So…where do I begin?? So much has been happening since I arrived in Thailand. We’ve had orientation, temple tours, race day, and SO much more!
Pictures
Well, I have to apologize for having very few pictures due to an unfortunate occurance last night. I was trying to upload pictures from my camera and somehow they got erased. Since pictures are a HUGE part of my life, this was hard to take. I cried because I had so many wonderful pictures that I was excited to share and at this point they are gone. I have one more possibility of retrieving the pictures but it may take a little while. As soon as it happened, I know God was using it to remind me of what’s really important. Pictures are nice, but it has to be about him and pictures are still materials. Please pray that this last plan will work in restoring my pictures!
Race Day!
Yesterday was our first race day. It was kind of like a scavenger hunt where we had to go through the list and see who could complete the task first. Four of us on each team participated. It was a good team growing time as we realized we all work in different ways, have different ideas, and our competetive levels are different. But as we realized this we knew we had to figure out a way to make decisions and make it work. We all compromised at different times and got the job done, whether first or last, maybe I’ll post more about that later. God is working on all of us continually to strip us of ourselves to make us more like Christ so that we can work better as a team.
Temple Tours
Today was a day full of seeking to learn Thai culture a bit better. Did you know that…
-Thailand is predominantly Buddhist, with over 94% of Thais professing to be Buddhist
-There are around 200,000 monks in Thailand
-Every man from a Buddhist family is expected to become a monk for some period in his life, for as little as a few weeks
-Every temple in Thailand has resident monkis, with one exception
-People go to the temple to build up their ‘merit’, and to pray for specific things they want, such as blessing in their life
It breaks my heart to see and hear the deception in the country. As we walked around gold statues of worship and saws people bowing down and praying to them, my heart just sank and made me realize how much this country needs Christ. We walked around many of the temples praying that God would open their eyes, that they would feel an emptiness and seek more-that they would seek truth because we know that those who seek will find. PLease being praying for the people of Thailand. They are a culture of nice people. They are willing to do almost anything for anyone.
PLEASE CHECK OUT MY TEAMMATES’ WEBSITES FOR MORE INFO and PICTURES and VIDEOS!!
[edit captions added late]
I went for something new so, apparently the meat is really spicy!!
Tuk-tuk ride! what an experience, weaving in and out of traffic. (Seth hangin out the window)
Me, Danny, and Heather at the airport
on our way to some temples – we got to have numerous ways of transportation
Apparently our capris were too short for this temple, so they gave us skirts to use for this temple – aren’t we so cute??
