Sunday Morning at Immanuel

Last week, my friend Vee asked me to speak at this morning's early service. I could speak on any passage I chose and Pastor Win, the senior pastor, would interpret. I Was given forty minutes to speak (keep in mind that with someone translating, it means about twenty minutes from me.)

I chose to speak on my favorite passage, John 9 , and the story of the blind man... "Once I was blind, but now I can see," and the fact that there is no argument against a changed life. I encouraged them to be willing to share THEIR stories of how their lives had changed since meeting Jesus.

I managed to finish up in a half hour, and it seemed to be pretty well received. Afterward, Pastor Win came to me and said that what I had shared was something the whole congregation had to hear, and he asked if I could cut it to fifteen minutes and share with the main service at 10:30. Yikes! You can't really say no to something like that, so I did so, and that seemed to go quite well, too. Thank you SO much to those who knew this was happening and who remembered to pray for me!

The Market

After we finished with the kids activities in the slums today, we sent the team to the nearby market, as usual, to get supper from the vendors. This time I went along. Several goodies available (although not all were eaten).


See, the crickets from last week were minor league compared to these bad boys, which are easily three inches long. You'll never hear from me what they taste like. That is out of my range.

Fresh frogs, anyone?

Chicken soup... Looks like the chicken drowned or something.

I had to.

Gabrielle

This young lady is Gabrielle, my new niece.

For over two years now, my sister and brother-in-law have been working to adopt a little girl from China. Unless you know someone who has been through this process, it is almost impossible to understand how complicated and, at times, frustrating it can be to go through the foreign adoption process. Not to mention how expensive.

All of that time and effort is about to pay off for Damon and Linda, though, as they were notified that their adoption of little Gabbie has been approved and that they fly to China at this end of this month to pick her up. According to the orphanage where she now lives, Gabbie has been living at the orphanage since she was an infant. She is now a little over three years old. Needless to day, my sister and broth-in-law are thrilled to death and frantically scrambling to get things ready for her arrival in Kansas City.

I am so proud of Linda and Damon for opening their hearts and home to a little one who otherwise would likely have faced a very difficult life. Please pray for all of them as they travel August 28th to China and return to the states with Gabrielle around September 10th.

Streetside food

One of the many things Bangkok is famous for is it's streetside food vendors. To give you a feel, I took a few photos yesterday along my way to lunch, a couple of blocks from where I work.


Fresh fruit is readily available from a lot of stands. Guava, pineapple, pamellos, and of course, mango, the 'official' fruit of Bangkok. There are many other choices that vary day by day.

Lots of lunch choices at many roadside stands. Here are sausages, fish balls and dumplings, along with who knows what else?

Many small restaurants line the streets, too small to seat folks inside, so you get your bowl of noodles or plates of rice with chicken or pork or whatever, and sit at tables actually ON the sidewalks. Some places don't have tables and you just sit on a plastic stool with the plate on your lap. By the way, few Thais use chopsticks unless eating Chinese or Japanese food. Most can handle chopsticks with ease, but use a fork and spoon like Americans would... well mostly, except the fork is used to push food onto the spoon...

My lunch yesterday was crispy fried chicken. A leg, thigh, and wing along with a package of sticky rice for 55 baht, or well under two dollars.

Street scenes

To give you a better sense of day to day life for me here, I wanted to just show a few very common street scenes from yesterday.

I have written before about motorcycle taxis. This is at a stand across the street from work and a young lady is taking off for work. No helmet and she'll be weaving in and out of traffic all the way, driving between lanes of traffic and maybe even on the sidewalks. Women in skirts just hop on side saddle.
One of our associates starts her morning by praying and burning incense sticks at the Fenix Tower's spirit house.

It is very common to see beggars, most disabled, along the streets. Often they play some sort of music. This man is blind. I often see a couple of other blind folks along this same stretch of Sukhumvit, standing with a small karaoke machine, singing Thai music. Their singing and playing just adds to the unique everyday sounds of Bangkok.

Work

I work for DST Systems, a company which does, among many other things, record keeping for the mutual fund industry. I have been a software project leader there for several years. DST opened a Bangkok office something about four years ago. I am here now as a "subject matter expert," working with Thai project leaders and serving as a consultant and sharing business knowledge about the retirement plan side of our business.

The photo above (from left to right)shows Momo (a Thai project leader I work with), me, Steve Lee (an American expat I work alongside), and Lek, Momo's technical leader.

This is a part of the office where I work. Because our bangkok office is rapidly growing, it recently relocated to the newly built Fenix Tower (spelling is correct) on Sukhumvit Road, the main street in the business area of Bangkok. The office is not as cramped as it looks in this photo, although you'll notice it is not the normal cube farm.

Some of our workers on lunch break in the area next to the cafeteria, getting serious about some pong pong. You don't want to play against most of these guys. It is pretty intense.

Probon

Vee asked me to go with him as he visited a Baptist Church in Bangna before heading out to the slums today. He wanted to see a member of his church who is dealing with HIV. Probon has been HIV positive for almost five years. His health varies a great deal. He lives closer to the Bangna church and has had to sell the taxi he drove for a living. Vee asked me to meet with him and just give him some encouragement, so I sat with a young translator and spoke with him for about fifteen minutes.


Later, the team gathered around to pray for him. He and his wife were very touched. Vee told me that he goes here to visit Probon twice each week. It is great to see his church support him like this. The church at work.

Oh no he didn't!

Oh yes he did!

As always, when the team goes to the slums, after we are done teaching the children, we gather for supper together. Someone from the team is dispatched to go get several dishes from a street vendor in the area. You never know what you'll end up with. Two weeks ago, it was frog bits. Today, it finally happened... a nice bag of fried crickets. I had to...

Dudes were not nearly as bad as I had feared. Now, if I am at Morton's and they offer me the choice between a 24 ounce porterhouse and fried crickets, I am going with the beef. But it is another biggie off my to-do list!


Dinner is served!

The unlucky victim.

3. Over the lips and through the gums.

Look out, tummy, here it comes!

Food

You'll get lots of posts about food, since Thailand is ALL about it. Today, I ate at a new food court not far from here and had one of the best meals since I arrived. A bowl of mixed seafood with rice soup and a plate of mixed seafood and noodles. Squid, shrimp, and fish chunks in both. Fantastic stuff and with a drink, it came to just under three bucks.

The other photo is of supper two weeks ago that the team ate in the slums. A couple of team members went and bought food from a vendor and brought it back for us. On a bed of rice, we have pieces of an omelet, some minced pork with spices, chicken, and the dark things in the ten o'clock position are fried frog bits. And the little dudes are pretty tasty!

I passed a vendor last week, who had a cart with various meats for sale. On the cart were some huge bullfrogs all dressed out. I didn't get a photo last time, but next time I see that, I promise I will.

Working with the BSC

In addition to my work on weekends with Immanuel Baptist Church, I also continue to volunteer with the Baptist Student Center here in Bangkok. The BSC teaches English to thousands of Thais each year, and uses that platform to introduce Thais to the gospel. I simply show up when I can to give the students the chance to practice their English in informal conversation. I also attend their "Friday Night Live" gatherings, where they get together to sing and play games in English. As I developed relationships there, I began to look for chances to build on the informal conversations and began to go shopping or to dinner with a few of them at a time. Three of the students I see a lot of are New, Pen, and Pai. New is 22 and heading to Saudi Arabia to be a flight attendant with Saudi Airlines. Pen is a bit older and works for a shipping company. Pai is a 20 year old college student. At this point, only Pai has crossed the line of faith, but New and Pen are very close, I believe. There will be more about "Bamboo Pai" in another post.

Vee

I have become very good friends already with Vee, the assistant pastor at Immanuel Baptist. He is in charge of their community outreach programs. Vee has such a gentle spirit and you can just sense his love of God. He is in training to eventually start a church. We have really clicked and greatly enjoy working together.

His wife, Mhuey, has a heart-wrenching story. As a small child, she was sold several times. Because she was too young for prostitution, she was just being held until she was old enough. By the grace of God, she was rescued in a police raid and eventually adopted and raised by an American missionary couple. She just graduated from Bible college and works alongside Vee in community outreach.

Working in the slums

I am pretty new to this blogging. I meant to add more photos to the last post...

Sundays

Sundays are pretty special for me. I attend Immanuel Baptist Church, a Thai speaking church with translation for those of us who speak English. After Sunday School and church, we all (the whole church) have lunch. After that, I join a team that heads out into some of the slums of Bangkok. The team's focus is on evangelism, with the hope of establishing home churches, but right now, they are just trying to open doors. To do that, they offer programs for the children. In one slum, they provide an arts and crafts program with fifteen to twenty kids participating. In another, they give English lessons to a little over thirty children.

Big C?

The name Big C comes from my first stay here in 2006. Almost all Thais have nicnames because their real names are so long. I was being introduced to a group of Thais and they all gave me their nicknames. I told them that I had a nickname in the US, too... that my friends all call me TC for my initials or just plain old "C." Immediately several of them pointed at me and yelled, "Big C!" and they all laughed.

I found out that Thailand is one of the few countries left on the planet that has not been conquered by WalMart. Instead, their big discount store is called, "Big C." Great play on words, though, because I am also a good bit bigger than most folks in this country!