Wow! This week has been a complete whirlwind! A week ago this time we were celebrating our commissioning at Hope Springs Community Church in Lexington, KY, and now we are getting physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually adjusted to life in Bangkok, Thailand! It is Monday afternoon right now (middle of the night back home), and Dora and I are glad to say we have survived the past two days without naps!!! YAY!!!
First, we want to thank all our amazing friends for giving so generously of your time and love to us during the last days, weeks, and months of our preparation to leave the states. We feel deeply loved and lifted up in prayers, and we honestly can say that the tough bumps in the road this far would have been impassible mountains without you. We are honored to call all of you friends.
So if you ever doubted that God is real….check this story out!!!!Hey everyone, this is Dora. I’m writing this part because I like to tell this story!
Well, we had quite an adventure on the way to Thailand. First of all, the night before we were set to fly out, we realized that we lost the letters that Dr. Nantachai had mailed us to get our teaching visas so we could actually stay in Thailand once we arrived. We originally thought that we were supposed to take those letters with us as we went through customs in Thailand. We frantically searched through all of our stuff (thanks for helping, mom!!!) and had Chris’ parents search in North Carolina for hours and couldn’t find them at all. We went through a list of friends that helped us get Dr. Nantachai to call us from Thailand so we could seek his advice. He soon called us and told us that we were supposed to have mailed the letters he sent into the Thai embassy in America to get our visas, so even if we could find the letters, they would not have done us any good. Dr. Nantachai told us that he didn’t think it would be a big deal for us to get in on a tourist visa and not to worry.
So, the next morning we sadly said goodbye to family and friends that had gathered at the airport and got on a plane headed to Memphis. That flight was uneventful. Then, in Memphis, we boarded a plane headed to L.A., which was again, an uneventful flight. When we got to L.A., we had about 2 hours to grab lunch and board our next plane to Taipei. We checked the flight departure screen, and the gate for our flight said “TBT.” We assumed that meant they weren’t announcing a gate yet, so we went and got some lunch, grabbed some ice cream, talked to a couple of people on the phone, and took our sweet time. At about 5 minutes until 1:00 (our flight was at 1:45), we moseyed back over to where we thought our gate might be, and the screen still said “TBT.” We asked someone what that meant, and they replied with, “You’re going to Taiwan? You need to be in the international terminal!” (Some international travelers we are ☺).
We asked how we get there, and they said, “It’s about a 20 minute shuttle ride!” This is the point at which we panicked!! We ran all the way out of that terminal, left the airport completely, and waited for a shuttle. We realized at this point that we still didn’t have boarding passes, and we would have to go through security again because we had left the airport. By the time we caught the shuttle and got to the international terminal, it was about 1:20. We ran to the China Air desk to get our tickets, and they had already closed the desk. We had to ask a janitor to go find the desk attendant to help us. The lady came out and was immediately noticeably mad at us. She told us that she could get us on the plane, but we would not have meals and our bags had already been taken off the plane and would not arrive with us in Bangkok. We agreed to this because knew if we missed our flight we would not only have to sleep in the airport, but we would miss the beginning of language school.
Then she looked at our information again and said, “You have no return ticket from Bangkok. They won’t let you into the country.” We told her we were moving there, and she said, “Without a visa or a return ticket, you won’t be allowed into the country, but that’s not our problem. Good luck.” AHHH!!!! Boarding passes in hand, we took off running for the security checkpoint. Chris told one of the guards that we were in a really big hurry (it was after 1:30 at this point), so the guy let us go in the front of the line. BUT, then Chris was chosen for a random “we need to search you further” full body search, and his bag was chosen for a closer search as well. It was all I could do not to shout, “We don’t have time for this!” but I (thankfully) realized that might look quite suspicious! At long last, they finished and we again took off running toward our gate. Poor Chris was carrying a 50 pound (literally!) carryon and running at full speed!! We actually made it to the gate right at 1:45 (albeit sweaty and probably not smelling great), and they let us board!! Unfortunately we were given seats a few rows apart form each other, but we were just thankful to be on our way to Taipei.
So, the entire way to Taiwan, we were both really worried and prayed a lot about actually making it into Thailand and receiving our baggage too. Surprisingly, they actually gave us both two meals on the flight—God is good! The layover in Taipei was uneventful, then we got on another plane for a 3 ½ hour flight to Bangkok. On that plane we had to fill out a customs form with all of our return flight information, which of course we didn’t have, so we just left that part blank. Once in the airport, we took our passports and our customs forms with sweaty, nervous palms to one of the customs guys, and all he did was look at our passports and customs forms, stamp them, and waved us on through!! He didn’t even ask us one question! Then, to top it all, all four of the bags that we checked back in Lexington made it to Bangkok!! We were so excited! God really took care of us! We actually got a 30-day tourist visa, so we have to leave the country within 30 days, so we’re going to go visit friends in Singapore for a long weekend. We will take Dr. Nantachai’s letters with us to Singapore, get them approved at the Thai embassy there, and will be allowed back into Thailand on teaching visas that will be good for a year!! Easy enough!
Praise God!!!
One tired week!Chris here again….
So we started language school about 4 hours after getting settled into the church’s apartment Wednesday night (morning…or whatever you call 4 AM!). Thank you again, Dr. Nantachai, for picking us up in the middle of the night at the airport! It truly was God’s providence that we stayed awake and quasi focused Wednesday but we did, and we both really enjoyed the first three days of the school. For the first three days, the school is focused completely on vowel and consonant sounds and clusters and the 5 tones of the Thai language. Dora and I cannot say enough great things about the PILAT (Language acquisition techniques) training that we had in Colorado in November. The techniques that focus on listening before speaking and engaging like a child in the learning process are already coming in handy, and we are more familiar with the sounds that are not in our English tone boxes. Now that we are into the second week of training we are getting slammed by the memorization factor, and are looking at our PILAT notebooks to create a ‘battle plan’ for working through the phrases and vocabulary that we are currently receiving.
I’m almost done sharing about our language learning experience…I promise. But, I just have to brag on Dora for a minute. She is really a motivated language learner, and she is more willing than me to just stick herself out there and ‘give it a shot!’ I’m so proud of her and so motivated by her. I think we are going to make it through this difficult process, but not without some battle scars (and a lot of Thai people laughing at our poor attempts at producing the proper tones!!!) I have had one language victory myself to report: today (1/11/10) my teacher asked me if the word she was using to describe an object was correct or not, and I was able to hear that it was the right syllables but the wrong tones. Praise God!!!
Life with a Thai Family
We might have mentioned that the Mission Society (our sending organization) encouraged us to live with a host family during the initial part of our stay in Thailand in order to be fully immersed in the Thai way of life and culture. We asked Drs. Nantachai and Ubolwan (his wife and fellow pastor/missionary) to help us find a host family, and did they ever! We are staying, not with a family from the church, but with a Buddhist family that is high in the government of Thailand! We have to admit, this gave us some anxiety (none that could rival our anxieties associated with arrival in the country!), but our anxiety was quickly dispelled when we met this warm family. Though both parents work full-time, they have a maid, whom they love as a family member, that cares for the children and the house so they can all enjoy each other’s company in the evening. This family has graciously provided us with a very comfortable room, breakfast and dinner daily, and a lot of good times. Saturday, they took us on a tour of the extremes of Bangkok. We saw the 'Beverly Hills' of Bangkok, the shopping mecca near the Siam Sky train station, home of Hard Rock Café and four beautiful malls that put all of our shopping areas to shame. Then we went to a Thai tourist spot, and I really mean Thai; we saw like two Farang’s (foreigners) all afternoon. It was a little island in the middle of the Chao Praya River, the main artery through Bangkok, where they make clay pottery and crazy egg yolk and sugar Thai desserts! The Thai have a way to make all food beautiful. Pretty tasty, too! All the homes ‘on’ the island were traditional Thai stilted homes on the riverbank. Surprisingly most of them had NO land access, so the community visits with each other, shops, and everything else, by boat on the river and the canals.
Some interesting discoveries and/or mistakes we’ve made so far:
They sell Pringles here! They even have most of the flavors we have in the States, along with some new ones as well—seaweed, soft shell crab, and grilled shrimp to name a few!
After we bought an umbrella from a street vendor, Dora should have said “khopkhun ka” (thank you). Instead, she said “kha nam pung” (bread). Oops!
We’ve both been doing a really good job with taking off our shoes as we enter the host family’s home. However, the other day Dora wanted to wear some shoes that were already up our bedroom when she was heading outside. So without thinking, she just wore the shoes from upstairs through the house outside. The host family didn’t say anything, but later we read that wearing shoes in the house is seen as totally disgusting! She felt terrible and later apologized!
They have a really cute channel on TV called the “Panda Channel.” It’s a camera filming a family of pandas living in the Chiang Mai Zoo 24 hours a day! It’s actually really cute because there is a baby panda at the zoo who loves to play!
Thailand is seeing the beauty of the Lord through their own people!!!I have to end the blog with this story. It starts a year and a half ago when we visited Thailand and went with Drs. Nantachai and Ubolwan Mejudhon to their ministry site in Roi Et, Northeast Thailand. There, we met a high school student, nicknamed Pure, in the village of Banon who was an amazing singer. There is a picture of Pure and I singing and playing together (respectively) for the worship service in Banon. Since graduating high school Pure received a scholarship to a performing arts school in Bangkok, and the Medjudhon’s ministry is helping him by allowing him to live in the home church in Bangkok. Pure has flourished in Bangkok this year and has become an active member of the Muang Thai Church and a growing believer!
A couple of months ago, we were sent a video of Pure performing with an acting company at his school, which made our hearts jump for joy to see a young man from the Esarn region performing, but nothing could prepare us for what Pure has accomplished this fall…When we arrived in Thailand we received word that Pure was in the finals for Thailand’s version of American Idol, the KPN Awards! Not only that, but Pure has been favored to be one of the top three contestants in the Awards!!! The excitement of this opportunity is being felt all around the Christian community as Pure is using his moment of stardom to sing songs about Jesus and demonstrate His love through his attitude. Dora and I stayed up late on Saturday night to watch the 3-hour KPN Awards so that we could see him perform on this week’s show. It is only hearsay, but Dr. Ubolwan told us that Pure has turned down an agent because the agent would prevent Him from singing in church. Please take a minute to enjoy Pure’s worship to God. We can all take joy as we watch God move!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKWpc9SK2gU
