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.

Post Script

You know when someone tells you something, and you automatically filter that information into the, “Oh, they’re just over-exaggerating,” category, where you heed the person’s message, but decide to take it with a grain of salt & consider it less potent than the propounder implies? And do you also know that feeling of realisation you get when you discover that not only was the messenger telling the truth, but they might’ve even been down-playing the severity of the issue so as to not appear sensationalising the state of affairs? Well, I think that that feeling has just hit me.

Moments ago, I went for a short stroll down the sois (soi = residential street; road = arterial thoroughfare) behind the school. We teachers were told in orientation by an ex-pat who’s lived in Thailand for decades that the culture is largely one of appearances, and that they like to put their best faces on, while sweeping the secrets up, behind corners and under rugs. I don’t think that there’s any better way to exemplify this very attitude than in walking into the bowels of residential Bangkok. The deeper you go, the narrower the streets, and the more difficult the access, until you find yourself walking along a concrete sidewalk-sized “road,” surrounded by jungle and swamp, wherein dwelling after dwelling stands. I don’t think I would venture to call these places houses, so as to give you an improper idea of how many people live. These abodes are literally sheets of tin tacked together with an odd wooden beam here or there for some random structural support.

To be honest, I don’t quite know what to say. I can tell you that my heart was deeply moved, and that my eyes have seen past the veil of “everything’s groovy in Thailand” that the roads project. I often wondered how people survived here in Thailand, when many prices for items (save for the most basic staples) are comparable with prices at home and when the average monthly salary works out to be something like $700. Now I have a better understanding: these people don’t, for the most part, have anything besides the most basic staples. Now, is this true for the majority of Bangkok & the majority of Thailand? I don’t know. I’ve only been down one section of the soi network, which connects millions of people to Bangkok’s arteries much like capillaries in the circulatory system. Are other communities the same, where people are literally living in swamps, having nothing more than a few sheets of tin nailed together as a roof for shelter? I’m not sure.

I’d like to find out, though.

Update Part II: The Empire Strikes Back

This is the second week of the second month of my time here in Thailand. It's amazing how quickly time passed by. Looking forward, I'm discovering that I have already completed 10% of my contract time here with GES (at least for this year—who knows if I will stay for more?). It has increased my awareness and my feelings of the brevity of time. I feel like I've done so little in what appears on paper to be a lot of time, whereas what, in my mind, seems like only a few hours.

Hopefully, things will improve. I mean, they are already. I've seen myself spend less time undertaking the daily drudgeries of teaching paperwork, and what used to take me 4 or 5 hours has been compressed into 2 or 3 (they say that by month six, these activities will be able to be completed in something like 20 - 30 minutes. I can't wait!). All this being said, much has happened in these 6 weeks, and a lot of it has been boring, boring paperwork. In the future, I expect this to change & that will be nice.


On a lighter note, here are some highlights from the past two weeks:

The very first night after the very first day of classes (last week, Monday, the 15th), I was working late in the evening up in my classroom on the fourth floor of the school. Suddenly, my eardrums were barraged by what I could only describe as a rather potent roar—strikingly resemblant of a jet engine, yet a few decibels quieter. I knew that I wasn't in an airplane, and the airport was about an hour away. Just then, though, a peal of thunder broke through the encompassing white noise, and I knew that the beast roaring outside was none other than the rain.

It was an amazing thing to watch as the playground quickly transformed into a shallow pool, as the walkways flooded into rivulets and as the ground-floor hallways disappeared under a blanket of water. I laughed a bit in awe, watching what could only be described as a chunk of the Pacific being cast upon the city. The awnings over our open-air walkways between buildings wept with such ferocity that veritable walls of water materialised, veiling these corridors with a sheet of this warm, liquid film. I kid you not, nor do I even exaggerate. My laughter quickly shifted from that of awe to that of nervousness: I was on the fourth floor, having the keys to this building, and those keys needed to be returned to the central administration building, about 100 metres away. "No problem," I thought to myself, "The walkways are nice and dry underneath the awnings, and the water pouring off of them like a million fire hydrants saturating the sky all falls into the ground-level drainage troughs. It'll be nice and dry all the way to the office!"

Quickly, I gathered my things, locked my room & the school and began my trek to the office along the several interconnected strings of awnings from building to building. Everything was going well until I started to traverse the kindergarten complex. Remember those hallways that I had watched fill with water? Well, now that water was creeping dangerously towards the classroom doors (In Thailand, interior rooms tend to be about 2 or 3 inches above the floor. I didn’t really understand why for the first week, but after my first experience with rain, I soon figured it out. This example further confirmed my conclusion.), and I barely managed to skirt around the huge, huge puddle before heading to the last walkway which led to the main office. Here, though, there was no avoiding the puddle. By now, the water had been pouring so heavily that the drainage troughs couldn't choke down their air-borne beverage fast enough, leaving a nice, thick layer of water about 2 inches thick all over the ground. "No problem," I said to myself, "I have full-grain leather shoes: that means they're waterproof!" Waterproof they were, and I began to splosh through the deep puddle... Until I felt my feet get soaked. Yeah, so that 2" puddle decided to become steadily deeper the farther I travelled, reaching as high as the middle of my shins before I finally reached the office building. Suffice it to say, I was thoroughly drenched; however good my waterproof shoes were at the onset, they could no longer avail against the wading pool that was GES.

I returned to my room that night, dreading the morning and having to slip on my saturated shoes. Just thinking about it made me shudder, reminding me of many-a-morning while tree-planting back in 2002. Nothing, I don't think, is worse than having to get your feet wet even before you begin work. Thankfully though, Thailand is warm & air conditioners typically dehumidify. In the morning, when I gingerly approached my insoles to stuff them back into their cavernous abodes, I was greeted by a wonderfully dry surprise: the only things that were still damp were my shoes' "cuffs." Praise the Lord for air con.

Highlight number two fast-forwards us to Thursday or Friday night of that same week. Again, the setting and time are the same: fourth floor of GES, late late late in the evening. As I'm in the middle of making my lesson plans for the following week, my body tells me that it would be a good time to check out the WC. Flicking on the switch to the fourth-floor loo, I waltz in, and on one of the sinks' cabinet doors, I am greeted by what I could only describe at the time as a sandy-coloured land crab—but this crab didn't have any claws. This one, instead, had eight beady eyes and a couple of furry fangs. Yup, folks. That's right: a huget—aka ginormous—spider. This thing was literally the size of my outstretched hand, with a leg-span of 8". I laughed as it looked at me: it was incredible! Seriously, the thing was the size of a little crab! After doing my business, I went to grab my camera & take a photo, but as things like this generally happen, the silk-spinning land crab decided to scurry off into a drainage pipe as soon as I got my camera back to document its enormity.

Talking about crazy animal adventures, often on the walls or on awnings, you hear the scurrying of little feet. Typically, the noises you hear are geckos running about, eating random insects and keeping the environment generally bug-free, which is every nice. The one downside to living among the wall-clinging geckos is that they tend to defecate wherever they walk, and this leads to little brown pellets randomly strewn upon any surface, as if the lizards were decorating for Extreme Home Makeover: Reptile Edition.

Anyways, this past Wednesday, while I was walking back to my apartment after a long bout of marking, I heard what I thought was the common scurrying of a reptile on the roof, but something was different this time. As soon as I had finished walking out from under the roof, I heard something fall to the ground behind me with a bit of a "slap!" It was big and dark, and at night in the low light, even still I was certain that this monster was no gecko. I've been told that there are rats in Thailand, so I considered for a moment that a hapless rodent had drunkenly stumbled off the roof and plummeted to the stony pavement below, but this beast didn't look furry and I couldn't see any feet. I took a step towards it in the low light, trying to figure out what had fallen almost on top of me, and then it raised its head, began uncoiling and stuck its forked tongue out at me. A snake. A pretty decent sized, dark brown/black snake had almost fallen on top of my head thirty seconds ago. I suddenly got all jittery, imagining what would have happened if that snake did manage to land on me. Now, I know nothing about the indigenous snakes in the region, so the though of catching it quickly subsided as I considered the possibility of it being poisonous. Ha! It's only right now that the idea that the snake may have been trying to strike at me from the roof has entered my head. Who knows? At any rate, I decided to let the reptile be and continue on my way. The slithery, scaly coil of blue blood seemed a bit defensive on the ground, and I had no intentions of keeping it company, so we parted ways & I went to bed.

Well, those are my random, unrelated stories for this update. On a more serious note, I'll discuss things that actually are related to what I am doing with myself here in Thailand. Two Thursdays ago, schools all over the nation celebrate "Wai Kru," which literally means "Show respect to the teacher/master." It's a very ceremonious day, where teachers are put on display and children sing, while bringing offerings of flowers and incense to the teachers and then bowing down before their instructors, touching their foreheads to the floor, where the teachers' feet are placed. To be honest, I felt a bit awkward participating. I mean, who am I that these people should be paying me not only mere respect, but outright veneration? I recognise that this is a cultural difference, but it reminded me of a passage (Matthew 23:6-12) where Jesus once spoke to the crowd that was following Him, telling them not to ascribe the titles of "Rabbi" or "Teacher" to anyone but to Jesus. After experiencing this ceremony, I now understand why Jesus was saying that a little more now. In cultures where wisdom, knowledge and understanding are highly esteemed—valued and honoured much more so than even wealth—the teacher, the sensei, the Jedi master is the preeminent figure in society. They and they alone embody that which others aspire to have. It cannot be stolen or usurped from them; it must be given or passed along by active choice from the one who possesses such knowledge. It makes more sense, now, to me that Jesus said these things, for we all are his disciples, learning to mimic him and absorbing as much as we can from our Master. None can be called "Teacher," because we all must come to the feet of the one who teaches us, humbly being willing to accept whatever he wishes to reveal in his time, on his terms.

On a less profound note, though, I've come to the conclusion that George Lucas &/or his production team for Return of the Jedi must have used Thailand for some of their inspiration—especially as far as the Ewoks are concerned. While we were rehearsing the Wai Kru ceremonies on Wednesday last week, the school went through the full assembly and did all the speeches and whatnot. During that time, I swear that I heard the words, "Toronto gosh," and, "Oo tee nee." For all you Star Wars uber-nerds like me out there, you are probably already grinning, but for those of you who are less nerdish in the ways of the force, let me explain...

In the Return of the Jedi, when Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, R2-D2, C-3PO and other random rebel alliance members are on the forest moon of Endor, trying to disable the force-field that protects the second (almost completed, but fully-operational—sorry for spoiling the surprise for those of you who are shut-ins and have never seen the movie!) death star, they all get trapped by the moon's furry little native inhabitants: Ewoks. They break out of the trap, and the Ewoks notice that C-3PO is shiny gold, so they start worshiping him. Everybody is taken to the Ewok's village in the trees, where the captured members of the rebel alliance will be eaten in a celebratory feast to worship the Ewok's shiny new god, C-3PO. In the meantime, Princess Leia waltzes in, having befriended an Ewok on the forest floor, and she tells them to let the people go, stating that they are her friends. They don't listen, so Luke tells 3PO (who can talk any language in the galaxy) to let them free or if they don't he [3PO] would get angry. They still don't listen, so Luke levitates the android and the Ewoks get scared, shouting all different random words in their own language, one of which is "Oo tee nee!"

Immediately after 3PO floats around in his throne, the Ewoks set the prisoners free, and the protocol droid recounts their epic tale of tragedy and valour to the warrior Ewok tribe. During the story, when C-3PO is talking about Luke's encounter with Vader in the cloud city of Bespin (see The Empire Strikes Back), he uses the phrase, "Toronto gosh!" and the Ewoks all gasp.

I couldn't help but be amused when I heard these very similar syllables strung together while the ceremonies for Wai Kru were being rehearsed and performed. I literally had to bite my tongue a couple times to keep me from laughing out loud as I did my best not to think of the brown children speaking a foreign language in front of me and paying their respects to us as little Ewoks who were worshipping us as gods who came from the stars. I'm so glad that I was in the back row of teachers; because I'm sure I had a huge, stupid grin on my face for the longest time. So, whenever you're bored and you find yourself sitting through two hours of listening to uninterpreted Thai speech, just think of furry little Ewoks, and you'll be amused throughout the duration of your sit!

Wrapping Up

Okay, time to settle this update and get back to living life in Thailand. Things of note for the upcoming week include one of our volunteers, Jason, leaving on Tuesday to head back to the States. We'll miss him as he goes, as it'll be like losing one of our family members. The teacher that he was filling in for arrived this past week with his family (the Saxtons, for those who might know them) and they've settled into Thai life rather well. Aaron and Katie, I believe, will be coming back this following weekend, so I'd ask that you pray for all this travelling as the "changing of the guard" occurs at GES over the next week. In 8 days, our overnight camp programs will begin, with the lower primary (grades 1 - 5) sleeping over at the school in tents on the fields for one night, and with the upper primary (gr. 6 - 11) students being shipped off to Pak Chong for a couple days' adventure. To help with all of this, a team from Liberty University & Liberty Christian Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia will be flying in late this week and undertaking a lot of these programs' execution (among other things). I'd ask that you pray for their health and safety as well. Above all, I'd ask you to pray that we here don't lose sight of the eternal by focussing on the petty things. The staff here is all well united, but that—as with all social dynamicst—can change in a heartbeat, if we let it. Pray that we work for the Lord with all our hearts, all our strength and all our determination. Pray that we glorify God in all things at all tines this week, and that our students would be able to see the love of Christ in spite of our imperfect selves.

Blessings to you all.



PS. I am hoping to post some more pictures on my flickr photo feed, and some of those pics may be student photos. For privacy reasons, I'm going to make the student photos accessible only to my flickr "family and friends" contacts, so if you'd like to see what my students look like, you're going to have to get a flickr account & ask me to be your friend. Otherwise, just enjoy the random snapshots that I acquire throughout my random bits of free time!