Thai Journal #8

I leave my room at 2:00am in the morning, Sunday, to catch a 6:00am flight home – 6 hours from Bangkok to Japan, and approximately 10 hours from there to Portland. It is now 6:30pm here, Saturday evening, and after I send this off I’ll eat some mangoes, and get some sleep – all in preparation for the long trip home!

It was a wonderful day. One of the students from Malaysia had my camera, and he captured in part the energy of the worship this morning – at least some of my energy! We had a powerful ending, and God’s name was praised!

After the potluck we went to two of the sites that we are planning for our mission trip next year. First we had conversations with the English teacher of the Public High School. She is excited at the possibilities of us spending a couple weeks conducting an English Camp at her school. We already have our foot in the door. Every Sabbath students from MC conduct a Branch Sabbath School there – all Buddhist Public School kids. As a matter of fact, there are about 90 MC students going out every Saturday afternoon conducting 13 Branch SS. We then went to the site where we will do a Community Service project. Uncle Bprasarn, a Buddhist, lost his legs +, eleven years ago when a train ran over him. This past May a team from MC built him a house, replacing the one that was teetering over. His livelihood is farming. We will spend time working on his farm as part of another project. In all these projects we plan to be working side by side with MC students and staff/faculty.

On our way home we stopped by the monastery with the White Buddha. When we return next year I hope to climb the 1250 steps up to the large Buddha.