After a week and a half, we left Wongen to join another ministry called Door2Door. The five of us traveled four hours on a crowded, rickity bus to a little village called Mae Ai. Now let me stop you right there, because the village you are probably picturing in your head right now is not like this village at all, think rural meets suburbia, a neighborhood with limited running water. Rolling into this little village I had no idea of the lessons in love that God had planned for me there.
Everyone there is either a rice farmer or a pig farmer (I got to live with the pig farmer!). We were there to work in the rice fields with these wonderful people. I can now tell you from personal experience that harvesting rice by hand… sucks. You are bent over at the waist, hand cutting all of the stalks, in the blistering heat while clothed from head to toe, boots, scarves, long sleeves, gloves, big hat, and all for 10 hours. In these slave-like conditions is where you’ll find the most beautiful example of community I have ever witnessed in my life.
All of the rice farmers plus some come together to help each other harvest their fields. One field at a time, they move like a swarm of locusts and harvest each one of the fields until everyone’s field has been cut. And it’s the funniest thing to witness because the women are chattering away like they are at the beauty salon; I’m wheezing trying to keep up with them and they are gossipping away… or laughing at me. But once again, God blessed me with beautiful strangers who
loved me.
loved me.
This is Aree, a beautiful but deceptively tough rice farmer who has become like my Thai mom and though not much crossed the language barrier because she knows about as much English as I know Thai, I know that she was always looking out for me and making sure I was staying safe.
She along with two other women had pulled me along side them to show me the rice farming ropes, hopelessly teach me Thai, and make sure I was drinking enough water or taking enough breaks. I have never felt so loved by strangers before.
These are “the boys”. They are the typical suburban misfit group of young boys who are always causing some sort of harmless trouble. Though they only ever referred to me as “farang” (Thai word for white kid), I couldn’t walk down the street without being called to join their game of soccer. And though I seriously stink at soccer, they still always asked me to play.
This little village in Northern Thailand has it right. Everyone knows everyone, everyone takes care of everyone’s kids, everyone cooks for everyone else, this is true community. They are so loving towards each other and they took in a group of strangers and loved us as part of their community. It was so humbling to be loved when I’m the one who’s “supposed to” come in and love them, and not that I didn’t, by the end I was ready to hang up my backpack and stay. It’s here, in Mae Ai, that I learned what really loving someone looks like.
“Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” (1Cor 13:13)
