We had told them. ‘You’ll not see rain…’, but our words were much less reliable that those of Elijah! As we went out that first morning in Bangkok the clouds were black and threatening. We managed to dodge the showers until boarding a river taxi when the skies emptied – on us. The rain passed and we dried out quickly, the only lingering affect was a few questionable hairstyles! Our credibility was dented a bit too as we were frequently teased, ‘You told us…’
On a more serious note, our team was taken aback as we visited the temple of the Emerald Buddha. Although in one way a beautiful icon of Thai tourism, the reality of the influence of Buddhism in Thailand shocked our team. The majority of people in Thailand are Buddhist, this with their strong animistic beliefs controls every aspect of their daily lives. This was one reason we were there, to begin to build up an impression of what it’s like for missionaries to work in Thailand.
Our tribal visits were all in the North East of Thailand so we travelled in an overnight bus to Mukdahan. The first missionary team we met was in the very early stages of their work. Having completed Thai language study they had been doing survey work to determine which village they should move to. It was during our time there these two young families were given permission to start work with the Pu Thai people. In another Esaan village we visited with a team where the work had been going on for a few years. They were immersed in the study of language and culture. Then finally we also visited a Bruu village where missionaries have been working for over twenty years. Here we stayed in the home of a young Bruu couple who are believers and had the privilege of meeting with the church on Sunday morning. One of the main tasks of the missionaries in this village is to continue translating the Bible. For this little church to grow to maturity they will need to have all of God’s Word in their own language.
Again the team was surprised by a number of things they learned in these places:
*To see a church established and brought to maturity requires a massive commitment and investment of time
*To do a meaningful work a significant amount of time must be spent in properly understanding the language and culture
*Even to get to the place where they can commence their work requires many moves and much upheaval for missionaries, especially those with young families
Throughout the rest of our time in Thailand there were other surprising things to be discovered, for example:
*You can drive for thirteen hours and only cover a small part of the country
*Thai people (and missionaries) can eat rice with just about every meal and don’t seem to get tired of it
*An elephant really can paint a picture with its trunk
*Almost the entire staff of a bank will come to your aid if you are trying to learn how to count in Thai
*It is so easy to make silly mistakes when you try to learn the language
*The number of scopes of ice cream one team member can eat – you know who you are!
1 comment:
Hi Bobby & Norman-
Neat post of your ladies trip to Thailand. I remember how our visit to the temple of the emerald Buddha affected me. In spite of all the beauty, gold and glitter, it just felt empty, dark and oppressive. It was sad to see people crawling on their hands and knees to bow before a statue...and teaching their little children how to do it, too.
What a responsibility we who have the Light have.
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