Four of us from the team – myself, Ashley, Josh and Dan – spent the last 10 days in a province Northwest of Bangkok called Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Pamela and Shanda were a part of other ministries during this time.
Separated from internet, most of civilization and any ability to go anywhere out of an 8 mile radius on our own without a vehicle, we experienced rural in a whole new way. Sickling the tall, junglesque weeds in the Thai sun by day and sleeping under an elevated, mosquito netted floor by night made for long overall days – filled with much unknown as to what lived below our feet, and occasionally, what was biting us up our pant leg. I do not exaggerate when the junglesque descriptor was used. We were working in the mist of the Thai jungle where we schlepped around machete sticks that I refer to as sickles, in order to chop the thick foliage of the fields. And when I say foliage, I’m really trying to paint a picture of something that resembles small trees. Often times the thick brush would hide snake holes the size of a small child’s head, beds of ants or its prickly pricklers that would stick mercilessly to virutally anything. During one of Ashley and I’s weed whacking breaks around mid-day, we asked each other whether taking on the thickets of the jungle was a requisite for virtue of a Godly woman. We were pretty sure that Proverbs 31 didn’t allude to that. However it was fun to speculate at what Proverbs 32 would have looked like if it had been written in present day Thailand.
After the first day in the fields, I appeared to have fought off a large cat attack. But despite my embellishment to this, the physical labor was almost cleansing and well-needed. It felt good to sweat and to see results of my labor; even though the labor required, seemed endless. The clean air of the country and verdant landscape were especially nice since we had only city locations for ministry thus far.
Time spent with family Bang consisted of good times at the YWAM base/farm – sequence domination, learning how to catch pregnant cobras thanks to Arun, taking in the Thai grub, or good laughs from conversations based on spiciness. Those things lost in translation were sometimes the funniest. When we weren’t working at taking out the weeds from under the strung wire fencing, we were teaching English at a local Thai Elementary school. Ashley and I taught in a 5th grade class. Thinking we were pretty clever by having them ask questions to us for the last 10 minutes of class, through our translator Mawn, we ended up agreeing to singing and dancing — like one of the girls requested. My question was for them, ‘Do you understand what duo your asking to perform this task?’ So like they asked, and as we agreed to, we decided to sing Silent Night because ’tis the season, right? No. Because we were not only asked to sing but also to dance. Let’s just say that one of our dance moves was craddling a pretend baby Jesus. The girl who made the request never again raised her hand to request an encore. haha. The things you do for kids.
All in all, the real question remains, ‘could I be a cow midwife for the Bang farm?’ The answer still remains ‘no’, but I can throw that sickle like nobody’s business and pick out the best papaya from among all the papaya plants.
God is good and has perfect timing. Praise God for all His living creatures even though I will always pray for the authority to crush the snake’s head under my foot.
