Email Update February 18, 2006 (picture, eating saag- green vegetables and chapatti (tortilla type bread) on a dirt floor!)1) Mailing Address- It would be best to send things BY March 25th!
2) A Typical Day…Living out my ‘life-long’ dream! (in a place where daily life isn’t necessarily in the best of conditions!)
3) Being Here = “A Wonderful Privilege”
4) Schedule
1) Address- please write!
We are going to be back in Thailand for our 6 month training from April 2-April 22. If you would like to send me anything, below is an address you can use. Things generally take about 2-3 weeks from the U.S.- so to be safe, a rough date to send things by would be March 25. I would love to hear from you!
(address omitted for security reasons)
2) A Typical Day
It’s hard to describe a typical day since there are only a few things that are the same each day. Most days something out of the ordinary happens. Below is a list of activities we engage in- some on a daily basis, some occasionally…
* Listening to people ring bells and blow horns (made from a large shell) as they recite memorized prayers to their gods.
* Shooing flies out of our room with my scarf (we counted 220 of them in our room one day!)
* Sleeping on a table
* Using our water instead of toilet paper
* Being asked by children, and their parents to take their picture
* Using chai (tea) in our cups as a fly trap (I caught 24 flies in my chai one day!)
* Making a fire and heating water for face-washing or a bath
* Drinking water with dirt in it… (we found letting it settle on the bottom helps)
* Not checking email (there’s no internet here- because there’s no land-line phone here)
* Feeling like I have friends here! (even if for the most part they are either under 10 years of age or so old they can’t remember how old they are!)
* Observing people look down on others, for reasons I haven’t figured out yet and when I ask the response is, “It’s our rule, our religion…
* Being misunderstood (they get confused with what we say, we get confused with what they say).
* Not having electricity (because that’s just the nature of the country we’re in!)
* Carrying a bucket of water on my head because no water came (The reason? The pipes might be clogged, the pump broke, or just because). (And what’s the reason for carrying the bucket on my head?- how else would you carry it?)
* Being stood over by an old woman, an inch away from me, as she listens to a phone conversation in English. And then she yells “how are you,” in her language to the person on the other end of the phone
* Sweeping our room with a short hand-broom made from pine needles
* Hearing people say, “you should live here!”
* Taking a bath (this one is usually about once a week or so, and then only about half a bucket of water is used- why? Because you don’t need more than that!
* Chasing monkeys through the field
* Walking on a skinny trail down the mountain, carrying branches on my head, for the cow and goats to eat
* Hearing people say, “You know a lot of our language!”
* And one more. This is a quote from a book I read recently about an M (cross-cultural worker) who worked in the south of this country. The M’s daughter said this when visiting her: “I felt like an animal in a zoo, with curious faces pressed constantly against the screening which formed the top half of the walls. Never have I seen people with such penetrating, inquisitive, bold stares!”
- This quote describes our life- except that there aren’t any screens in our “zoo!”
Being Here = “A Wonderful Privilege”
I’m blessed by God’s grace to truly enjoy being here with these people and feel a deep sense of peace and even happiness just being here. While I haven’t yet directly been able to tell the “Gentiles” about the His “endless treasures,” I look forward to that day. Below are some verses that seem to describe my feelings at the present time. They are taken from Ephesians- Robin and I have been studying as part of our Sunday worship!
“By God’s special favor and mighty power, I have been given the wonderful privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News...I was chosen for this special joy of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ.” ~ Ephesians 3:7-8
Schedule
Feb 20-28- Capital city- meeting with two other families doing Epic projects, for fellowship and to gain more insight about our work. Robin and I will also be going to my friend’s wedding.
March 8-28- Village- Language learning, cultural study, building relationships
April 2-22- Thailand- Training
P & P
* Praise that we’ve been able to have focused language learning time in the village
* Praise that I feel ‘at home’ here and enjoy life here very much!
* Praise that we’ve been healthy for the most part
* Praise for good relationships with the upper caste families and for several encounters with the lower caste people
* Prayer that our time in the capital is encouraging and restful
* Prayer that we might be able to meet the sister of the family we live with in the village- who is studying right now in the capital city!
* Prayer for safety while traveling to/from the capital and to/from the village
For the Least Reached,
~ Elizabeth
No comments:
Post a Comment