Friday Night Live

When I came here in 2006, I was introduced to the Baptist Student Center, located in the heart of Bangkok. The BSC operates one of the most respected English language schools in the country, enrolling thousands of Thai students a year. Young adults and college students see English proficiency as a key to their future and almost all of them take some kind of training. Because the BSC is staffed by volunteer teachers (folks from Baptist churches in the US, Australia England and other English speaking countries who give up four months to several years to come and teach), they can afford to hold tuition far below what any other school charges.

James Redeker, the director of the BSC immediately took me up on my offer to help. My job was simple. I was to show up in the small commons area just outside the ground floor about 6:30 in the evening. They have sessions from 5:00 - 6:30 and from 7:00 - 8:30. In between, students gather in the commons area to visit and eat supper. My role was simply to introduce myself to students and offer to visit with them and let them practice their English. I loved doing that, and the students really responded. I was there almost every evening for the three months I was here last time.
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The commons area where students gather to eat supper and visit. There is a concession stand that serves hot meals that are very tasty and average maybe a dollar.

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So far this time, I have been too swamped at work to do the conversational English practice as much as I would like, although I hope I am able to increase that in the weeks to come. One thing I DO get to do most weeks, though, it participate in Friday Night Live. Each Friday evening, instead of holding classes, the BSC hosts an evening of fun and games in English. Generally, the evening starts with singing some simple Christian choruses (it is quite cool to watch a big group of Buddhists singing about Christ.) Then some games are played, centering around English somehow. Thais LOVE to play games and even if they are simple, this is a fun time for them. Finally, a guest speaker comes up and does some kind of presentation that has some connection to the gospel. They might share their testimony or they might tell about their home country and its customs... you never know what the guest speaker will talk about. After the speaker finishes, we break into small discussion groups for ten or fifteen minutes of discussion (in English) about what the speaker said. It is an amazing thing to me, but scores of young Thais show up each week for Friday Night Live, and I love being part of it.

This week's guest did a magic show, and the point he made was that everything he did was an illusion, but that the love of Christ is very, very real.

Folks watching intently at FNL.

Sala

The variety of fruits and vegetables here is pretty staggering. Some are old favorites like apples, pineapples and bananas. Then there are the ones that are at least somewhat familiar like guava and mangoes. There are a lot of things here, though, that I have never heard of before, let alone tried. A couple of weeks ago, I ate a 'custard apple,' which looked more like an artichoke on the outside, but was soft and quite sweet inside.

My favorite new taste, though, is a fruit called 'sala.' I happened to mention to Pai that I had tried it and really enjoyed it, so tonight he showed up at Friday Night Live with a big bag full of it for me. WAY more than I can eat.



They look a little like oddly shaped strawberries growing in a clump.

The peeling is very stiff and comes off easily. Inside, the fruit is in two halves, each with a pit. The flesh is quite tart. It is a great thing to have a couple of for dessert, but you would not want to eat a big bagful of them! Still... very cool of Pai to be so thoughtful.

Another Great Sunday

Mhuewy, Vee's wife, taught a lesson today about creation and about the fall. She used a potted plant to illustrate as she spoke of the garden of Eden and gave the children small apples as she spoke of Adam and Eve giving in to temptation, and how that fallen nature was passed on to us all.

The kids kind of slowly filter in. I ended up counting twenty seven this afternoon.

Each week, more and more of the gospel is being shared. Seeds are being planted in their lives.

Irony

Thai Buddhists are very much into 'making merit.' By doing good things, one can rack up lots of merit that will help determine your fate in your next life. Here is a cage chock full of birds. One way to make merit is to release a bird into the wild. This guy appears to have a stock of them he can release when he needs some good karma. A missionary I spoke with described seeing a ceremony where several birds were released. Having been caged all their lives, they didn't know what to do when set free, and before they could get their bearings and fly off, a bunch of cats ran up and ate them. I suppose its the thought that counts.

Back to the market

Another Sunday in the slum means another trip to the market for supper. More scenes from the market...


If you stick your tongue out at me again young lady...

It looks a lot like any other flea market, but with lots and lots of... unusual... foods.

Frog bits. They literally chop the frogs into little bits and deep fry them. Not at all bad, but lots and lots of bones.

Motorcycle Nation

The traffic here in Bangkok is pretty hard to describe to folks who have not experienced it. Ten to twelve million people with infrastructure for a tenth that population. Last night, I sat in a taxi for an hour and fifteen minutes to make the same trip I make each morning in about twelve minutes.

One of the ways around the traffic is to go by motorcycle, along with the many other bikes in town. These are not big Harleys, but little 125s that weave in and out of traffic all along each of the major roads. It takes some getting used to to see them lined up at a stop light, like they are at a rally. Or to see them driving BETWEEN lanes headed the same direction (watch your knees so you don't take off a mirror!) Or driving down sidewalks.

Motorcycle taxis are a common way to get around town, too. The drivers wear orange "construction worker" vests to identify themselves. Hop on behind them, and off you go!

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.