Took some time to stop and watch a caterpillar today. Wish I would’ve stayed and watched longer. It was nice to slow down, even for a moment, and take in the little wonders. He/She had just started to crawl from the grass to the asphalt and the fluid green movement on the black surface caught my eye. As I knelt down to observe more closely I felt the urge to pick him/her back up and “assist” by relocating the little guy/girl back to the grass. I stopped myself though. How do I know the grass is where he/she wanted to be? Who am I to make that call?

I thought briefly about how there are times we try to help others by providing or instructing what we think is best for them. We form our opinion on what is best for our subject by placing ourselves in their shoes. It’s instinctive really. We don’t even consider it most of the time. Caterpillars like grass. It’s science right? Therefore, if I was a caterpillar on a patch of asphalt I’d want to be moved, is what we think to ourselves. But I’ve never been a caterpillar. I can’t know if there is some reason the caterpillar wants to be there, or has some plan other than going back to the bit of grass a good-intentioned passerby might place them back at.

So how do we reconcile our good intentions for helping others with our total inability to fully know another person. I worry about these things too much I know. The answer is pretty clear; we must continue to offer our help and guidance, first doing all that we possibly can to consider their point-of-view, feelings, experiences, and goals, but we should be careful to approach with our advice as a gift and not an order (enforced through pressure, guilt, or any kind of manipulation). Our words to other like a fine necklace, not a collar. A necklace is given in love as an optional adornment. At the root of things a collar is always given with a desire for power and control. Being a gift-giver, a good one at least, requires knowing the intended recipient.

Today I was just a passerby so I stayed my hand. (Mind you, if I could speak caterpillar I could have asked if my assistance was needed. I’m not advocating withholding help.) Let’s try to be more than that to others. As the chorus to a song by one of my favorite bands says:

Oh, don’t you be a passerby
oh, won’t you sit down and stay a while
Oh, don’t you be a passerby
Oh, won’t you sit down and stay a while
Cause it’s been too long since you been around

Well, I recently applied to the GST at ACU. It was a big decision for me, that took quite some time. I thought I would share the person essay I wrote. I also want to thank those who helped me edit this, be it through correcting my grammar, or as far back as helping me draft the ideas that are at the core of what was written.

Introductions always seem so troublesome for me. That sentence alone took a long time to get past. I believe this is because, at times, I worry too much. I worry about a lot of things: making the right choices, the future, things I can’t control. But more than anything, I think I worry about being understood. This is probably not the best way to begin a personal essay written with the purpose of obtaining admittance to a theological program whose foremost educator plainly spoke out against such a useless act as worrying, but I admit this for a reason. It is my belief that this desire for understanding points to a deeper truth that links me to everyone else, and ultimately brings me to write this and to seek to join the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University.

I suspect that everyone has this desire to be understood, although most probably don’t think on it as actively as I might. Before I get ahead of myself, I want to explain why links are so important to me. There is a book, a study really, that has been made into a couple of books. The goal of the study was to examine and categorize different types of personal strengths. By doing this, the researchers came to develop a system, a language with which to talk about these strengths. One of the products of this study, besides the books of course, was a test designed to discover the test taker’s top strengths. None of this is all too relevant to my essay, except to say that I took the test twice, and both times my top strength was connectedness. Connectedness is an unusual-sounding thing to call a strength. It doesn’t sound like anything a superhero would have. It’s not like analytical, communication, or discipline, some of the other strengths that our society would easily recognize, and perhaps praise. But, I remember reading about connectedness the first time and being extremely contented with the definition. Connectedness, in this language of strengths, is basically what it sounds like, a keen sense of connection between things. In better words it is a “faith in the links between all things.” Still, even after explanation, it’s hard to see how this might be called a strength, especially one to embrace so strongly, or to appropriate to oneself, but I enjoy it because I believe it does a good job at describing how I view the world and, by extension, how I interact with it. This is important to me because, if you can understand how I see the world, then perhaps you can understand me. As I mentioned before, I think this is what so many people are seeking; to be understood, to be known, for connection. This strength plays out in how I feel I fit into the vastness of humanity; how one idea relates to another; in how one action or consequence is tied to the actions or consequences before it. I’m not really sure if your view of the world is anywhere near the same as mine, but I hope that this little insight will frame the rest of my personal statement, in a way that helps you know me better.

As perhaps is fairly common in the United States, I was raised in the church. However, I wouldn’t say that church was the primary source of my spiritual development. My parents divorced when I was very young, and I believe that later on this contributed to our experiencing what I think is one of the bigger issues facing the church. How do those who feel different fit in, and find community in a place that so often, perhaps unintentionally, projects the idea of being perfect? How does a single mother feel welcome, or at ease in a place that might seem to have a different definition of having it all together? That’s a problem for outsiders, even with kind and loving congregation members. So the absence of a “church family” left a potentially huge hole in my early formation. Thankfully, God granted my mother the wisdom to place me in a private Christian school. Looking back I savor the multitude of mentors and spiritual influences that God blessed me with, over my twelve years there. My mom later remarried, and my stepdad owned a piece of property in the country north of College Station that we would travel to every weekend. This continued the absence of a close church home, as Wednesday night youth group events happened in Houston, while Sunday morning was always in Hearne, but I gained two important things from our weekly treks to the ranch. First, I gained a great appreciation for the outdoors, something I had only previously been able to develop on family visits to Tennessee. Secondly, I gained an awareness of Texas A&M University, and eventually the Aggies for Christ. A&M later became my choice for college, and I began to cultivate a community there. It took me awhile to get involved with the AFC (did I mention my difficulties with introductions?), but a few weekend trips and several devos later, I became connected with two ministries there: Men’s Bible Study and Aggie HYPE (Helping Youth Prepare for Eternity). Over the course of a few semesters, I became more and more engaged in these ministries, and eventually came to lead them both. Men’s Bible Study gave me an outlet for spiritual growth, and conversation on deep spiritual or intellectual issues. HYPE, a ministry for inner-city children, fulfilled my desire for service through my passion for kids and helping the deprived. It was also through the wonderful opportunities provided by the AFC, that I eventually went on my first overseas mission trip. Because of certain circumstances, the trip was a curious combination of two weeks of working with orphans in Bucharest, Romania, and two weeks working with children at Made In The Streets in Nairobi, Kenya. Throw in some thought-provoking Christian literature, and I had a life changing experience. Coming back to Texas A&M for one final Fall semester, I was given a blessing that I will admit I didn’t really want. I was fortunate to have several doors open to me after graduation. I had a great job offer already lined up from a previous internship, I was considering graduate school at A&M after two summers of undergraduate research programs, and I was also thinking about switching tracks altogether, and pursuing a masters of divinity at Abilene Christian. Also on the table was a semester of A&M Church of Christ’s serve abroad program. For both graduate school options, serve abroad was perfect since it would take place in the Spring before the start of school in the Fall. However, after talking with several friends, thinking, and praying, I decided to accept the job, but ask to do the serve abroad program first. My employer agreed, and so I spent six months in Chiang Mai, Thailand, working under the missionary Robert Reagan. It would take many, many more pages to tell of all the things I learned and experienced while I was there. Suffice it to say I loved it. Every day was an adventure. I learned mountains from Robert and the Thais. I learned a new language and a new culture. I made several new friends as I soaked in half a year of the “honeymoon” phase of missions. If the four weeks of what our team affectionately called Afromania was life changing then Thailand was life forming.

Currently, I’m working in Austin. After returning from Thailand, I began to work for a software and hardware company called National Instruments. I love my work, and I’m thoroughly convinced that I have one of the best jobs in the world. I love the city of Austin as well. It reminds me a lot of Chiang Mai, a place with a good balance between big city and small town. Austin has so much to offer; nature, music, culture, a secure job that pays well and offers new challenges. Why would I want to turn away from that? I thought for a long time about that question. I suppose the best way to answer that for you is to start by going back to the strengths test. The test reports that I have three other strengths, all of which sound very familiar. They are ideation, intellection, and input. I think they can best be summarized as follows; a fascination with new ideas, an appreciation for thinking deeply, and a highly inquisitive nature. In short, I want to learn, to grow, to be a collector of thoughts and ideas, puzzle pieces to analyze and connect. I know that sounds overly fanciful, and that these things could be accomplished here in Austin, but this was just the spark that started the fire.

I recently heard a man speaking about finding one’s passion, and the frequency of that problem, especially for young people. His advice was to free yourself to begin to think in terms of a portfolio of passions. From there the task is to marry that portfolio to the opportunities in front of you. One of the prompts of this essay was to speak about my vision for ministry. To be honest, I have very little clue about the future God has in store for me. That same speaker went on to say, stop thinking about the horizon and focus on the direction. What are my opportunities in that direction, and how do they sync up to my passions today? I’m changing my direction, and it’s been a scary decision to make. I know that the next few years will present many new challenges, but I’m following my passions. I decided to pursue a masters of divinity, most likely with a missions focus. I am excited to begin learning Greek and Hebrew, and to begin tempering my understanding of theology. Yet, my true passion, and by far biggest motivation for changing directions, is a desire to live out the Gospel by loving and serving the dejected, downtrodden, and outcast; or perhaps, as I’ve heard it said, to be “a bridge and a magnet,” through my words and my actions. God created me with the desire to reason, discuss, and understand, and I believe that He wants me to use those gifts to help heal the wounds that link all the way back to when we lost our connection to the One who understands and loves us completely. I like the words Darryl Tippens wrote, “As imitators of Jesus we are here to grant others the gifts of safety, attentiveness, compassion, empathy, accountability, truth-telling, loyalty, distance, time, forgiveness, spiritual care, and selfless love.” That is what I want my portfolio to be about and I believe that the GST can help me draw closer to that.

Finishing up I want to close by thanking you. Thank you for taking the time to read this and trying to understand. You may feel that you are just doing your job, but I think by understanding these words you’ve paid me a great kindness, and for that I am sincerely grateful.

So it’s been a looooooooooong time since I’ve written on here. I was trying to change over to a different website. Vox has somethings that are problematic) but I never finished that.

Here’s a short paragraph I wrote that each of the interns wrote up for the Project 153 newsletter and I’ve also put up a lot of pictures on my Flicr site.

It’s hard to believe I’ve spent nearly a whole semester on the other side of the world from everything I’ve ever known. Time has certainly flown by, but what’s even harder for me to believe is how much Thailand feels like home
now. I find myself automatically going to the passenger side of a car to drive it. I think certain things in Thai. When we took a trip to Cambodia last month (where they use US dollars) I found myself needing to calculate how much things cost in Thai baht. I think the biggest thing that has helped produce this feeling of home and love for Thai culture has been the sense of family at the various churches. I’m excited about all that the Lord is teaching me and I know that if there’s only one thing I take away from Thailand it will be the relationships I have with all the people here in Chiang Mai. My Thai family.

Blessings.

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. it’s been a long wait (seriously all of this happened like a month ago, my apologizes) but it’s finally here, the conclusion of our trip. we’ve finished the english camp part of the program and now the kids are going to take us to a nearby water fall.

after we changed clothes the children led us down the road out of town, across a small bridge, along cow paths through dried out rice fields to a trail that made its way along a small stream. the scenery really brought me back to my time exploring the woods of middle tenessee (only a bit more bamboo this time and small thai children leading the way instead of my cousins). eventually we came to a waterfall and spent a few hours swimming in the cold water, drew, tum, and i jumping of the rocks to show how brave we were. again i was amazed by the beauty that just seemed to be so typical in thailand. it’s like a story i heard once (maybe from traci wilson) about a foreigner who came to america and was so shocked that every restaurant had sugar on the table and not only that but it was free! where he came from sugar was a delicacy, a special treat usually only enjoyed by the wealthy and here we offer it at no cost in every eating establishment. it’s expected. the norm. that’s how it is for me and this country everything is so beautiful or so exotic that i’m afraid i’ll go back to the states and be depressed by my environs. (i don’t really think that, but it is helping me to see how fortunate i am and how great our god is. i hope that this is something that will be carried with me even after my time here)

after the waterfall we trailed back to the village for dinner with the families we would all be staying with. a few of the kids stopped to climb a tree for some fruit (i can’t remember the name now but its thin brown pods with a thin hard shell and orangish-sourish-gummyish fruit) and they shared it with us. dinner was nice and after we had arranged our sleeping areas we headed back to the school to put on a show for the towns people. now skit shows are no stranger to a former afcer (woah i just said “former” weird), but doing them as foreigners on the other side of the world in front a large group of people none of whom understand much english is a little different of a challenge. so i was kind of nervous on how this would pan out. we stuck with some of the basics that we thought would be entertaining and tried to focus on things that didn’t require the dialogue to carry it. however the real gem of the performance was a skit that i had never done before (i hadn’t even seen it done or heard anyone describe it). it was called the princess skit. basically it has five characters in it all of whom are played by drew and myself (on a side note we’ve actually added a 6^th character which we’ve yet to reveal to anyone. fun stuff). the basic idea is that a knight (drew) comes to a castle to ask for a princess’s hand in marriage. the butler (myself) informs the knight that he will tell the king (drew) who in turn must tell the queen (me again) who then goes to the princess herself (drew) to ask for her answer. essentially the skit is the two of us running around changing into different costumes and doing different voices. we had old women rolling in the aisles. one lady in particular loved drew and kept requesting that he go up and do more things (like sing). so we finally gave in (and by that i mean he dragged me up with him) and we did an interpretive dance while three of the other guys sang and played guitar. i’m pretty sure we clearly communicated at least one thing, we are insane. so that’s how we became superstars in a small northern thai village.

we retired for the night after a short post-show devo and woke up the next morning for church. we had church on the same little platform we had entertained on the night before. it was awesome. after services we said our goodbyes and made our way back down the mountain to mae hong son. robert ended up not traveling back to chiang mai with us because he felt ill (actually he was just starting to have another flare up of pancreatitis, not pretty at all. it gave us all a pretty big scare and he is still kind of recovering from it. ) the bus ride was a lot better in the day time but seemed just as long. that fact was not helped by the fact that we had a random one hour stop at some town along the way. (this was actually a very bad stop. i decided i would walk around instead of hang with the group by the bus. you know stretch the legs see the sights. i ended up stopping at a street vendor lady and ordering to items wrapped in leaves. i knew from a previous meal on the trip that they were a kind of desert rice thing. i ate both of them and a sleeve of strawberry icing oreos… ya i’d never heard of them either… before getting back on the bus. i got really sick and the thought of the sweet custardish rice things still makes me queasy… no joke i’m stopping writing right now)

wow that was a longer break than i meant it to be (about a week…. yikes) never the less our trip was a very inspiring one. i think after we got back a really began to start to find my groove here, to at home. since then there has been a lot going on; more trips and english camps, lessons in thai and classes in english, learning to drive better and get around the city, parties, preaching, equipping times, and planning for our big trip to cambodia coming up in march. i’ll do my best to catch everyone up on everything. God bless you all and thanks for continuing to read my words.

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. i’ve been really busy but here is the long awaited part three of our story in a multi-post series telling about our trip and the things we did. we’ve just arrived at the guard post were we left the truck as we took boat rides up and down a small river in northern thailand to visit a few villages.

loading into the back of the truck again we headed further up the mountain. eventually we came to a temple. monks with shaved heads and orange robes roamed around as temple goers offered incense. we did what tourist do best…. took pictures. this time i didn’t feel like a dirty tourist though. the peacefulness of the place gave off a calm quite disposition that left one in a good state of mind to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the town nestled in the valley far below. my third cornetto of the day probably added to my harmonious mood. (ice cream is good for peace and quiet joy. the world would be a better place if ice cream was more plentiful… at least it wouldn’t hurt.) it was strange to be in the face of another religion in such a real way. looking back it leads me to think about how other religions or non-religious people see christians. what do they see? i saw people carrying out rituals, nothing too strange there. burning incense. offering a silent prayer to something unseen. is that what others see when they look at christians? waking up early on sundays. singing songs. praying. ceremonies. traditions. customs. rituals. is there not something deeper? i believe there is. do others see it though? interesting thoughts. we just took pictures.

that night we slept in a hotel owned by jenny’s parents called ban farang (“honkie house”?, if i haven’t yet explained farang or falang let me do so. farang is the name of a guava i think. it’s a white guava so it also refers white foreigners. so it’s kind of like saying honkie or cracker… but in kind of a nice way.) we slept well that night, (but not without get my fourth cornetto of the day) our first true full rest since the bus ride. we woke early to travel to the village we were having the camp at. the road this time was possibly more winding than the bus trip (although more upward than rollercoaster-esque) but it was during the day and not packed into a bus seat. the road slowly went from paved to paved and overgrown to dirt and then all of a sudden we stopped. rains had washed the road out in some parts and a truck was stuck in one of the grooves carved out by the rain. the driver of our rot dang (reminder: “red auto”, the taxis of thailand) was very protective of his vehicle. not peculiar due to the care it looked like he had put into it but definitely not the norm for professional drivers required to navigate the chaotic streets of this country. never the less he was not excited about the trip so far and although we thought he could bypass the automotive obstacle he was unwilling to budge until the owner had relocated the entrenched truck. this was not pleasing news since we were all anxious to get to the village and begin (we did have a schedule to uphold). eventually we were able to manhandle the small truck far enough over that our driver attempted to pass. we made it through but not without a small scrap on the canvas of his truck’s camper-top (oops).

our church had been to this village before but last time the town’s people did not have electricity. since that previous visit poles had been erected and power lines hung. despite this modern amenity the village still seemed quaint. we meet the student, all of them very shy, and started to play games and sing songs together. then came the whole teaching english part. we broke into four stations each of which would teach different words and had a different game for the kids to play. adelina (one of the one month interns) and i had a station that was to teach different types of animals. robert had told all of us that our goal was to help the kids become more comfortable around foreigners and help them to be more confident with english just as much as it was to actually teach then new words and phrases. after teaching each group about 15 english names for animals that group would then play a family feud style game of 5 on 5. there purpose of the game was for me to act/sound out the animal and then the first person to “slap” in and get the name correct earned their team a point (or vice versa I say the name and they had to act it out). some animals have obvious actions associated with them (ie a chicken or and elephant) other animals you have to rely more on the sounds they make (ie a pig’s snort, unless you want to roll around on the ground with your finger squishing your nose back). however, we found out before the camp that animals in thailand apparently don’t sound the same as they do in america. for instance a duck doesn’t say “quack-quack”, it says “gap-gap”. pigs don’t say “oink-oink” they say “oot-oot”. the rooster cries “ehkie-ehkie-ehk-ehk” and a cow say “maw”. (we actually heard a rooster while we were there and i tried to argue the point of cock-a-doodle-doo, but alas it was hopeless). the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves and before too long it was time to break for lunch.

during lunch we saw a small (albeit noisy) procession make its way past us as we dined. apparently, a wedding was coming up soon and the bride, lead by some music playing family members and half a large pig carried on a stick of bamboo between two men, was making her way to her husband-to-be’s house. quite a sight indeed. after we ate we played some more group games with the kids in the heat of the mid-day sun. the really cool part about it was that a lot of these things we had to come up with on the spot. it was a really nice way of having to work as a team and think on our feet. after games we took a short break before or next planned adventure. i’ll finish the story in my next post and tell all about the waterfall and how drew and i became superstars.

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. this is the second part of our story in a multi-post series telling about our trip and the things we did. it’s early friday morning after a long overnight trip up the mountain roads and we’ve just unloaded ourselves off of a tiny bus into the darkness of the morning at a place that they told me was supposed to be a bus station.

we’re all tired, not many of us got rest, but i am in high spirits because of the amusing events on the ride up to the mountains. i learn that jenny’s uncle will be picking us up after his shift… which seems to be not for another 4 hours or so. well, we have some time so we start walking. i think we were going to go stay at a temple and just grab some shut eye for a bit but that plan failed some how. i wasn’t asking too many questions, but i do know that after we walked a few blocks one direction we turned around and headed the other way. eventually we cam to a police station. jenny’s uncle was a police officer and instead of waiting for him we decided to go meet him. anyway short story even shorter, we spent the night at the prison (no not in the cells… although i kind of thought that would have made for a cooler story). i unsuccessfully did my best to catch some z’s. i was too lazy to dig out my thermarest so i just leaned against my pack and listened to my ipod. a few short hours later we rose to go eat breakfast with jenny’s uncle at a shop in a near by market area. it was soup of some kind that’s all i really remember. then robert told us to look around and buy some food for lunch since we wouldn’t have it provided for us in the village we were going to. no problem right? well, this wasn’t quite your local h.e.b. it was kind of nerve racking knowing that i had to find my lunch in a foreign market place, not knowing the language or half the things being sold. if i chose to play it safe and just grab a light snack then i’d have to go a whole day on the mystery soup of the morning and the cornetto i bought for the bus ride. drew and i browsed the narrow aisles of venders looking sheepishly at their wares. we bought some fruit and meet up with the rest of the group who was buying some fried chicken and sticky rice. getting some for ourselves we headed back to the police station. we packed all of our bags and our persons into the small pick up belonging to jenny’s uncle and took off for the first village.

driving up the mountain roads in the crisp morning air was a good refreshment for one on so little sleep. we came to a place where the road ran along a river and stopped at what seemed to be a guard post (apparently we were spitting distance from the burmese boarder). we could go no further by truck because the road a long been washed out by the river it followed. so we made our way down a slope and hopped in a long-tail boat. the river ride was even more scenic than the truck ride had been and we were all wide-eyed as we cruised past the abundance of greenery. reaching a small sandy shore we unloaded our supplies and walked a short distance to the village. jenny’s uncle, our ambassador of sorts, led us to the small school. it reminded me of stories my mom had told me of her early education in buffalo valley, tennessee. there were about 20 students probably from the ages of 6 to 15 all taught by the same teacher in a one or two room building with a large open area in front. the kids were very shy and spoke hardly any english, but we started to play games with them, doing our best to explain the concepts with our fellow thais as translators. this was were i felt more at home playing with kids comes more natural to me than befriending college students. we ran around and had some fun and then we passed out gifts for the children and their families. afterwards, we had our market meal at one of the houses and most of us ended up taking a nap to make up for the bus ride.

after we were well feed and well rested we made our way out of the village back to the boat. traveling on we made our way to one of the long neck villages. it was pretty cool to see in person a culture that most only see on the discovery channel or the travel channel, but i felt like too much of a tourist. i don’t like feeling like a tourist. i’m pretty sure that if you came up to me and said, “hey john, (or marty… or any other of my many names) you’re such a tourist.”, i would take offense. it may sound odd, but my mom knows how much i hated doing touristy things on our family outings. she thought it was me just trying to be cool and not be seen with my parents but it was more about not liking tourist. now i am all about traveling to interesting places which is what one might say a tourist does, but there’s a difference between being a “tourist” and traveler. tourist are pretentious and ethnocentric. they are demanding and inconsiderate. basically their existence continually increases the cultural divides that cause problems in our world. ok ok that last part may be stretching it but let’s just say that to me tourist is a four letter word…erm… with “ist” on the end. anyway our trip to the long neck village was exciting but it did kind of put an itch in me so i wasn’t saddened that it was somewhat short lived. as we cruised along in the long-tail boat back to the truck at the guard post my mind drifted to other things. it had already been an exciting day, but it wasn’t over yet. we still had a temple to go to and i had more cornettos to eat.

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. this is the first of a multi-post series telling about our trip and the things we did. it’s thursday night right after cell group and we are all packed into the back of the joaw ford scrambling to get to the bus station. we barely make it and as we file on to the small bus everyone stares.

ok so we were on this bus ride up to the mountains. it was eight hours long in this little cramped seat that was not exactly what i call sleep friendly. this was an overnight bus ride by the way (8pm-4am). adding insult to injury the road up to the mountains was a combination of the road to camp of the hills and a roller-coaster. anyway drew and i were crammed in this two seat row, knees squeezed behind the chair and he’s not feeling well either. eventually some people get off (did i mention we were constantly starting and stopping), so i moved to a three seat row with one other thai guy to let drew stretch out some (however, one stop later a thai guy, possibly drunk, sat next to him in the spot i moved from). the funny part though is that the thai guy (let’s call him bob) that was next to me pulled down his bag and put it in the window seat. so i’m in the aisle seat, bob’s in the middle, and his bag is in the far seat. smart move for bob, he could now protect his bag and use it to support him as he slept… nope. bob fell asleep alright, but he did so on me. at first it was no biggie. he just did the kind of leaning thing, which i could ignore. then his head dropped to my shoulder. i couldn’t take it anymore. it was too funny. i had to show julie who was on the other side of the aisle from me. she started to crack up. this of course led me to start to snicker… but i didn’t want to wake bob up for fear of being rude and making things awkward. i couldn’t help it. my shoulders started to bounce as i tried to constrain my laughter. then i let it slip, a shoulder heaving chuckle. bob jolted. still trying to hold in laughter i stared straight ahead hoping he would just readjust himself towards his bag and go back to sleep. bob did go back to sleep (almost immediately) but he forgot to lean on his bag. within minutes bob was snuggling up to me again, head drooping on my shoulder. i mustered all my strength to hold in the laughter, hoping i could use the insane curves to gently push bob back towards his bag. no luck. somehow we seemed to be making only right hand turns… i couldn’t help it. i tried, really i did, but all my compressed laughter shifted from my mouth and my gut to my shoulders. uncontrollably they began to gyrate up and down at the speed of laughter. bob’s head bounced up from the shoulder blow.

now before i continue there are two things i need to paint clearly in your mind. first off, i have very bony shoulders. i mean seriously whatever those two long skinny bones that go across your chest are called they basically come out to make spikes on the place that bob’s temples were resting. secondly, this may be unknown to those who have not had a class with a cadet from the corp at texas a&m university but there is a strange phenomena that happens sometimes when someone is sleep deprived but forced to sit upright. i don’t know the medical term for it but basically as the head starts to drift slowly downward it picks up speed due to the increased torque provided by the direction of gravity and the increasing angle of the neck. at a given point the pull becomes too great and tension forces suddenly fail. for the unconscious sleeper this means a rapid downward jerk. the spike in acceleration instantly wakes up the body and allows for a last instant recovery flinging the head back upwards, allowing renewed vertical repositioning. unfortunately this instantaneous jolt of down and up motion is not able to revive the sleeper longer than a few seconds so the process repeats. the resulting effect is a human bobble head. (now that i think about it that might be the scientific term “bobble-head syndrome”. on a side note this is made even more hilarious when the sleeping corp member is in a chair that has a bending back. imagine a backwards bobble-”upper body” effect on the front row of class as a professor is giving a lecture.)

but now back to bob. so out of some freak coincidence the frequency of my shoulder gyrations and bob’s… bobbling matched perfectly with a 180 degree phase shift. in other words my shoulder would spike bob’s head up in the air and as his head went up my shoulder would go down and as his head came back down my shoulder would be heaving up to meet his head. this probably happened a handful of times but the utter ridiculousness of it made it seem like it lasted for a good minute. eventually the blunt trauma was enough to wake bob up to slightly reposition as i continued to hold in my laughter (i assumed it wasn’t polite to laugh uproariously on a bus full of sleeping thais). then the spinning cogs in my mind came to a brilliant conclusion. how could i solve the problem of bob’s bobbling? i would just lean forward slightly, resting my head on the back of the seat in front of me and then as he slid my direction on the next big curve nothing would be there to catch him and he would be forced to come up with a less socially awkward sleeping arrangement. i don’t know if the curve was just not big enough or if the muscles in bob’s slumbering body were just strong enough to resist the forces, but the quick slide into nothingness plan i had devised was less than successful. instead bob had gently drifted from a mostly upright position to a mostly prone position behind me. that’s right my plan to avoid an uncomfortable situation resulted in a short thai man lounging across my back at 3 in the morning in a dark bus with the top of his head just barely peaking into the aisle. i signaled julie again and she almost died. at this point my laughter was quelled by the total unease i felt. bob eventually woke up, but didn’t say anything to me. we both just pretended nothing had happened. i knew that i was called to be a bridge and a magnet to the thai people but i didn’t expect that role to be played out so… literally. and that is how our trip to the mountains started.

so my apologies for such a delay in posting any updates but i was sick for a short time after our group’s trip to the mountains last weekend. to catch everyone up to speed i’m just going to quickly cover some of the cool things we’ve done since my last update and i’m working on putting some more pictures on my new flickr account.

two sundays ago now we went to walking street which happens every sunday. basically, they close down a huge section of streets and the whole place becomes a big market. i mentioned before seeing more amazing things that i could have thought possible. well walking street probably doubled that. a few people were handing out flyers for muay thai fights for monday night. that peaked the interest of the three of us so monday (our day off) at night we got a rot dang (“auto red” i think, basically the taxis of thailand) to take us to the place on the flyer. we didn’t really know what to expect, but julie said she had heard that if you sat on the front row there was a chance you might get blood on you. yikes! we were seated (ya on the front row) and we ordered cokes and we waited, wide-eyed and curious. the listing said there would be a total of nine fights! we were almost mortified when small kids no more than 8 or 9 were led to the ring. don’t worry the matches were friendly (like sparring in karate). the combatants slowly got older and older and the fights got more heated. the big fight was supposed to be spain vs. thailand, but it was a huge let down compared to some of the other fights (spain won easily and we were rooting for thailand). the most awesome part of the whole night was when three guys entered the ring and were then blindfolded. as the bell rang the three of them bolted up and started swinging wildly. it was more of a comedy routine with the three fighters bumbling around like clowns, the referee getting attacked several times and then pushing the blind opponents into each other. i got the whole thing on video and i’ll try to post it if i can. afterwards the three fighters went around getting tips from the crowd. all in all it was a fun night.

one other really cool thing was that we met two brits while at the fights and they told us they were rock climbing at places all across southeast asia. the next day robert took us on a “mystery” equipping trip. we went to a place called crazy horse and guess who we met there? our two new friends from mother england, climbing. we said ‘allo again and then went on exploring some caves that robert showed us. one place we climbed down into was quite dark. robert lit a lighter and showed us the four walls and then told us to find the other way out as he extinguished the light. it took the whole team searching but we finally found a huge opening that lead to a grand room with a small hole in the roof about 100-200 feet above us. (it turns out one of the “walls” was only from the waist up) the place where we did our equipping time was called (and get this) anxiety state crisis. after a gut churning climb up a small cliff we came into a beautiful cave with a large opening with early morning light flooding in. again beauty surpassing my ability to describe (just wait for the pictures) and this is where we did our morning study.

the last exciting thing that has been happening is that julie and i are learning to drive the joaw ford. i love driving in thailand. left side of the road, driving a standard, shifting with the left hand, no power-steering, in a place where traffic laws are more like guidelines. i wish americans drove like they drive in chiang mai. let’s just say space is used efficiently.

that’s all i have for now i’ll get pictures up asap and be checking back soon for a multipart report of our trip to mae hong sorn.

so i wanted to wait a week after arriving before i wrote my next update to all of you (you know to get a feeling for what life here was like) and wow what a week it was. in one week i think i’ve tasted, smelt, seen, and done more new things one person could expect to experience had they fallen into another dimension and in some ways thailand really is somewhat of an alternate reality.

culture shock?

no.

more like culture amazement. i’m beginning to understand why they call it “amazing thailand”, i’m struggling to find the words to describe it all. i think you should know something about me. i find it very hard to tell people things if i can’t fully and accurately communicate what i want to say. maybe it has something to do with a limited vocabulary and a non-fondness for the english or maybe something deeper, but never the less it’s something i struggle with. so i can tell you about the things we’ve done so far but it makes me squirm a little bit because there really isn’t a way for you to get this any more than hearing a nice story and looking at some pictures. and man it is so much more than that. let me just say right now to any who may be thinking about it “go on a mission trip” and the longer you can stay the better i think. i’ll leave it at that… for now.

let the uncomfortableness commence. so we arrived in chiang mai a little over a week ago now. the first people we met was our mentor, robert reagan, and three short-term interns from singapore and malaysia (mit, adelina, and han). after a nice breakfast at a nice little place called bake and bite we headed to the christian zone (the name of the place we are staying), met a few more people, and began to unpack our things. the christian zone is a three story building close to payap university. the first floor is a hangout area for the students (equipped with ping-pong table), an office, a library, and a few other small rooms. the second floor has a small kitchen area with a balcony, robert’s office, a computer area, and a few dormotory type rooms for interns such as us. finally, the third floor is a large open area with windows lining both sides and is used for church services and large meetings (there is also a baptismal with a lovely mural in one corner). drew and i are currently sharing a bunkbed in one of the rooms on the second floor (nothing foreign about that as we have already shared a room last semester in college station). that night we had a amazing meal and small impromptu devotional at robert’s house with his family, some former interns and some of the thai christians.

over the next day or so we began to familiarize ourselves with our new environs. the university is less than a block away. there are a number of eating places on campus as well as several right outside the zones front door (i’ll do a post later on about the different meals we come to know and enjoy). the food is amazing and it’s really a big part of our ministry. in the past lunch time on campus has become a key tine for meeting people and make friends with the thai students here. the other interns took us for a walk along a small river that borders the campus which lead to a large open area that was oddly serene for a landscape found in the city. julie and i ran around the campus that first morning. it’s not very large coming from the comparatively monolithic campus of tamu, but it seemed quaint and sufficient with the beauty of lots of flowers and a few small ponds and the ever so essential football fields and volleyball/basketball courts.

our first group activity was cell group which takes place every thursday night for the payap church. just a small gathering with singing and sharing (mostly in thai) that is all started with a common meal (i told you food is a big part of the ministry). afterward we got to hangout with everyone and play games and continued singing. the next day we went as a group to what we were told was a bb gun paintball-esque place [LINK-TO-COME]. fortunately the “bb guns” were only automatic air-soft rifles [LINK-TO-COME]. nothing say lets be friends like shooting small plastic pellets [LINK-TO-COME] at high velocities at each other. right after we returned from doing this we packed up for another trip to a “house-boat” for a day and night of planning/relaxing/getting to know each other. now back in the states a house boat is a small to mid-sized boat that happens to have an area to live in, kitchen, bed, bathroom, etc. well what we eventually came to was more of a small floating hotel. again that word amazing pops in. we drove a good distance up into the mountains in the back of the jao-ford [LINK-TO-COME] (the church pickup), scenery becoming even more beautiful and the air becoming cooler as we drove higher and higher. the pictures can do a better job than my words can. suffice it to say that once we got there we were blown away. being an engineer i was amazed that the entire structure including ourselves was supported by bundles of bamboo. the morning view was even more majestic than what we saw the night before. it is the kind of sight the makes your heart melt with appreciation for God’s love and His power. it is that it was the kind of beauty you want to share with the person that means the most to you.

a truck-load of credit to robert for know how to motivate and energize his charges with the natural blessings thailand has to offer. we returned to the zone after a breakfast and some morning equipping time feeling rested and renewed. (equipping time is time we spend with robert every morning or sometimes afternoons learning and discussing various things related to out work. currently we are going through what is called the “red book”). church on sunday was even more fascinating. i love music as i’ve mentioned and singing in thai was just… well… amazing. for the lesson jan, robert’s wife, translated through theses little wireless earpieces that you see diplomats and dignitaries wear during  meetings at the UN. probably not as high tech but still you can be sure that drew and i felt pretty cool about ourselves. it’s really very motivating to learn the language when you are surrounded by it (and i’m a computer science guy, new languages are our business). drew and i are both going to lead sunday service at least once while we are here and we both think it would pretty stinkin’ awesome to close with a prayer in thai, no translation needed.

if you’re still reading this you’re beginning to understand my need to use a lot of words to convey the experience of being here. i thank you for your patience and i want to leave you with one last thing. the experience isn’t a cakewalk despite the wonderful things i’ve tried to describe. no mission trip is. there are always team issues and other problems. i’ll be the first to admit i’m still trying to find my groove, still trying to fit in, still learning to adapt to the culture. a fish, not out of water, but in waters of a different… feel. do you remember how when you won a goldfish at a fair or bought a guppy from the store they put it in a little bag and before you released it into you tank or bowl at home you were supposed to let the bag sit in the water for a bit so the temperature would adjust slowly for the fish. if you didn’t do this i always imagined the fish felt awfully uncomfortable. it’s kind of like that, an uncomfortable fish that is trying to clear it’s head and understand this new home it’s been placed in. but this is precisely why mission trips are so powerful. God can do amazing things with the uncomfortable, but it isn’t too often that we are willing to place ourselves in situations that make us squirm like fishes.

today drew and i got on a plane (don’t worry there weren’t any snakes on it). we flew from texas and north carolina (respectively) and met up in chicago. i rushed to finish all of the last minute business i needed to take care of on the phone and we boarded a huge 747 to tokyo. i’ve flown on one of these transcontinental flying beasts a few times before last summer going to london, bucharest, and nairobi. the difference this time was that each of the times before it had been with BA. i remember being awestruck by getting to watch movies or tv shows the whole way with plenty of tasty meals and complimentary socks (which i still have several pairs of, what can i say they were blue and quite comfortable). ANA (our transpacific transporter) was even more impressive. british accents are really cool but when you are going on a serve abroad for six months it strikes you a little deeper when japanese is spoken first and then they offer a english translation second. we still had the cool movies and the meals (of which i got plenty, just one of the perks, if you can call it that, of traveling with a guy that is allergic to half the eatable things known to man), but this time we got warm face towels to clean up before the meal and along with flying with the daylight we flew (as drew put it)”into the future” as we crossed the international date line (i’m on the positive side of time once again).

it was a long flight to tokyo (made all the longer by the fact that the man in the aisle seat, blocking us from the leg stretching freedom provided by that aisle, was asleep for a good 80% of the flight), but jackie chan, chris tucker, and mr. bean made it pretty enjoyable. we made it at last and we stepped foot on to japanese soil about 13 hours after leaving the windy city. we were excited about the free internet we would get to use as we waited for our next flight to bangkok, but that turned into a disappointment we found only the standard pay-to-surf services that most american airports have (apparently julie flew threw hong kong not tokyo and so our hope we falsely raised).

however, as we sat trying (and failing) to be more clever that the internet companies we met a man having similar troubles. talking to him for awhile we learned that he had just come from bangkok and that he worked for a some kind of missions based company. before he left he offered drew and i a service that his company provided to help us learn the thai language for the very convenient cost of free.we got on a much less crowded 777 to thailand at about 6 pm local time and slept most of the way to bangkok, only waking for a meal and some ice-cream. 7 or 8 hours later we awoke to instructions in japanese, english, and thai to return our seats to the upright position as we made our “final apploach”. we said kop khun krup and domo ariegato to our flight attendants and began a hunt for mango and sticky rice (drew’s favorite thai dish). going through customs we grabbed our bags and asked a gentleman in a light purple jacket where we could find our gate for the next morning’s flight. after eating some good thai food and talking to my mom on skype drew and i made our way to the area next to the desk we will need to check into and pulled out our thermarests. now we’ll get about 3 hours of sleep and wake up to meet julie for our last leg to chiang mai. goodnight all.