OceanicThai

Christmas is a time of frantic frenzied activity within the Christian community here in Thailand. It is a time of outreach, giant neighborhood parties and trying to explain to everyone we are not celebrating the birth of Santa Claus, but in fact are celebrating the birth of Christ. A typical party are tents and booths pitched outside on the dirt, sweaty crowds of people showing up for the food, treats & free presents. We play crazy games, kids are screaming, dogs are barking, there is trash everywhere and the sound system is so loud our ears are ringing. Through the years my ideas about what Christmas is supposed to look and feel like have morphed from the American ideal into something much stranger and hardly recognizable for us whities. I usually come home exhausted and half deaf, covered in dust and food. It's a grand and glorious time, always a funny new story, always the great feeling that you made Christmas for so many people. We still try to have a few hours Christmas mo...

I work 3 days a week during the busy hours at WonGen Cafe'. I take orders, bring food and drinks, and work the cash register. I also help clear and clean tables when the customers leave. I wash dishes. It's probably not exactly what our supporters envision their missionary doing. In all relationships, communication is essential, time together is important. Where I am from, getting together once a week to build a discipleship kind of relationship is seen as good enough. I brought that idea here and I don't think it works very well. Relationships here need much more time, trust builds slowly, change comes gradually. Seeing is believing, especially in the areas of love and trust. It is not enough that I am a Bible school graduate. It is not enough that I am fluent in the language and understand the culture. I am still an unknown foreign woman. Working at WonGen Cafe' enables the women who work there to get to know who I am & I get to know who they are. How we work with...

I dreamed about Wendi last night. We were at some kind of fair. We took a picture together and Wendi smiled her beautiful smile. We watched a gorgeous sunset together over an ocean city filled with water. The water was reflected in beautiful colors over everything because it was flooded. I kept crying and wanting to sing you songs, I knew I wouldn't see you again. You seemed distracted and kept walking away, getting further and further away. Oh Wendi. Why did it have to be you? I miss you so much.

It has been difficult to write since the death of my best friend, Wendi L. I miss her so much, and the easier days are the days I forget that she is gone. Sometimes I dream about her. In my last dream she was healthy and whole again, not thin like she was when she was on chemotherapy. She told us all she was ready to die the day before she passed, but we were not ready, those of us who loved her. I don't know if I felt more grief or more anger, even in the year and a half of knowing she had terminal cancer, we all believed, herself included, that she would be the exceptional statistic. Instead, she died earlier than the 2 years the doctors gave her. My world is not as bright and beautiful. Without you, Wendi, life is different and there is this pain that just sits there somewhere deep in me. I love you, I miss you so much, I still don't want to believe you are gone.

Rotting, tattered leaf shreds and brown shrivelled vines looked ugly underneath the vibrantly green growth of new leaves, vines, huge yellow flowers and curling tendrils of my climbing pumpkin plants. I started to chop them off, thinking the trellis would look so much more attractive with just the good looking parts on display. Curiously, as I chopped off the old, mostly dead vines, the new vines started falling off the trellis. What was going on? I looked carefully underneath and realized the new, tender vines and tendrils had piggybacked on the older ones. When I cut the old ones off, the new ones lost their foothold, their support structure on which they had their hold. I left the rest of the old brown, yellowing growth to simply fall off on its own so I wouldn't have all the new plants collapsing off the trellis. It reminded me of people, of course.

Wendi Louise Lehman died April 13th at 11:30 a.m. I will love you forever, Wendi, my beloved friend.

My beloved friend Wendi L. has run out of time. I was planning on flying out to see her in June after the kids finished school, but her condition has deteriorated more quickly than any of us could have anticipated. She is on morphine and oxygen, and she no longer has the energy to talk more than briefly. My best friend for 25 years, I will be content just to hold her hand and be with her, nothing needs to be said, really. I already know she loves me, she already knows I love her. We have had countless hours of conversation through the years. I just want to be with her one more time before she goes into eternity. My passport and visa came just in time before the offices close for several days for national holidays here in Thailand. The seat I reserved was still available even though I went past the reservation day. I am in shock, I am devastated, but I am also so thankful I can make this trip. I will fly out of Thailand tomorrow and be able to see her Friday. Oh God, just help her to ho...