“From Thailand, mostly…”

Watch this video. It’s amazing. Then check out the website: The Resurgence
 

Jacob’s Story from Unearthed on Vimeo.

Water is Everything

“One day I woke up and the world was an ocean…” 

It’s called “naam” in Thai (rising tone). Naam tuam is the source of all our troubles as it continues to encroach on the city. Naam plau wasn’t in the stores for a while as people panicked and bought up every bottle in every Seven Eleven. We visited the most beautiful naam tok last week in the jungle mountains of Khao Yai. Wai naam has been my stress relief lately as I slowly train for a triathlon. And today was Loi Krathong, the festival when Thai people offer floating sacrifices to the Water Goddess.

Water is everywhere and means everything, and I hardly know how to begin about it. Every soi (sidestreet) around our office is flooded. Water is coming closer to my slum community from both the north and the south. “One day I woke up and the world was an ocean…” or so it seems.

Once again, I’m learning about powerlessness. Let me tell you people, this is a hell of an experience. We have to put events and plans on hold, not because the water is preventing them from happening, but rather because we have no idea at all what the situation will be like in a week or even in three days. Stuff is happening in this city, but I have no idea what, or when, or how, or what my role in it is.

So I take each day as it comes. I walked to the park this evening to see the floating lanterns. Of course I had left my camera at the office so the only photo I got was from the roof of our building, but I’m afraid I couldn’t much enjoy the festivities anyway. I feel like a Jew at Christmastime–what have I to do with these celebrations? Yes, I enjoy the aesthetic of it, but unless I try exceedingly hard to keep my brain out of the business, I can’t help but think how fearful I would be if my security depended on making merit or appeasing the spirits of this world.

I guess that leads to the other flood that has flowed in lately. It’s a strange tide of the Lord’s work in my heart. I can’t really figure it out…it’s confusing, and it’s quite overwhelming, and it’s powerful. We feel rather like the church in Acts, waiting for the fire to fall on the Lord’s people. I don’t know what to say about it. I’m grasping for words, so I’ll borrow Jon Foreman’s: “Let there be a flood of justice, and endless procession of righteous living.” Let’s just say there’s more than one flood taking over this country.

And for all this water, I keep thinking of baptism. What was the purpose of water in the life of Jesus? The water of our baptism is about the Lord releasing us from our lives of guilt and oppression and selfishness and cleansing us for a life of love and righteousness. Every morning I wake up and I feel like I need that water of baptism all over again: “Draw me further up and further in!” Remind me that this isn’t a flood of dirty sewage water, but a flood of naam plau, clean water that will make me white as snow and lead me to be the Lord’s servant.

But I know what you came here for. You don’t want my aimless verbal ramblings, you want more flood pictures. So here they are:

P.S. These were taken about 10km from my house. The water hasn’t reached us like this yet. We’ll see if it does…I might need to get myself some rubber pants.

The Flood is the Least of It

My Thai teacher, Khruu Juum, worries too much. I mean, yes, her house might just float away if the khlong floods high enough, but why fret about things you can’t help? It really made both of us laugh when she said that she had missed a couple nights of prayer group on account of worrying about the floods coming into her house. Think about it– if the flood came while Khruu Juum was at home, she really wouldn’t be able to do much about it anyway, but at least at a prayer meeting she could have some effect through intercession, right?

It’s a challenge to figure out the in-between of freaking out and not caring. There’s so much information on the news about the flood that my neighbors are quite anxious, though there’s been no real evidence that the flood might affect my district in any physical way. Some of the businesses in the area have built small retaining walls around the entrance of the building. Some have sandbags piled up. Many of the street vendors have just picked up and left the city for their families’ homes, either to help out or to seek refuge. Every day I hear someone say, “Oh, now it’s really close.” “You said that last week.” “But this time it’s actually going to come.” “Sure.” The rest of our team is pretty doubtful that it’ll hit, but even the most adamant of us has been wavering lately…

Not to say that there’s been no effect of the flood in Bang Kapi. Actually, it’s amazing how many people have left the area. The streets are so much quieter at night because there are so fewer people out. The stores are out of bottled water and dry goods like bread, ramen, and cereal. Other drinking water filters are working overtime because of the water situation. Taxis and cars are parked on the elevated sections of the freeway and SO many taxi drivers have straight up left the city. For some strange reason, chicken eggs were impossible to find the other day. I have this theory that the chickens have ESP and the impending doom of the flood made them too afraid to lay…

Okay so maybe the eggs theory is chicken crap, but all of this to say that the flood has come to our area even though the water hasn’t touched us. Maybe we can save our stuff, but in the end, we can’t really avoid the inevitable. Some things are going to reach us whether we pile up the sandbags and build ourselves into a little square of safety or not.

We spent the Saturday and Sunday at a volunteer center, moving sandbags and water bottles and sorting through donations. Today we’re going to help out some army rescue crews because there aren’t enough soldiers to help the people who need to be removed from their houses. But basically, we do what we can. We figure out how to best respond to these things that we can’t control.

The list of “things I can’t control” here in Thailand (/slash my life right now in general) is pretty long. The flood is the least of it for me. I have to figure out which coping mechanisms are helpful and which I can throw out the window. For example, taking responsibility for every bad thing that happens or blaming myself is one that I should probably try to avoid (even though that’s my first reaction). But turning my ignorance, impotence, and lack of understanding into a motivation to learn and practice language skills more is definitely superior coping.

Dealing with things you can’t help seems to be part of living with the poor. You learn to find joy and peace in other ways, like in hard work and in the laughter that always follows my awkward attempts to speak the language. Limited resources lead to ingenuity. Being cast out leads to the formation of a different kind of community. The golden lining of this powerlessness is that I’m turned back to prayer as the best coping mechanism. Can’t talk to my sisters, but I can talk to Jesus. Can’t change XYZ but I can petition the Lord. Can’t focus, can’t win this emotional wrestling match, but I can pray through the Psalms and in that I become the conqueror.

I kind of like this flood crisis. Speaking very selfishly, I feel like it’s a good reminder to me that no one has it together. There are some things that no one can control, no one can say, “Oh, I’ve got that covered.” And sometimes, our responsibility is proven not in how we avert crises and maintain the appearance of perfection, but in how we respond when the shit hits the fan, how we pick up the pieces afterwards. Hm. Oh, what a good reminder that is for self-blamers like me.

Speaking of picking up pieces, I’m headed out in a few minutes to help out a rescue crew, so say a prayer for us and the people we’re going to try to help. I love being able to do something in these situations of seeming helplessness. None of us quite know what to expect, but even if all we do is pass out food to people trapped in their flooded houses, it’s something. And when you feel like you’re incapable of doing much of anything, being able to do something is quite satisfying.

Weddings and Multiculturalism

Lexie got married!!

Nothing was easy about this wedding. Imagine doing everything in Thai and English; planning for out-of-town guests and bringing in locals from our community who don’t have resources for easy transportation across town; and all while the river is threatening to overflow and wipe out the town. But it all worked out in the end, i.e. they were married by the time it was over.

Lexie has been in Bangkok with Servant Partners for the past four years and she met her husband, Rod, while he was living in the city and working with an Australian mission, Urban Neighbors of Hope. (A nice reminder that it is possible for a girl to find a husband even on the other side of the world.) Now they’re both living in Mae Sot, a much smaller city on the border of Burma. Lexie’s fantastic and she has been so welcoming as I’ve been adjusting to life in Thailand. I’m sorry to see her move, but it’s also pretty obvious that she and Rod are going to be a great team and that many people will be blessed by their ministry.

Fun facts about the wedding: 1. It couldn’t be a Thai wedding without a random stray dog waltzing through the middle of the ceremony.

2. Flowers in Thailand are amazing. Orchids might be expensive in the US, but they’re about as common as carnations here.

3. Adopting Thai customs is hilarious. Tuk tuks (or rickshaws, as they’re called in India) are pretty cool, but it’s even cooler when the groom surprises the bride by renting one and whisking her off to the reception in a traditional Buddhist parade.

Normally these parades happen after the party when everyone has had a bit too much to drink, but we don’t need alcohol to convince us to start dancing. Especially Kevin.

Floods (and I don’t mean cropped jeans)

Apparently CNN and other world news have been telling all y’all in America about the flooding going on here in Thailand. Well rest assured, I am quite safe here in Bangkok. Many of my Thai friends have been a little bit panicky about it. The grocery stores ran out of noodles and rice because people were stocking up in case of really bad floods. But since Bangkok is the capital of the country, it’s in the best interest of the national economy to keep the city center safe from flooding, so they built retaining wall on the north and east sides of the city, diverting the water away from our region.

Unfortunately, that water has to go somewhere. A lot of it has ended up in Ayutthaya (aye-YOU-tee-yuh) up north and they have very severe flooding there. I’d say that a good 50% of Bangkok residents are from smaller villages outside the city, so many neighbors’ families are victims of the floods. In the outlying provinces, many people are trapped on the second floor of their homes, and up north near Chiang Mai, the floods have claimed many lives. As near as 20km away from my home, people have flooding up to 2 meters deep.

This weekend was supposed to be the climax of the flooding in Bangkok, especially in Bang Kapi where I live, which is one of the lowest parts of the city. Local stores have built two-foot retaining walls around their entrances in case the water reached that far. Last night a little girl in my neighborhood was excitedly telling me how her bed was going to be washed away and her house would be flooded up to her waist and… But thank God, we received almost no rain last night!! It really was an answer to prayer. This would have been a somewhat devastating weekend for Bangkok, but it seems that the Lord has been gracious in holding back the rain.

Still, pray for the families who need supplies and for the rescuers who are trying to help. Unfortunately, this was one of those lose-lose situations for the government. They had to make a choice–general damage to all of Bangkok, or major damage to less developed outlying regions. They chose the latter, for better or worse, and now there are still consequences and victims to deal with.

It’s strange to think that we have major flooding in Bangkok, while back home in America, states like Colorado and California have serious drought that leads to forest fires. “Rain falls on the just and the unjust…” and sometimes it doesn’t fall at all, and sometimes it falls too much.

The Land of Smiles (A real blog post!!)

Heaven knows how certain nicknames are earned. I was told this week that Baltimore, Maryland is nicknamed “The City that Reads” even though it has a pretty high rate of illiteracy. Chicago (my kind-of hometown) is “The Windy City” though I’m pretty sure Upland, Indiana has more wind (the origin of that nickname is a cool story though). Thailand is called “The Land of Smiles” and I have to say, for once, the country’s nickname totally fits. People in Thailand smile when I’m awkward, when I’m clumsy, when I use the wrong tone so instead of saying “I have a shirt” I end up saying “I have a tiger.” They smile for everything. And smiling doesn’t become insignificant, as ubiquitous as it is. The best way to make a friend in Thailand is to smile at everyone (especially as a farang, a foreigner.)

But the big deal behind the smiles are the people. So here’s a bit about some of the people I’ve met here in Bangkok.

Jin is probably one of my favorite people here in Thailand. Unfortunately, she’s moving up north in only three days to help her parents who have no source of income and steep health problems. Her father has tuberculosis and currently, since her sister is taking care of their parents, Jin’s dad has to sleep outside so Jin’s infant niece and nephews don’t get sick.

Jin has been one of the strongest Christians in Samaki Patina (my neighborhood) and was prepared to take over leadership of our house church before her dad got sick. She works with the Thai Peace Foundation on the administrative side of things, but she contributes so much more than just her work. Every time I walk into the office, she makes me smile with some kind of sarcastic remark (though she pretends to not be able to speak or understand English, she knows a lot more than she lets on) or by the absolutely ridiculous t-shirts she wears. They always say some kind of mis-translated phrase in English like, “Thailand Only” or “I <3 Thailand because someone in Thailand love me.”

She can also eat like no one I’ve ever seen. She’s tiny. Literally, like six inches shorter than me (and I’m not tall by anyone’s standards), and skinny as a rail, but she packs it away at every meal. I don’t know how she does it.

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Some of the other great people in Samaki are the kids. One thing that’s really awesome about kids is that you don’t need too many words to be able to communicate with them. And they’re a bit more understanding than adults who expect you to be able to make conversation. I met two sisters, Dhim and Dhing (it makes more sense when you’re speaking Thai. I think of them as “Thing 1″ and “Thing 2″), on my very first night in Bangkok. I was wiped out, but an American friend, Lexie, invited me to a carnival so I thought, Best way to fix my lack of relational stamina is to kick it in the butt, so I went. I don’t know what it is, but kids seem to like me. Maybe they recognize that I’m not a very good grown-up. So I went on the carnival rides with Dhim and Dhing, repeated everything Dhim said as she tried to teach me some Thai, and basically just held their hands all night long.

I met Mint, Earth, and Mee a few days ago when we were walking around the neighborhood. Of course they immediately love any farang, so they grabbed my hands and started pulling me from street to street until I was completely lost and I said, “As long as you can get me back home” which of course they didn’t understand. We sat down for maybe an hour pointing to things and I would say what they’re called in English and Mint would tell me what they are in Thai, and Earth would just jump on my back or pull on my sleeve and point to something and say “Pi Ratsamee! Pi Ratsamee!” (“Pi” is like “big sister” in Thai and “Ratsamee” is my Thai name, since no one can really say “Elena” very well.)

The kids really do get me excited about what we do here. Sometimes the jobs feel small, like teaching English a few times a week during the school break (coming up next month) or holding classes on parenting (many parents here are absent or addicts). But even at ten years old, Earth and Mee are little leaders in the making and I love the thought of what they’re going to become.

And while there’s so much potential, there’s also so much at stake in their lives. Earth lives with his grandmother who’s an alcoholic, and because he has rather strange tastes and behaviors, all the adults in his life classify him as gay, which in all honesty, becomes rather self-fulfilling as he comes to think of himself that way too though he probably has hardly any idea yet of what sexuality really is (and later, he probably won’t be very well educated about the health risks that such a lifestyle poses). Dhim and Dhing are about seven and eleven years old, but they don’t go to school because their parents basically just didn’t bother to change their school registration information after they moved here. So, what now–what on earth will they do when they grow up? How will they support themselves, start working in the red-light district? Heaven forbid.

Anyway, there’s so much to do here and I’m really humbled to be part of it. I was talking with some of my amazing friends who are in Uganda and Kenya a couple of days ago and for all of us, we’ve realized that there’s no reason why we should be the ones doing this work. There’s nothing special about us, no skills or abilities that would distinguish us. But we’re willing, and excited about this work. And your prayers are unbelievably important, too. Pray for Dhim, Dhing, Earth, Mee, Mint, and Jin, as well as the other women on my team, Michelle, Lexie, Susie, Christy, and Christina (which I’m sure I’ll write about soon, because they’re great).

Here are a few more photos of some kids I met today:

Words from Bangkok

I’ve been out of the U.S. for ten days (I think? I can’t keep track of time lately) and I suppose it’s time for a blog post. Part of me doesn’t even want to try though, just because everything has been such a whirlwind. So many thoughts.

But I’m here. My home for two years. In some ways, it’s so strange and weird and will take getting used to, but in most ways, I feel pretty comfortable already. For now, I’m just trying to take it in. My team. My neighborhood. The shift from weirdness to familiarity that I love so much. Getting used to being grimy most of the time. (Part of that is my fault because I don’t shower often enough. There, I’ve admitted it.)

Just before I left, I had a conversation with someone and he asked me a question that has struck me a lot as I’ve been stripped of the home I’m used to. He asked me, “What feeds your soul?” A good question. And I’ve come up with my answer. Words. Books. Poetry. Songs. Most recently, Steinbeck, Bonhoeffer, e.e. cummings, Baudelaire, Mumford & Sons, Josh Garrels, Over the Rhine, and Scattered Trees. And okay, I admit, even Suzanne Collins. (I really resonate with Katniss Everdeen. Is that super lame? *sigh* Teen fiction.)

But I really do feed on this stuff. Maybe this is kind of backwards, but they put life in context for me. I definitely have a tendency to read myself into the characters of books, so in Katniss, Caleb Trask, and the autobiographical musings of the poets, I see myself. I self-examine, psychoanalyze, critique, and understand. Sometimes I’m sure this isn’t quite healthy, but mostly I come out the better for it.

People have asked me what they might send in a care package. (If you want my address, click up there to the page “Contact/Support”.) Well, I’m a big fan of dark chocolate (it solves every problem) and Starbucks VIA, and I wouldn’t mind old issues of The Economist and I most definitely want any pictures or writings by human beings under the age of eleven, but the quickest way to send me some kind of awesome encouragement would be to pass along a poem, or a passage from some amazing author, or a new song (yes, you can email those) that I can pick apart and mull over and mentally meander through in my day-to-day.

Another thing that I’m thinking a lot about: I’m taking a class called “Urban Spirituality” which is about as intense as the title implies, and our professor asked us a question yesterday. “What are you asking God for, and how are you pressing on in faith to receive it?” That’s really deep. And as a matter of fact, I’m asking God for a couple kind of big things that I imagine will take a while to come to fruition…there are certain desires of my heart that won’t be put to rest as much as I try…but there are some other things I’m asking for, like direction and understanding of what my purpose is beyond these two or three years, especially in light of my gifts (or rather, what other people say my gifts are.)

Language classes start on Monday… can’t come soon enough, in all honesty. Not only do I want to be able to get around this city on my own, but I’ve said before that anything’s worth it if I can just be talking with people about Jesus. Time to put my money where my mouth is (or vice versa).

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

.: i thank you God
:: by e.e. cummings

:: i thank You God for most this amazing
:: day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
:: and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
:: which is natural which is infinite which is yes

:: (i who have died am alive again today,
:: and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
:: day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
:: great happening illimitably earth)

:: how should tasting touching hearing seeing
:: breathing any-lifted from the no
:: of all nothing-human merely being
:: doubt unimaginable You?

:: (now the ears of my ears awake and
:: now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(I know, you’re all thinking, “That’s her blog post? She’s in Bangkok and she doesn’t say two words about what it’s like??” I’m sorry. Real stuff will come. I have some pictures to put up too. Be patient with me. Thanks.)