First Time in a Thai Church...

Orientation started again at 8:30, which gave me plenty of time to get my daily strawberry yoghurt from sev and some time to skim over the Bangkok Post, an English paper. Speaking of the Bangkok post, last week I was reading it and read an article about George Bush speaking at Calvin College. It even said how some of the faculty had sent a letter to the Grand Rapids Press saying they didn’t support Bush blah blah blah. Interesting thing to see Calvin College and the CRC church mentioned in the Bangkok Post. We started the day learning about learning methods and then David Long (not the professor from King’s) talked to us about Thai culture. He’s been living here for 18 years. We then went to The Mall and had lunch together at The Sizzler. Headed back here and learned a bit about making lesson plans. We then made lesson plans for the practice lessons we are gonna teach to each other tomorrow. I am gonna teach about the circumferance of a circle. After running across the street to grab some supper I headed over to Nonthaburi Baptist Church which is on campus here for some sort of Hymn night. We went because Ajahn Sahat wanted us foreign staff to sing a song. The service was longer than I expected (2 hours) and I had a pretty bad headache but it was pretty interesting. I didn’t really understand anything but there were a couple hymn books in English so we could sing along a bit. During the service we decided we would sing Be Thou My Vision. It was Ajahn Sahat’s birthday today so the church sang happy birthday to him first in English and then in Thai. On our way out they were handing out cds with Thai hymns on them. We’re playing it here in the staffroom right now. It found it interesting that I could see a spirit house from the window while in church. A spirit house is like a fancy dollhouse on a pole that people put outside there houses so that the spirits hang out in the spirit house instead of the house. I felt strange being in a pocket of Christianity amidst an ocean of Buddhism. Pray that God continues to work in Thailand. At church this past Sunday we saw a presentation from the jail ministry program. The lady giving the presentation became a Christian while in jail. They showed us a video of a giant jail choir. They set up a choir program where they have choir practice combined with a Bible study. 80% of the choir had accepted Christ. Pretty amazing that the place which seems to be the most receptive to the gospel is the prison!