Sa wad dee ka! (Hello!)
Here is a little about Thailand and a little story for you all about our interesting day today.
Thai Culture
1. Do not ever touch anyones head. Its the most honorable part of the body and it is a great insult to touch someones head.
2. Never point your foot/feet at anyone of anything. It is the lowest and dirtiest part of the body. When entering a home or temple or anywhere really your shoes must come off! Don’t sit with your legs crossed, feet always stay on the ground.
3. When you walk in somewhere be as quiet as possible and sit at the same level as everyone else. Never be standing when the whole room is sitting.
4. Monks are forbidden to be touched or touch a woman or accept anything from the hand of a woman. A woman has to set whatever she is handing the monk on the ground or hand it to a male to hand to the monk.
5. Be careful not to step on money, it has the kings face on it!
6. Never use your finger to point at anything, use your whole hand and keep your palm down.
7. It is most important in Thai culture to “keep face”. Keeping ones “face” is equivalent to keeping ones self respect and dignity intact.
8. “To be Thai is to be Buddhist.”
Today we did a team scavenger hunt. We had to walk around the city and take a tuk tuk (mix between a taxi and a truck), and go see the three kings statue, visit some temples and a local college and take pictures at these locations. I was excited to see the temples because I had never seen them before and I am interested in learning about other cultures and religions. Our team got to our first temple and I wore shorts, which isn’t allowed, so I had to buy a wrap across the street to put on before I went inside. We walked over to the temple, took our shoes off and went inside. Right at the front of the door was this little gold statue with his hand up. Its name is, Pra Buddha Attharos. There is a short story behind him but basically he prevents fighting and signifies world peace. So we walk into this huge temple and everything is gold and there is a huge red carpet in the middle of the floor. On the wall at the end of the red carpet there are 3 giant gold statues. The one in the middle is huge and there are two slightly smaller ones to its left and right. In front of those statues are hundreds of smaller gold statues all representing a different god. There were people on there knees bowing down to this false idol, this huge gold statue. All of a sudden I started to get this really bad headache, then my teammate got a bad stomach ache, another one got nauseous. Spiritual warfare was happening all around us.
We left the temple and all of a sudden the presence of our team was just..different. We were are all very tense and there was a lot of awkward tension between our team. We were all just being snappy and very to ourselves. We decided to take a break at a Starbucks. I pulled the team close together and just told them we needed to hold hands and pray. I said I didn’t know if it was the temple that messed with us or bad spirits/demons, I didn’t know but I just knew we needed to pray. We prayed in Starbucks and we cleared the air and the tension was released and we all felt so much better.
Later that night during team time we talked about how it is so insanely important to be praying constantly about anything and everything especially in a dark place like Chiang Mai. There is a lot of spiritual warfare and dark things that go on here and we need to have our armor on at all times. We are preparing for battle. And every morning we need to wake up and read Ephesians 6:10-20. It talks all about putting on the full armor of God. “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground….”
Please be praying for our team this month. Thailand, as beautiful and amazing as it is, is a very dark place with very very little christians, lots of sex trafficking, and worshiping of false idols. We will be doing monk chat, working at a coffee shop, teaching english, and doing bar ministry working with prostitutes. My whole squad needs prayers of strength. Its going to be hard to see God at sometimes in this country but thats why we are going to be his hands and feet and the light in the dark for these people.
“Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should.” Ephesians 6:19-20
