Wow, what a term! We are back in Bangkok now after a crazy first term of teaching English and serving in Roi Et. This is Chris writing again, as Dora is way in over her head in all our work and teaching as well finishing her Masters Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language long-distance, AS WELL AS preparing for our baby girl to be born in 4 ½ months!!! I’m cutting her a little slack! J
I can’t believe it is the middle of October already, and I apologize for not writing in over a month and a half (but, we hope that you all got to check out the DVD we made about life and transition in Thailand. If you didn’t receive it, please email me at barbee.chris@gmail.com).
A Teaser of what is to come….
- Our deepest held value of ‘Wasting Time’ is coming under fire!
- Teaching violin, guitar, saxophone, keyboard instruments and flute while learning Basketball….in THAILAND!!!
- The difficulties of English teaching-No catchy slogan, sorry!!
- The children influx in our home, the Good, the Difficult, and the Sad
- “We aren’t in Kentucky anymore!!!!” Don't miss it
- Selling cans of tuna out of our house at 10 PM
- First conversation with a monk-one I’ll not forget!
- Rigging our pick-up truck/bus to keep the kids dry during a storm
- Selling cans of tuna out of our house at 10 PM
- Teaching on the love of God (mostly in Thai) in the strangest mixed company
We can’t waste time!!!!
Well, that is what the Thai believe, because time is not something to be wasted. Time is not quantified. Work and play are not separated. What is important is whether or not you are enjoying the current moment.
If there ever was an idea that was foreign to me, it is this one! All the time as we grew up, we focused on ‘What am I going to be when I grow up?” and “What are we going to do tomorrow?” Dora and I have lived very much with a sense that we must ‘earn’ our free time through our diligence in work, but the more we learn about Thai culture the more we see how different their concept is. Last week we attended a week-long seminar (pictured above) led by Dr. Nantachai and Ubolwan Mejudhon, our mentors, entitled, ‘Meekness: An Approach to the Christian Witness to the Thai People.’ We could write 5 blogs on all the great information and insight we gained from their wisdom last week, but there is not enough time (ironic, huh!?!?). What we did learn was that we are going to have to die to our concept of time wasting if we want to be successful in this culture and keep our sanity. This week specifically, we are in Bangkok preparing for the Study of Christianity camp for next week for our high school aged students from Roi Et, and we are overwhelmed with work. However, I think that our friend and team leader, Ekk, has much more work to do than we do, as he is doing most of the correspondence and preparation for the camp. Somehow, while we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off, he is calmly and cooling plugging through his tasks. He probably spends an equal amount of time in relaxed conversations with each person with whom he communicates about the camp as he does actually accomplishing the tasks, but yet he always gets done, and with a lot less stress!
Dora and I try very diligently to take the opportunity to stop and talk with anyone that wants to talk to us (especially if they are Thai), but always in the back of our minds is this countdown clock; my brain says, “OK, the lunch meeting we just had with our Korean friend from language school was good, especially since we got to talk about faith and our struggles living as believers in this very different culture, but it was longer than we expected. Now I have to make up the time on this blog so I can make sure it is complete before our scheduled hang out time with our Thai and American friends this evening.”
I just want to let you our supporters know that we are making a concerted effort to be less productive. How do you feel about that? Seriously, pray for us that every day we can ask for the mind of Christ to know what is really important so we may learn to take time (not ‘waste’ or ‘spend’) just being with the Thai. I think you would agree it is not a waste at all.
Teaching and Learning in Roi Et:
When we came to Thailand we were excited about our shipment of children’s bell sets, guitars, saxophones, clarinets, trombones, trumpets, flutes and violins arriving on the boat in February; all generous gifts from many of you. But, we also had some anxieties because while we felt certain that God intended us to use these instruments for teaching and connecting with our Thai students, we had no idea how that is going to work! We are asking ourselves, “Are we supposed to start a concert band here, or what?” If so, we did not have nearly enough supplies. However, God has shown us how great of an opportunity we have to show His love in one-on-one and small group teaching sessions on various instruments, both in our home, in other schools, in the ministry center in Banon, and in Bangkok during our return stays. To teach successfully, we have had to very quickly learn the vocabulary for blowing air, using each finger (saying ‘finger #1 on your left hand’ gets pretty tedious’), along with many other words. The unexpected benefit of teaching lessons is that the students are growing super comfortable with us as they realize they have permission to help correct our Thai speaking skills as we correct their playing posture. We are developing some very good relationships that are growing very naturally through this dialogue. I think we are starting to see what God is doing here…but only time will tell!
Also, I was hoping that when we got to Thailand I would get a chance to play a little basketball, because I have always enjoyed playing, and if I am really honest, I expected and looked forward to being the best one on the court and having a good ego boosting time! I am not a strong player at all, but I thought since I was entering the land of soccer and Thai boxing that I would surely be a basketball superstar. Boy, was I ever wrong! I play on the courts in front of our home in Roi Et one-three nights a week and get put in my place every time! I am the tallest guy out there by far, but they have a quickness I have NEVER played against in the states. It is a weekly humbling reminder that my gifts are limited, but more importantly, it is a great opportunity for me to place myself in a learner’s posture. One Thai man, who is about my age, has taken me ‘under his wing.’ I am so grateful, because it allows me to be a learner instead of a teacher! We truly believe that just as God desires to shape and mold the lives of the Thai people in His Son’s image, He wants to use us to affirm the goodness and the gifts already present in their lives. Please pray that all these relationships grow and that God speaks with our students and our teachers in His own special way!
Our struggles in teaching English:
We came into this ministry loving the way Dr. Nantachai and Ubolwan teach English to the Thai. It allows every student to learn to speak in a very non-threatening way, and it is just plain fun!!! The success of their program is clearly evident and we are honored to be a part of a teaching ministry that works! However, we also help teach regular English classes in our home school all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in exchange for our free lodging. When we teach at our school home in Roi Et during the school day, we must use the curriculum of the Thai public schools.
First, we want to you all to know that we believe in the love of these Thai teachers for their students, and in their desire for the students to achieve, However, these textbooks are near impossible to teach successfully. The school system expects students to be capable of reading comprehension at an American high school level by the time they are in 12th grade, yet my students are only able to understand about half of the words in their textbooks and able to speak less than a fourth of them. These students only have English class a few times a week, and for years the system has not encouraged the pursuit of speech, so the students come to English class and try to read a language they cannot speak and hardly understand. Needless to say, very few of them enjoy it. We have spoken with the director of the English department at our school and I believe she is on the same page, but it is not an easy problem for anyone to fix. So, our predicament is: Do we continue to help define words and force comprehension of difficult subject matters (and increase boredom) or do we ditch it all together and focus on fun basic conversation? We have been seeking the middle road, and spending sometimes enormous amounts of time to find ways to make pieces of their textbook articles both relevant to their lives and useful in conversation. We really want to be an encouragement both to these students and their Thai teachers, so pray for how we can best do that without wearing ourselves too thin! Thanks!
The Children are Coming…The Children are Coming!
The good: Well, since the last blog, we have experienced a massive influx of kids at our house. It has been awesome! We have been opening up our home on four different afternoons for anywhere between an hour to 3 hours for kids and teens to come over and play games, read English books (and some Thai books, too!), and practice instruments. What started last month with small groups of boys or girls coming has now turned into groups of 15-30. It is super fun, though albeit, sometimes stressful. You would be amazed at seeing how content these kids are to work on a jigsaw puzzle for an hour or so! Dora now has some girls that call our phone occasionally just trying to talk to Dora for a little while. It is so cute. You see some pictures here of all the kids playing games and bell sets, as well as having reading time.
The difficult: We have found that trying to make rules and enforce them in a language that we are just learning is way hard!!! Its not too hard to say, “OK, it is time for everyone to leave so that the teachers can rest,” but it is difficult when we need to communicate something like, “Everyone needs to leave, except for these two students because they have expressed an interest and have demonstrated their willingness to work on studying violin, (because we don’t have enough instruments or time for everyone to study) and we do not have enough eyes to watch all of you at once!” We will figure it out with some more time, we’re sure. Pray for our time spent with the children that it can be fruitful and can stir their hearts towards knowledge of a loving God.
The sad: It probably isn’t fair to lump this sad tale into this heading, but I didn’t know where to put it. The teachers at our school have been slightly anxious about us having the children into our home, especially because they fear the children might steal our stuff. Well, we have assured them that all the things we have on the bottom floor of our house are for the children’s learning and use and we will keep the children contained in two rooms so we can keep an eye on them. We have had a couple students take marbles from one of the marble games, but then another student returned those marbles because he was upset with his friend for stealing them, so it has seemed that the students really respect us and our property. However, when I was at the office around 7 AM one morning four weeks ago, and Dora was out our house alone, Dora’s engagement ring disappeared from the shelf. We assume a little student who probably didn’t know better walked into the house while Dora was in the shower without calling for us, saw it on the shelf where Dora left it over night, and picked it up simply because it was pretty. It has been a very sad and hard lesson for us (especially since it was our most valued physical possession). We have learned the hard way that we have to be more careful with our stuff, but by God’s grace, we have come to see it as an opportunity to be a witness to God’s truth to this community. We have offered forgiveness in our hearts and prayers for the one who stole the ring, and now we can demonstrate to this community that, while that was a very special possession, it was only that, a possession. There are more important things in life (like our baby girl growing in Dora), but this fact is sometimes easy to forget!
We ain’t in Kentucky anymore!
- Funny Cultural Experiences of Living in Thailand
(this picture is Worship in Roi Et!!!!)
- Selling cans of tuna out of our house at 10 PM
Never in Kentucky would our high school students show up at our home after a long day of test preparation asking to buy a can of tuna. One student, Suport, had gone with me to the grocery the previous week and when we returned home we made a tuna sandwich together. Because the Thai are so good at sharing, when Suport and his friends got hungry one night, they pooled 20 baht (about $.70) between the 5 of them to buy our extra can of tuna and some mayonnaise from us. Suport told them, “This is the tastiest, healthiest ‘white people’ food I have ever eaten! You have to try it!"
- Rigging our pick-up truck/bus to keep the kids dry during storm.
Never in Kentucky have I driven a 29-year-old pickup truck that I have had to pull down canvas rain flaps and lock them down with old rusty clasps in the middle of a rainstorm to keep my 20 teenage passengers from getting soaking wet as we cruise down the highway. Gratefully, those canvas flaps work, I was the only one who was soaked that day!
- Our first conversation with a monk…and he waxes his eyebrows!
Never in Kentucky would I be stopped on the side of the street by a Buddhist monk for a little casual conversation, much less a monk who was a lady-boy. It was very strange to talk to a ‘man’ that looked more womanly than manly in the long flowing robes of the Buddhist monkhood. You see new things every day! Wow! (This picture is with some other monks at the rocket festival a couple of months ago, just in case you haven't seen the Thai monk dress)
- Teaching on the love of God (mostly in Thai) in the strangest mixed company:
In Thailand they have a special term for lady-boys. Kateeys are boys that have changed or are in the process of changing into girls, and they are very, very common in Thailand. Our home school in particular has probably 1-5 of them in any given class. It has become completely culturally accepted in Thailand to become a Kateey, and so many of these younger boys that come from broken homes with no father figures, or just want to be noticed, decide to start making the change. One of these boys named Best is about 14 years old, and he comes with us to our Sunday morning gathering almost every week. Recently 3 more of his friends have started coming, too. About three weeks ago I taught the final high school-age Bible study time for this term, and I was sharing on the love of God. We had just concluded working through the Sermon on the Mount and so I taught about Jesus coming down the hill and healing the man with Leprosy. I taught almost all in Thai (Praise God!) all about the deep passionate love of God for all the people He has created, while sitting right next to three of these lady-boys from our school. It hit me like a ton of bricks: God really does love those boys as much as He does me or anyone else, and Christ died for them, too!
I felt the presence of God moving through me that day, and I pray God continues to do an incredible work in many of the students’ lives as we begin our camp about the Christian Faith for 34 students from our Roi Et ministry this coming week in Bangkok.
Thank you for sticking with me on this long blog, and PLEASE pray for these students as they come to Bangkok, and pray for us as we help to teach and share our experiences with our Awesome God.
Dora at 18 weeks! We thank God for our coming baby girl!
