Sawadee kha Thailand! We are here and have started our month of ministry. So far I LOVE Thailand! Since Thai food is my favorite, every meal is pretty much a party in my mouth, and the people are incredibly friendly despite the obvious language barrier. Also, since I’m no longer the translator for my team, I get more time and energy to just take in my new surroundings. Asia is beautiful! And as a little bonus, I have been asked twice this week by Thai girls if I’m Asian because, and I quote, I have “small eyes, dark hair, and light skin…you should be Asian.” Maybe next time:)
We started our month doing a little cultural briefing at the YWAM Thailand headquarters in Bangkok for a few days. During our time there we went on a prayer walk/tour of some of the temples of Bangkok. Here are a few pictures from the day.
We took a boat across the city to get to the temples.
Our first stop was Wat Po, which is a huge temple complex with over 400 images of the Buddha.
Wat Po houses the famous Reclining Buddha which depicts the Buddha passing into Nirvana.
The Reclining Buddha is 46 meters long.
In addition to showing the Buddha respect and leaving offerings of flowers, incense, and candles, people put a coin in each one of these pots that they pass to make merit. The result is that the entire temple rings with the clinks of all the coins falling into the pots.
The Wat Po architecture is incredibly beautiful and intricate. It is impossible to capture it all in a camera’s lens.
Team Wreckonciled girls
Wat Po is also home to a center for the preservation of Thai massage and medicine, as well as a famous place to consult fortune tellers.
We also climbed the 318 steps to the top of Wat Saket Temple of the Golden Mount to see the whole city of Bangkok.
As another way to offer worship and make merit, people ring all these bells as they pass by.
On the roof of the Wat Saket there is an area to pay homage to Buddha’s relics.
To make merit people clip money to these lines by the relics.
Time for our boat ride home!
The Thai people are incredibly warm and friendly, and the culture is very gentle and honorable. We really love Thailand so far, but there is also a very heavy spiritual atmosphere here. Many people are consumed with trying to be good enough spiritually and physically, which leads to a lot of comparison and repressed emotions. There is also a lot of confusion and miscommunication in this country, which can cause frustration and misinterpretation of what people are trying to say. These are things that we are praying through as we begin our month of ministry here, especially in our night ministry in the bars of Chiang Mai.
Team Wreckonciled and Team Divine Collision are living and working with a ministry in Chiang Mai called Lighthouse in Action, which is a branch of YWAM. We spend our days visiting Chiang Mai University and inviting students to come to the WonGen Coffee House to practice their English. Then we return to WonGen to hang out with the customers and help serve food and wash dishes. We also get to enjoy their amazing smoothie selection! WonGen is run by Lighthouse in Action, and is a place where people can come hang out, speak English, be accepted, and hopefully see God’s love. Some of the girls who work there used to work in the bars but have since become Christians and come on staff with Lighthouse. In the afternoons we visit the slums down the street from the house we’re living in. We play with the kids, build relationships with the adults, and help them with anything they need, such as hauling dirt to make a new floor. At night we take turns doing bar ministry. We will be spending all month visiting The Rabbit Bar and The Kitty Kat Bar, building relationships with the girls and lady boys who work there, and loving them unconditionally. So far it has been amazing, and we have had a lot of great conversations.
This is the cafeteria at Chiang Mai University where we hang out with students and invite them to the coffee shop.
Another blog soon to come about what is actually happening in this picture…
We help with dishes and waitressing at the coffee shop.
This is one of the adorable children who we play with in the slums every afternoon.
Playing games is a good way to make friends with the girls at the bars.
This is Arika, our friend at the Kitty Kat Bar. She is so kind and loving, and she’s going to show us around Chiang Mai this month.
Our ministry style this month is very different from how it was in Latin America. Here our calling is not to directly share the gospel with everyone we meet. We rarely actually talk about God and the Bible like we did in Latin America. Things here are much more about reading between the lines and loving people with our actions instead of our words. Because of the pervasiveness of Buddhism in Thai culture, we are not simply called to evangelize people, but to have a much more relational ministry. Our hope is that the friends we are making can see the love of God through the way that we treat them and each other, and that maybe one day they will be interested in finding out more about what makes us love them the way we do.
Please continue to pray for us this month. Pray for clarity in our conversations with people, for opportunities to meet people and invite them to the coffee shop, for wisdom about what to say, for safety for us as we are in the bars at night, and for freedom and love for the girls and lady boys who work there. More blogs about our time in the slums and bars so far are soon to come! Thank you so much for your prayers and support!
