OceanicThai

My body is still aching from yesterday's massive country-wide water fight. Hard to believe this started hundreds of years ago as a gentle ceremony to honor the elderly by pouring scented water over their hands and blessing them. Now it is a huge raging water-fight party where every city goes bezerk. If you don't want to play, you better stay home and lock the door. If you have to go to the store to buy milk, just expect you will be doused with water and smeared with color powder, over and over again. And you have to smile when it happens! :) What happened to the gentle elder-honoring ceremony? Culture changes through time, I suppose. Anyway, we did both yesterday with our Thai friends and Thai co-workers. We had a bucket of sweet-scented water with flower-petals in it and blessed the elderly and middle-aged of our village of Bang Sak. Then we filled plastic 50-gallon drums full of water and ice, bought bottles of powder, packed them and ourselves in the back of pick-up trucks a...

(Fishing Ship in Nearby Village) It has been a month since my last blog entry, and some wonderful things have happened since. For one, Gee's brother-in-law miraculously recovered and is now at home, on medication but very much alive. (The doctor had given him 6 weeks to live when we visited and prayed for him at the hospital.) Gee told me, "There really is a God! It was a miracle that he recovered." She's been coming to church with me, and she told me she is very interested in becoming a believer. Our Friday night cell groups have been great. We get together, everyone makes some food, and we eat together, each week at someone else's house. Then we have a time of worship and Kennedy leads a Bible study. After that we pray for one another. We are getting close as a group and we have a lot of fun together. The same folks that come to the cell group on Fridays are also there on Sunday, and more are coming as time goes on. Last Sunday we had a special Easter...