Just a quick note… Plans completely changed for me. On Sunday afternoon, Melissa called me and told me I would be going with Holly and Baw Baw to stay at a restaurant til Christmas break. Aw, a Thai lady who worked as a translator at the Adventist school, lives with her mother at the restaurant. Her mother is Buddhist, like everyone else in the town. Aw has been trying to witness to her mother, who seems to be turned off to Christianity. Aw wanted a couple of us to come to stay with her to do friendship evangelism–not preaching at her mother, but just living the Christian life. We will be helping her in the restaurant (in any customers ever come in) and teaching English to some kids near by. Holly will be leaving on Sunday for Cambodia to teach for a month, so soon I’ll be the only farang here. I think I’ll be massaging some people too, but I really don’t know many details. For this first week, we are just seeing how things fall into place. P Aw is really nice, and I’m glad she is here to help us. The plan is to be here til our Christmas break, which starts on December 15, but Melissa says we will just be playing it week by week. I don’t know if I mentioned it in previous blogs, but for Christmas I’ll be going to Cambodia and will actually be staying there for 3 months or so to teach at the Adventist school over there. More on that later… For now keep P Aw’s mother in your prayers, and pray that opportunities will come along for us to witness to these villagers.
Hangin’ at the Ranch October 23, 2008
Well, these past few days have been pretty slow… We’ve been here at the ranch, not doing much but trying to get better from our sicknesses. I’m still coughing up stuff and have a runny nose, but hopefully it’ll get better by the time we have to go out again. Melissa and the pastor are both gone and will probably be back on Sunday. That means we might be going out to villages on Monday, but who knows… These last couple days we’ve been going down to the field at the academy to play soccer with the students. We’ve played around with frizbee and basketball as well. It’s pretty fun and gives us good exercise for the day. It is interesting, though, learning the technique of playing sports in a skirt…
Here’s a few more pictures of my experience in the last village.
We went up to a house that had an amazing view. This is Brian, me, Mem, and then two villagers who helped us translate from Thai to Hmong.
One day we went on a hike up a mountain to this huge tower. The trail up there was covered with foliage. I even got a little leech on my leg, but Brian got it off before it attached itself too bad.
Here's the tower that we went to. Brian climbed up it, but I couldn't with my skirt...
The view from the tower.
They use tires here for everything: siding, stairs, etc.
We gave this little girl a hot foot bath for her cold.
We always eat on the floor. The Thai people are a very unsanitary people. They like to use the spoons they're eating with as serving spoons, so Brian and I would always try to get our food before they started doing that.
The group from the other village came to visit us one day. It was great to see them.
Some of our group went for a swim in one of the cleaner lake/ponds near us. Brian cut his foot on some metal, but made sure to amply wrap it up afterwards.
Here is a man we visited who had side and back pain. Holly is trying to diagnos him. Most of the time, visiting requires 3-way traslation: English to Thai, Thai to Hmong. So Holly would tell Ying, who would tell Bee, who would tell the patient.
I’ll try to put more later…
First Village Experiences October 19, 2008
Well, we just got back from 2 weeks out in a Hmong village. Our group split into two, going to different villages. My group went to a little village called Buakjan. My group consisted of 3 Thai girls, Brian (video guy), Holly (nurse), and me. The first week was really slow. Our schedule went something like this: 5 am worship with the church members, 7 am breakfast, go visiting at 9:30, lunch at 1:30, go visiting again at 3:00, and then come back for the evening meetings at 7:30. Though it sounds like a lot, we ended up not visiting as much and had a ton of down time. I read through a whole book in the first 3 days, plus anything else I could think of doing.
The church. We stayed behind it.
We stayed behind the church where there was a little room for us to sleep (on concrete of course), and a tiny kitchen (consisting of a sink and a table) and washroom.
Ying cooking on our little burner and table full of holesThe room we stayed in
It was actually pretty cold, seeing as how we’re going into the winter season. I didn’t bring any long sleeve shirts or sweaters with me to the village, only my rain jacket. It wasn’t too bad though. It’s really cold to the villagers, but it really wasn’t all that cold during the day. Night time was pretty frigid, but my sleeping bag kept me really warm (REI is the best!).
The view of the village from the church
Taking a “shower” at 4:30 in the morning wasn’t my favorite though. The water was freezing; pouring the first bowl of water over my head always took a lot of gumption. It rained everyday for most of the day, and when it wasn’t raining, it was cloudy. It was also really noisy; there was never a time when it was quiet. There were always roosters crowing, dogs barking, and pigs grunting.
One of the hairy little piglets that I think are soooo ugly!
The villages were pretty much what I expected them to be like: primitive bamboo houses with either dirt or concrete floors. It’s the custom here to take off your shoes before entering a house, no matter how dirty it is inside. That has taken some getting used to; many a time I’ve walked into a house with my flip flops on and then got repreminded by the translater with us. I’m learning though.
When we went visiting, the translator would greet them and see if they had any health problems we could help them with. Like I said, that first week was very slow. Our little group split into two so that we could cover more ground. I wasn’t in the group with Holly, so I wasn’t able to see many medical things, and when I did, it was done by one of the Thai girls, so I didn’t know what was going on.
Every evening, we would have a health talk and then a Bible talk. We took turns giving them. The health talks were on the 8 Laws of Health; here we learned it as GOD’S PLAN, but most people know it as NEW START. I did it on Plenty of Rest. I also did the Bible talk that night. I was nervous about that one, but fortunately with translation, I only had to talk for about 20 minutes, which was still hard for me to come up with enough stuff to say.
Mem giving a health talk on Godly trust (the G in GOD'S PLAN)
On that first Wednesday, a few people from the other group came to visit for a few hours. Though it had only been 5 days since we had last seen them, it felt like it had been a month. Their group had more Americans then we did, so I think it was a little easier for them. In the afternoons, Brian and I tried everything to keep ourselves busy… We found out later that the other group had hot showers, a washer, a refrigerator, and other nice conveniences. No, of course I wasn’t jealous!
On Thursday we were joined by a lady from Australia, Nola. She came from Cambodia where she taught for a year. She has been a full-time missionary for about 6 years. It was really interesting to hear her stories. She has a background with nutrition and natrual remedies stuff, so she was a big help to our group.
Nola with a little baby who had swollen glands
On Friday, we had the day off and went to the other village to have breakfast with the other group. We had awesome American food for a change (we have pretty much the same Thai food everyday: pumpkin and cooked greens with rice…).
Our American feast (the Thai people in our group had to make at least one Thai dish since they aren't too fond of our American food)
After eating, we all went into Chiang Mai to get some necessities and buy food. Then our groups split up again and went back to our respected villages. I washed some clothes, by hand of course, and hung them out to dry (clothes take forever to dry with all the rain and humidity).
The church service started at 8:00 am and went til noon. It was a lot of sitting and a lot of the talking was either in Thai or Hmong. That night, the other group came for a visit and to have worship with us. Afterwards, the villagers made a couple fires outside the church and filled bamboo sticks with sticky rice. After they cooked, we tore them open and ate the rice inside. They were surprisingly good.
The bamboo sticks cooking on the fire
The next morning, Sunday, we heard that the other group was going to join us in our village for the time being. We were then really crowded in our little sleeping room for the next few nights. Eventually the Thai girls moved to a church members home so we’d have more space. It was really nice to have the whole group together again. With Melissa being there (she was with the other group before), we had more of a schedule to follow. We started going out to other villages to visit people while still sleeping and giving meetings in Buakjan. She split us into 3 groups. We would travel to the village together and then from there split into our groups to visit. I learned a lot more and did more hands on stuff that week. I massaged a few people with gout and arthritis, showed people how to stretch different muscles that were sore, and helped tell them about the 8 laws of health. Though I still wasn’t doing much, I learned a lot by watching the others who knew what they were doing.
Phoebe and I massaging a man who had gout
This last Friday we had off because a few people were getting sick and we were all worn out from not getting much sleep. On Sabbath, half of the group went to another village to do the church service there. I stayed back with Melissa, Ricky, Phoebe, and two of the Thais. 20 minutes before Sabbath School started, the elder of the church asked us if we’d do Sabbath School along with the church service we were already planning on doing. Melissa asked Ricky and I to share our testimonies to fill up that hour. I had never given my testimony before, so the though was kind of nerve wracking, but I was able to write down a few notes and had to leave the rest up to God. It went better than I thought it would, though it was hard for the translator to understand everything I said with all the stuff about America. After church, I was able to call home for the first time. Jen had gotten me a phone in town for really cheap. I wasn’t planning on getting a phone cuz I thought it would be too much of a hassle, but it was really nice to be able to talk to my parents. Around 3:00 pm, we drove with some of the villagers to another village to have a Bible study with the few Adventists there and visit some sick people. The Bible study was all in Hmong, and I almost fell asleep a couple times. I had woke up pretty sick that morning with a bad cough and a sore throat, so being in that smoky village wasn’t my idea of fun at the time. We finally went back and had the evening meeting.
After the meeting, Melissa surprised us with a new change of plans. We though we would be staying in that village for another week, but she said we would be leaving the next morning to come back to the ranch (the health center). I was glad to hear that, cuz I was ready for a change. The next morning, which was this morning, we packed up all our stuff into one truck and rode in another. Come to think of it, I haven’t actually rode inside a car since I’ve been here; I’ve always ridden in the back of a truck… Anyway, it took about an hour and a half to drive back to the ranch. A few of us walked 2 miles down the road to have some Pad Thai at a little restaurant. That’s one of the few Thai dishes I actually like! We went back and had a meeting with Melissa about our plans for the next couple months. Sooooo… Here’s the plan for now: we’re splitting up into 3 groups and going to completely different villages. I’m in a group with Holly, Ricky, Baw baw (the translator), and Bee (a guy who went to the training Pastor Phamor did at the center). We will be going to a Hmong village for a week where we won’t have any electricity. After that we will be going to a Karen village for the rest of the time, probably til Christmas Break. I think we’ll have electricity there, but no cell service (so much for using my new phone…). Of course, like usual, I don’t really know any details, but God will work it all out. From what I understand, my group is going to the most primitive out of the three. Unfortunately we won’t be together for Thanksgiving, which is a bummer. Also, Holly, the nurse in our group, is leaving on November 2 to go to Cambodia for over a month to teach at the Adventist school over there. I don’t know what my group is going to do when she leaves, cuz she’s the one with all the medical experience. We’ll leave it to God…
We’ll be here at the ranch for a couple days, or at least til all of us are well again; there’s about 5 of us who aren’t feeling too well. It’ll be nice to recuperate for a day or so and get some laundry done–using an actual washer. Pray that we all get better soon…
