I pray everyone is doing well in the world of warm showers that actually flow from taps...and dishes that are washed with soap. It seems like it has been forever since i have had a chance to send some news from the frontlines of the Thailand Jungle. I have almost been here a month already...and in ways it feels like a week. So much happens every day that it all melds together and before I know it another week has passed...and Heidi is once again very tired. Each day I get to know one kid a little bit better. It is exciting to see the relationships build through the language barrier. Since there are 70 kids here I am going to need the 8 months to really get to know most of them. There are quite a few that know english so that is nice to help them learn more and to speak with them.
This week has been draining because 3 of our Kids cousin died suddenly as he drove his moped straight into the front of a bus last week. He was 27 and him and his passenger died instantly. The body of both were unrecognizable, the family was just lucky he had an ID card on him. The other body is still a Jane Doe, only male I guess. Sad. Well, the funeral celebrations went of for whole week, the last night of worship being done tonight. I think I have participated in the most worships this week in my life. The family is Baptist and has a great relationship with bamboo school. So of course we were invited everynight to bring guitars and sing. After singing and worship there is always food!! ( which by this time is 9:30pm and we have already eaten dinner and must eat again) They made special vegetarian meals for us each night!!! I am amazed at the lovely hospitality. They also serve what we call "stay up all night" drink. It is hot water with about 1 scoop of Milo (hot chocolate) and 20 scoops of sugar. Very sweet and very gross. The key is to never finish your cup because they promptly fill it up again!! hee hee.
Muwai (one of the guys (19yrs) from our school who's cousin died) asked Arthur or I to speak for worship one night. It ended up being me. That was an interesting experince to say the least. I prepared for about 3 hours on Friday searching for the right verses of hope for the family that had so suddenly lost a son. And as I had prayed and was leafing through the bible I thought a lot about Hofer's and what I had learned through their experience of death and hope. I decided to speak about family support and our strength and comfort coming from our Heavenly Father. I think I whelmed them a bit because I used so many bible verses that all fit together so perfectly. A Baptist missionary from the states said after, good use of bible verses...all I could say is "Praise up". They have a tendancy here to just pick one verse and elaborate on it. But it is so much better using God's word to explain Himself than your own. Mom, I will have to send you a copy...and I had to write it out word for word because it was translated 2 times (into Thai AND Karen). it is such a delay in speaking that it throws me off. Once Muwai (he translated into Karen) read the wrong scripture, laughed, and then read the right one. I always wonder how much of the message actually gets translated correctly. But that is left in God's hands, He knows what is important for them to hear. The Baptist pastor made me laugh after (he translated into Thai from Karen) and he said that prays God can do wonderous things because some time he translates things that he does not understand or do not make sense to him, but he hopes they make sense to those who hear it! I thought "great...What did I say through the telephone line?!!??"
Yesterday our Bamboo school was invited to go to church and sing at the Baptist church. We took up almost the whole church, and it was very hot and sticky. I am defiantely getting used to sweating and wearing jeans in the heat. Kiera, remember how we wondered how they survive in the heat wearing long sleeved shirts and jeans?? It can be done. Infact, sometimes, I it just feels so nice to wear jeans. I definatly do not have enough clothes here though. Considering that they swim in their clothes, there is always a set that is drying. Also, because you sweat so much during the day, you wear something once and have to wash it. The Karen for the most part are fairly clean people, in a sense that they are always washing clothes. I will enjoy the luxury of a washing machine when i get back to a city.
Anyway, gettting back to the sunday service, it was long at hot. And as they were sitting there Muwai says...they want you to say some words of encouragement to the church. And if you know me...i'm not good with getting put on the spot...which I have to overcome rather quickly out here I think. I like to think things through and make sure I know what I am saying. Well, it worked out great because Arthur did it. We both opened our bibles and it basically turned into who can find a text they want to speak on first, does. And it was great because he did, I think we are a good team at sharing responsibilites since I spoke at the funeral already. After church Muwai's family invited us all over (about 45 of us at least) and fed a a huge delicious lunch. Arthur and I were amazed once again at the planning of it all and how we are continuously treated so nicely i feel like a qween!! At church in the mornning I had a headach and felt a bit nauseous. I was sqwatting in the shade beside the building with some students who, after a few minutes, realized I was not feeling well, ...attacked me with their great massaging little hands. I had one working on my neck, one on my shoulders, and one massaging my temples. Wow...I tell you, no headach has power over that!! it was brilliant! And of course only added to me feeling very loved.
Nurse Heidi attended to a little wrinkled old scrawny butt two weeks ago with bed soars. It was rather interesting to say they least. The school visits the sick on sabbath afternoons. We load up the truck, bring a guitar or two so the kids can sing and play while the sick get attended to. Last week we went and visited an older man (50-60yr) in the next village that became paralized on his left side just over a year ago. His family does not take care of him at all really. And so he is constantly laying or sitting on his matt. He lives in a very airy bamboo shack about 10 feet off the ground on stilts. Since he cannot move very well, he scooches off his matt and does his business through the cracks of the floor. The stains on the bamboo makes you not want to think too much about what your bare feet are troding on...yes the conditions of the place would make your stomach turn. I don't thing he has been completely bathed in probably also a year and a half...or so it looked. He is a very skinny old man that just wears a sarong and nothing else. Try to clean off a bum without getting flashed with the dried,shrivled fruit bowl "down there" is a very hard thing to do. It did not take Muwai and I too long to do that and then we proceeded on to cleaning his feet. Cat suggested we give him a foot massage...but before we could start we needed to take off the thick crusted layer of dead skin and dirt and whatever else there was I will not think about. It was so crusted on there was no space between his toes, and there were dark brown patches on his feet that were the same. We soaked him with gauze and sterile water and i grabbed one foot and Muwai the other. We scrubbed for half and hour or more...and got as clean as we could. At first I had to keep my mind on other stuff not to hurl thinking about what I was cleaning off. Then I thought how good it must feel for him, to finally get some blood circulating and some attention to his feet. My thoughts then shifted to Jesus washing feet...and i thought as gross as this is...it is not below me. It was a very humbling experience. As Muwai and I walked away from the house I said "We need to scrub his whole body down, let's make him our project". I hope to go visit him more often. I would like to see him twice a week, but were unable to this week due to an unforseen virus that had us laying in bed a few days and of course the funeral.
Boils...yes they are a lovely thing. I had only an idea of them in Canada...that they were something that people got that created a big bump and were very painful. That was my extent of knowledge on them. I now know what they look like in great detail...from the inside out. Most are also situated on people's behinds. Although they also like to appear on other parts of the body, such as elbows and backs....or anywhere really where a hair folical decides to infect itself. It is basically a gigantic zit. Large enough sometimes, that once cleaned out of the green pus, I could stick my whole pinky finger (till the top of the nail bed) into the hole. Delicious you say?? yes rather. Let's go eat. They are really common here, and infact can be quite dangerous because if they get out of hand they can poison the body. The other day one of our boys got a fever. Since that was the primary symptom of the virus that Arthur, Cat and I had caught, we just shipped him to the hospital. (Cat had also gotten admitted the day before due to her constant vomitting for 24 hours. It was the first time in 6 years of her living here and bringing people to the hopital for care that she herself was finally admitted. The entire hospital staff knew and thought it rather faunny and ironic.) Anyway Chargaygay was in the hospital for 2 days with a fever before they found out what it was. It was a boil on his behind, noticed by his mother has she helped bath him. He was too embarassed to say anything to us before, which we could have sorted out at the school in our little clinic and not needed to spend all the money in hopital bills. So, boils can be dangerous...especially if ignored.
