Three Weeks and Waning...

Hello, friends and family!

It has been a long three weeks, let me tell you. Much has happened since my last update, though I do not know if I will take up too much of your time with the details. I want to communicate effectively the activities that are happening in my life and with this ministry at GES, and not bog you down with a deluge of words (though if you would like more details, don't hesitate to drop me an e-mail).

The last time I left off, we here at GES were going away for what was called "overnight camp." My original perception of this outing was that the students & staff would be spending time in the Thai country, living in tents and cooking over a fire. As it turns out, "camping" in Thai culture really means "staying in a hotel away from Bangkok."

For three days, the students and teachers from grades 5 through to 11 went to a 4 star resort called "Fountain Tree," where our meals were catered, where we were given free access to their archery range (though, only 5 shots each), paintball course (only 30 paintballs—pretty much just a "taste" of what the sport's really like), paddle boats, soccer field and swimming pool. It was pretty much just a get-away, where the kids were allowed to eat as much junk food as they could afford while also not having any parents to tell them to go to sleep. Seeing that we were a group of 120 strong, pretty much the whole resort was booked for our school. It was interesting.

Much fried rice and bottled water later, and having two games of capture the flag under our belts, the school returned to the city to finish off the week with two days' worth of classes. As I said, it was a very interesting experience. I never really expected to go camping in a hotel, while sharing a king-sized bed with one of the other teachers.

The following week was school as usual. When I arrived here in June, I was told that I would be the "homeroom teacher" for the Grade 11 students—four very intelligent young lads—but after the first week of school, the administration introduced a new homeroom with students that were barely exposed to the English language. This was the 10B class. It turned out that the ESL teacher from last year was returning to GES shortly, and seeing as she was the Grade 11 students' homeroom teacher last year, the administration thought it best to keep them with an instructor who had already cultivated a working relationship. While she was away from the school, I'd be conducting homeroom activities with Grade 11—leading devotions, being responsible for student behaviour during morning flag ceremonies, etc. As a result, the 10B students (whom I had officially been given, when the school found out that this other teacher would be returning) were, for the interim, globbed with the 10A students—those kids who had a relatively decent grasp of English—and their homeroom teacher.

Why do I tell you all of this? Well, it was this week after "overnight camp" that I officially began taking the reigns of 10B's homeroom activities. Up until that point, I had only been exposed to the class through our daily 90 minute classes of English acquisition, which I was given as filler while the volunteer teacher from San Francisco took over my Chemistry classes. It wasn't bad—the kids are great, for the most part. They're usually active and willing to learn/listen/engage in the classroom activities, and when I started leading their devotional times, I was excited to be able to a.) Use the relationship that we had built through English classes and b.) Reach these students at a level of English and at a level of exposure to Christianity (all but one of these students had never been to GES before, meaning that there was a 98% chance that they had never heard about Jesus) that would allow me to reach them effectively.

My first devotional session with these kids, I asked them what they knew about God & Jesus. One of the students asked why Jesus had to die, and there I began with creation, the Fall, the first coming of Christ and the wages of sin. I explained to them the matter at hand, and the extent of the love that God must have had to desire so eagerly for a restoration of the relationship between ourselves and Him that he would willingly kill his only Son in order to bring about redemption. I then told them how Jesus conquered death, and hoe both Jesus & God wanted to have a relationship with each individual—including these students sitting in the class. Learning something about "sales" from my time as a retail manager, I was taught that the biggest failing of making a sales-pitch (or evangelising) was forgetting to close—to present the chance for the individual to accept or reject the proposal. Armed with this knowledge, I asked the class if there was anyone who would like to have a relationship with Jesus. One girl in the corner raised her hand. "Perhaps she didn't understand what I was saying," I thought, so I quickly re-presented the implications and the information of the gospel message in a different way. I asked a second time if anyone wanted to be friends with Jesus: this same girl with the same amount of resolve raised her hand, not caring what those around her were thinking. I was ecstatic: my heart leapt. Then the bell rang and they were off to their next class.

She was sick the next two days, and the male students from Grade 10 upward are sent to military training on Fridays, which means no school for those grades (by implication, this also means that my first four days of the week are 25% longer than normal school-days). The following week had a 4 day long-weekend, giving me only 2 days with which to touch base with my students, and it just so happened that this girl was in some sort of accident (my students tell me in their broken English, which also might have meant that she was still sick). I therefore, haven't had an opportunity to build upon her initial decision, nor do I know how she's doing—or if the decision was based on personal motives and not "to please Teacher."

If you could pray for this girl, that would be amazing. Her name's Kand. Pray that her decision to follow Christ would well up within her, that God would found her fledgling faith and secure her in her conviction to follow Jesus.

When I broke this news to the other teaching staff, no one really seemed all that excited. This came to me as a shock, seeing that those involved in my next most intensive outreach ministry—Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp—would have been hooting and hollering, praising God for another child being brought to Him.



Well, that week being over, there were plans for a couple groups of teachers to go away for the long weekend: some were thinking of going to a popular beach location called Hua Hin, while others were hoping to spread their wings a bit further and go to a tropical island in the Gulf of Thailand. Seeing as the majority of staff here are female, there isn't really much "guy bonding" available, and the only two single guys who are on staff had decided to go on a retreat with the church that they were a part of. Yep. That left me with hanging out with one of two groups of girls. That being the case, I decided to go the more adventurous route & hit up the tropical island, Ko Chang.

Our bus tickets needed to be purchased at the central hub of Bangkok's tourism industry: a place known as Khao San Road. This is apparently the "must-go" place for intrepid travellers, hippies and consumerism junkies. As a result, there were more farang (white people) in this street market than there were Thai folk. I felt extremely uncomfortable.

If there were any suitable picture to give you at home of how Khao San Road feels, I would have to describe it to you like this: I have come across no better a representation for a modern equivalent to Sodom & Gomorrah. The place is horrible. The tourists come and flock to the beer gardens, the brothels, the tourist shops to consume at to satiate any of their appetites for anything you could possibly imagine. The Thai folk, knowing that these white people are flush with expendable income, prostitute not only themselves, but their culture and their very identity just to make a Baht. Every 5th Thai woman is dressed up in a mock version of traditional Buddhist Thai costume, stroking these carved wooden frogs with polished wooden sticks, making them "croak." As soon as a white person passes one of these ladies, they start following you, stroking these frogs, and if you stop walking, the wooden croaking acts like a "money alarm," causing the convergence of about 10 more of these ladies dressed in the same garb to surround you, hoping—practically begging—that you will throw some bills at them as the sell out their culture. Along with these various barrages of wooden frogs, every third Thai man would come up to me, asking if I would like to see/sleep with any of his fine, beautiful ladies in the back of his shop. I felt sick. The place was covered with a dark evil that made me itching to leave.

Since being there, I haven't quite felt like myself. I've been feeling frustrated, sad and constricted—as if something were dragging me down, sapping my strength and sucking the joy out of my life. Initially, I thought that much of this may have been due to the news of my best friend's father passing away, but I've been leaning more towards the notion that there's been a hint of spiritual oppression plaguing me since wandering into Khao San Road unawares. Praying to God today about this, and using my authority in Christ to rebuke said oppression, I've felt a release and a bit of a renewal.

On the note of difficulties, I feel that the community we have here as teachers is falling apart. It breaks my heart to see and to hear that people are beginning to fight, bicker and distance themselves from others because of petty, insignificant things (like who gets to live in what room). It is getting difficult, and it seriously devastates me as I watch this body of Christ—perhaps the representation of God's love that this un-exposed country gets to see—crumble and fail.


Pray for us, I beg you. Pray that the staff would be unified. Pray that we would do everything out of love for others; not out of love for ourselves. Pray that we would all consider others as being more important than our personal desires. Pray that we would have the courage enough to be humble, the strength enough to confess to each other, the love enough to love each person.

And pray for Kand, as she starts her walk in the footsteps of Jesus.