Thai ’08 Journal 2

To see photos of my trip please go to (and bookmark for daily updates):

http://www.wallawalla.edu/campus-life/spiritual-life/gallery/mission_trip_to_thailand_2008

Please also note my new cell phone # in Thailand: 011-66-849-036-933

It is a long ways from Walla Walla to Mae Sot, Thailand (where I am tonight, Friday). We drove over 200 miles to Portland on Tuesday to catch the 10-hour flight to Japan on Wednesday, and then the over 5-hour flight to Bangkok Thursday. It was less eventful than the first mission trip to the Philippines in 1998 when we had a 15-hour flight delay in San Francisco, and a man died on the flight over the Pacific. This time we just had to sit and wait after we landed in Bangkok for 3 cops to come and escort a man from the back of the plane. We don’t know what the problem was. He wasn’t in handcuffs.

We cleared customs and immigration and were on the road by 12:30am for the 2-hour trip to Muak Lek, the town where Mission College is located. We got to bed about 3:30am, and I was up at 6:15am. The internet is disconnected in the house that they have reserved for us (it will be ready to be used when we return next Thursday), so I walked over to the main campus to get caught up, while Vie and Lorraine slept in a bit.

A great deal of the smooth sailing of this trip is due to the great planning, coordination, and general supervision by a Mission College student from Africa named Tresor Mulumba. I got to meet him again this morning; and he certainly has everything under control. We also briefly met with the lady at the High School who will be in charge of the English Camp. Her plan is for the English Camp to go from 9:00am to 2:00pm daily.

The Mission College nursing students are already involved with the Community Nursing. They leave for the village at 7:30 each morning. I hope our nursing students will be up to the early morning program. They are also planning to have the evening meetings at the same place. It will be outdoors, and they are hoping to have a projector and screen. We will use my computer for the PowerPoint presentations by the WWU nursing students. The one problem we face is that it has been raining each evening for the past week. Hopefully it will ease up by the time our health meetings begin.

This weekend the plans for the work on the farm will be finalized. There is some talk for the team to work on another farm, belonging to the same injured man, about 1.5 hours away. That’s a bit far, in my opinion. But I’ll wait to hear what Dr Wayne’s recommendation is. Maybe that farm has more fruits that the workers can eat – maybe more mangoes! That would be attractive and worth the trip!

We ate breakfast in the cafeteria. North-westerner Lorraine is slowly getting into eating again in Thailand – not much meat and potatoes, French fries and burger, and pizza here! While at breakfast Paul Dybdahl, who is teaching here for the summer, stopped by to see us. He and his family are in one of the faculty houses 2 doors down from us; and we got to see Kristyn and the kids on the way to breakfast.

At 10:00am our driver was right on time to take us for the 6-hour drive to Mae Sot. It’s a long drive; but Thailand roads are quite good. On the way there we got some great sweet sop. We are in the nicest hotel in Mae Sot, the price of which is much, much, less that a Motel 6 per night in the States. Wensleigh and Ruth Chu are great host and are taking great care of us, including taking us to dinner at a hang-out of westerners. They also borrowed a vehicle that they have given us to drive around.