away to P’Yah.  However one of the things we did do for her was install a bottle light in her bathroom so she could see.  This is her bathroom pre-bottle light.

I’m not totally sure how the chemicals work, but there is some sort of something in the bottle that causes it to provide light when the top is being hit by sunlight or moonlight.  I think this is a really cool idea because it is cheap, easy to make,  and sustainable.

After bottle light – Jason said it casts the same amount of light, when the sun is shining, as a 50-60 watt light bulb

While Jason installed the bottle-light in the roof of P’Yah’s bathroom, Les fixed up some broken bikes that people from P’Yah’s village had brought to her house.

Wanna know what I did? You’re looking at it! I sat and took pictures.  Disclaimer: not all of the pictures are mine though..props to Emily for her photography skills!

P’Yah fed us a delicious lunch of som tom thai, sticky rice, chicken, greens, and a delicious orange sauce.

All of us girls with P’Yah

Thai countryside is absolutely beautiful.  Our pictures don’t do it justice.  The rice fields create a patchwork of beautiful green as you look out over the land.  Everything is so green, which creates this really cool contrast with the blue, blue sky . It feels so peaceful.

P’Yah showed us her rice fields.

She showed us how to plant the rice.  She hasn’t finished planting all her fields yet because it hasn’t been wet enough.

After spending the day outside, the team went to the pool, and our neighbors joined us.

props to Emily for the sweet photography

 

A few prayer requests:

-We start our journey back to the states on Monday night.  Please pray for safe and smooth travel.

-Please pray that we would continue to have open hearts to hear God speaking to us throughout the remainder of the trip.

-Also, please be praying for our return to the states.  It’ll definitely be an adjustment, and it will take a while to process everything that God has taught us here.  Please pray that God would continue to show us how He wants to use what we have learned here back home.

But Look at the Clouds

Since there are soooooo many pictures from just Friday, I’ll do it separately from the rest of the weekend.  We had culture time with Doni and for our excursion, we went to what I’m going to call the bamboo forest wat.  It was a large complex, with a lot of different Buddha statues, and it was incredibly beautiful. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking…

We stopped at 7/11 before hitting up the road for the wat, and we all tried these jello juice drinks that Doni recommended.  I really liked the taste of mine, but I couldn’t quite get over the fact that there were jello pieces in my juice…

One of Buddha’s monkey guardians, out by the parking lot

the bamboo forest on either side of the path

Buddha idol #1

more bamboo

#2 – the Burmese Buddha

I believe this is the Chinese Buddha but I’m not totally sure

While we were looking at this one, the lady you see here hurried up with her suitcase, took off her shoes, and immediately started praying to the Buddha. It was really interesting to see how much of a priority this was for her since she had obviously just arrived or was just about the leave. Oh by the way, the big pink thing he is sitting on is suppose to be a lotus flower.

This is going to sound really vague, but you know that Asian gong sound that is in like every American movie that is set in Asia, ever? Well here’s the source.

Here is the map of the complex. If you look really closely you can see Nemo and Dori near the top.

An idol of the water goddess, appropriately placed right before the large fish ponds

By the fish pond, there was a wall filled with murals depicting the story of Buddha’s journey to enlightenment. Here’s the first one, where he is still the rich, young prince (on the left).  He is discontented with life and takes a walk on which he sees an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and then a Hindu monk.  I don’t know the whole story really well, but his walk convinces him that he should give up his wealth for a life of suffering.

Here’s another mural, much later in the story.  Remember the water goddess statue? Here she is, protecting Buddha from the evil spirits.

You could feed the fish, and the second that food landed in the water, a bazillion fish converged on it as you can see.  The fish pond mostly contained catfish, very large goldfish, and turtles.

Look at all the fish!

This is the meditation bridge.  The gaps between the plates are suppose to make you slow down and meditate as you cross.  As a reference, my foot easily fit in the gaps between plates, so I was contemplating staying on the bridge while I was on it.

Ohmigosh! scary bridge!

A wat is not just a temple, but the entire temple complex. The monks live in the wat in houses that look like this.

It was evident at the bamboo wat that a lot of effort had gone into making all the idols and their enclosures, which were cool to see.  Yet they couldn’t compare with the peaceful, little bamboo forests, or the way the sunlight played on the brilliantly green leaves.  My eyes were drawn past the statues to the crazy variety of plants that surrounded me, and the color of the bright sunlight as it filtered through the soft green canopy. There was no comparison.

An extremely tall Buddha statue, and just to give you an idea of scale, I’m just a tad taller than the pink lotus flower it is standing on – While we were walking around the wat complex, Jason mentioned that idols this big really made the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego come alive. Looking at this guy, I totally agreed. While there are plenty of idols in the states, there aren’t really any tangible ones.  Seeing literal statue-idols, and people offering them food and drink and bowing down to them has breathed new life into my understanding of the Old Testament.

As I stood before this statue, my eyes were continually drawn away from it, to the clouds behind. Clouds are a little tricky to get right in pictures, but I tried anyways. The statue just looked so insignificant and flimsy in front of the dramatic grandeur of the clouds behind that I couldn’t help but wonder why worship this image that man had created, instead of the creator of something so beautiful and out-of-human-control as the clouds.  My response to this idol: but look at the clouds!

remember, look at the clouds

For any Lord of the Rings nerds out there, the color and style of the pillars reminded me of Theoden’s Hall at Edoras, minus the Buddha images

There are statues of fish and turtles on the right side of the fountain

There was also a tank on the side of another, smaller fountain, with 3 fish that were longer than I am tall. I believe Emily’s post has more specific info about these fish if you’re curious. http://thethaitrek.wordpress.com/

There were a lot of roosters and chickens sort of wondering around.

There were 2 enormous elephants outside of one of the Buddha houses.  Can you find me??

Jason and Doni

On our way home we stopped at the stand by our house and got grilled chicken, khao niaw (sticky rice), and som tam thai  (green papaya salad) for lunch

It was decided that Jenna would drive back from the stand to our house.  Now, as you can see, something is different about driving in Thailand.  Yes, that’s right, they drive on the right side of the car.  Jenna did a fabulous job driving the 1 minute back to the villa, minus the fact she turned the windshield wipers on instead of her turn signal

 

This Week’s Challenge: Teach English Without a Voice

In spite of the fact I’ve never taken an education class, I found myself teaching, or helping to teach English nearly every day this week.  I actually really enjoy it even though sometimes it is a bit challenging to figure out how best to communicate what I want to teach my Thai student, since we come from such vastly different language and cultural backgrounds.  Also, in case you were wondering, I am feeling MUCH better, but I seem to have misplaced my voice on Wednesday and have yet to find it (prayer request!!!), which has limited my teaching ability. Alright so Tuesday:

We are now spending our Business as Missions time at the car wash teaching the employees English (at their request), if they don’t have cars to wash.  Tuesday, Jason did most of the teaching to show of how to go about these group English lessons.  Thais love to laugh (which is more than fine with me) so the challenge is to make learning English fun.

Since I was still feeling pretty horrible on Tuesday, we just went straight back to the villa and did nothing else until dinner time.

Check out the clouds

After a 2 hour nap, life looked much better, and I joined Jenna and Emily for dinner with a missionary that Emily had been connected with through family friends in Seattle.

We went to a chain Japanese/Chinese restaurant called MK, where you order a bunch of vegetables and meat, throw it all in a soup pot, and let it cook.  Everyone then serves themselves.  It’s really good.

Debbie (the missionary) was so sweet, and imparted to us some wisdom about life and being a missionary in Thailand.

She also introduced us to Swenson’s, which is an ice cream place if you couldn’t tell.  Mine is the one with the oreos and I absolutely can’t believe that haven’t been before!

Emily’s fantastic photography: This is a great picture of our neighborhood on a sunny day, with all the green.  Can you feel the heat???

After coffee and really fabulous scones with Debbie Wednesday morning, we took Eva on an adventure to grab some groceries at Lotus, before meeting back up with Debbie, and some other members of the home-school co-op for lunch.

This was Emily’s face after she met her match in spiciness. I felt this needed to be included because I thought it would never happen…

We went to the Complex to teach English again Wednesday afternoon.  They were a little low on students so we were sent to go make some new friends, with interpreters, and invite them to come up and learn some English.  It’s hard for me to go up to people I don’t know cold turkey for several reasons, but God is good and we got to talk to a girl who had heard of God but wasn’t quite convinced He was the only way yet. A lot of Thais who aren’t believers may have heard of God, and even accepted Him, but they haven’t given up Buddha and the spirits they worship.  Like our new friend, many Thais don’t believe He is the only true God.

As you may noticed, there are sprinklers misting the Complex.  There is no AC in there, so the mist is suppose to cool the building down.  However, from my experience, it only adds the the humidity in the building.  I should also mention that I was feeling much better Wednesday, minus the fact that I gradually lost my voice throughout the day, so that by dinner, I could barely talk loud enough to be easily understood.

Chillin with the Thai Campus Crusade students! They’re awesome!

Emily and I decided to do some of a P90X Kenpo workout Wednesday night. Yeah, we look awesome

So much hard chore! This may or may not have been posed…

I had very little voice again Thursday, so I didn’t get to help out much with teaching English at the car wash.  We only had 1 student for 20 minutes because a lot of cars came in, so  it wasn’t the worst day to have no voice. Since our student was busy washing cars, we went and explored a weird-foods grocery store close by before heading back to the villa for our book study.  As you can see, Jason totally photo-bombed our picture. Oh and in case I haven’t pointed this out before, the car wash part is on the left and the cafe is on the right.

Why don’t they make cars this color in America?

We tried out MK by ourselves (just us interns) for lunch

Thursday afternoon we went to teach English at the Complex again.  Still voiceless, I was along as moral support.  The KKU students have midterms exams this weekend, so we had very few come for English lessons.  While we were waiting for students, one of the Korean Crusade Team students taught us part of the Korean alphabet.

We did have 1 girl come for English lessons, and Emily did most of the teaching.  I helped out a little because it was Emily’s first student.

After language we went had dinner with Debbie and the kids.  Debbie makes great chili.  Actually, Debbie makes great everything.

I gave fencing lessons after dinner. (i miss fencing)  We didn’t have real weapons, so knitting needles had to do.  After fencing lessons, Jenna and I watched a movie before heading back for the night.

 

Thanks for all the prayers for quick healing! As I said, I’m totally better minus the fact my voice is still really hoarse.