Thai ’08 Journal 17

It was a very long day! It started when we left here at 2:00am to take Vie and Lorraine to the airport in Bangkok to catch the 6:00am flight home. They are already terribly missed. But I just called and they have arrived safely in Portland. Amen!
Almost everyone in the team spent the day at a school nearby where the Thailand Adventist Mission and Bangkok Hospital conducted a health clinic. The President of the Mission, Somchai Chuenjit (who was formerly the hospital Administrator at Phuket Hospital) was there to support the project. Dr. Nic Walters was the main medical personnel. There was also a dentist and an ophthalmologist. The latter was there until late, and he performed three eye surgeries in one of the classrooms. One of our nursing students got to scrub in [see Hector’s photos]. The dentist pulled a number of teeth, and Kim did a lot of cleaning. She was assisted by many of our team members (not only the nurses, but by those who worked on the farm, and some from the English Camp), who did cleaning themselves – a first for almost all of them!

What a way to spend the Sabbath! I compared what we did today with our usual practice of going to church for an hour on Sabbath morning, and then going home to worship at St. Mattress, doing Lay Activities, and listening to Pastor Pillow! If Jesus was here today, I believe that he would have been with us on this project. This is not to negate the traditional worship assembling! It is not either/or – it is both/and! It was exciting to see the Church Administration support this endeavor. We at Walla Walla University are proud to be in partnership with this kind of wholistic evangelism. The Mission President and I talked about doing more of these joint endeavors in the future.

Renee Goff and Markie Bazzy took public transport from Bangkok to come and see me today. They are both working at Ekamai International School, and were both a part of the team that I led to Mae Sot in Christmas 2004. I took some time to take them to the farm and to the White Buddha. I was absolutely delighted to have them here with us.

Oh, do you have Google Alert? One of my alerts is for Walla Walla University. An alert came in yesterday of someone who blogged what we are doing. She is from Seattle. Here is the link: Muak Lek high school, Mission College and Walla Walla University .... But I’ll copy what she wrote:

“On the same Friday Ben, Seyha and I arrived into Mission College (www.missioncollege.edu), a group of volunteer missionaries arrived from Walla Wall University (www.wallawalla.edu) too. There is a group of nurses and English majors (and a few undecided) that are going to the local schools doing lice, vision/hearing checks. We joined a group going to visit the high school for their summer English program. The kids were awkward and shy, and it was a fun challenge to play games and communicate with them. Most of them speak English, but we went on the first day, so they were nervous. I am praying for this group of students. I can see that these short-term (one/two week) missions are more meaningful for the people who go than for the people here, so I pray they can find their path and calling in life.”