Then I got to meet with Zack, Kregar, Laurin (not Lauren Becker) and Dr. Gary, the team from Evangel to meet with the local pastors P'King and his wife Apple to hear their heart for the ministry here at the coffee shop at their church. Then we met with Lauren do some training on teaching and understanding Thai culture, and then Zack, Kregar, Laurin and I headed out to downtown Chiang Mai in a sahng taw (a pick-up, usually red, with “two benches” (approximate translation of sahng taw) in the bed of it) to eat lunch and visit a wat. Zack, Kregar and Laurin have been in the country for about a week already so I just followed their lead to get around for a little while.
Then we headed back to the church for a Thai lesson, which we are going to have twice a week while we are here. I am very excited about learning more of the language here. I keep reflecting back on how much Arabic I learned during the one month I spent in Jordan so the idea that I will be in Thailand almost twice as long has me really excited to see how much more Thai I will be able to learn. After our Thai lesson we walked up the road to another wat.
It was amazing to compare and contrast the two wats. The one downtown was very commercialized and filled with people come to “earn merit” to help balance out their bad karma by leaving flowers and food for the spirits and by leaving money in the temple (wat) there. The top part of the huge chedi behind the temple was partially collapsed a long time ago in an earthquake before the current temple was built in front of it. The other wat, Wat Umong, is up near the base of the mountains behind the Chiang Mai university and it is in a very natural setting. In doing a little reading about it I found something that said that Wat Umong was unusual in its setting out in this wooded area, but regardless of how it was built it was beautiful. I don't know how else to sum it up.
At Wat Umong there was a building filled with painted murals; it was hard to understand the meanings behind them, especially without knowing Thai. But from what I could gather they were representations of significant events in history and sayings of great teachers, things from around the world. There were paintings of Jesus on one side of each column with sayings of Jesus from the Gospels painted on them in Thai and English. These were the only sayings in the building painted in English, another example of how set in the Thai mind it is that to be Christian is to be Western, just as the Thai saying says “To be Thai is to be Buddhist.” Our goal in the English Center is to show the Thai people that one does not have to be western to be Christian; we want to connect the students who come with Thai Christians so they can see that to be Thai does not mean one cannot be Christian.
Pray that hearts would be prepared and open to understanding this as we begin building relationships with out students in classes on Tuesday.
Eating Lunch in a sahng taw.
Wat Chedi Luang in downtown Chiang Mai
Chedi at Wat Umong, Chiang Mai
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