This past week...

has had some busy days, and some lazy days, with a few decisions made in between.

Friday night, my friend Jyup took Dave and me to a Thai place for dinner, and it was very good. She's grown up here, so she knows where to go.

Saturday evening I went to a birthday party at Blossom Home. The twins, Sitigon and Sitipon were turning 12 and Bank turned 3, so they had a BBQ in front of their house. They set up these cool BBQ cookers and we gathered around them and cooked our own meat, boiled our own vegetables around the outer edges of the BBQ, and just kept eating until all the food was gone. It was my first time to do something like this and it was great! (First time to cook the food like this, not my first time to eat until all the food was gone! Duh!)


Sitigon and Sitipon, birthday boys.

The BBQ at Blossom Home.

Sunday was super cool. We went with the whole house church in a 45 minute convoy ride out to a park by a river, and joined 2 other churches to have a service, lunch and baptism. There were about 20 people getting baptized, 8 of them from our house church, all of them from Blossom Home. In addition to the 6 older children at the home, one of the staff women and her son were also baptized. It was an awesome day!! At the service, I met this cool woman missionary, who told a fascinating story of growing up in Burma, living in the jungle and eventually ending up in Chiang Mai where she met her husband. They lived in Laos for 7 years and now back in Chiang Mai for 23. She was super interesting to talk to, and I wasn't actually all that surprised to hear that her family came from Oklahoma back in the day. One of the things she told me was that her oldest son had recently opened a restaurant here. When she said he served pizza and ribs, I was intrigued enough to mention it to Dave and Jyup and we decided we'd check it out the next evening after our day in the mountains.

Baptism before and during.

Monday, I spent the day in the back of a red truck with Dave, Jyup, her assistant Ku, and a pastor from the mountains. We were helping Jyup and Ku get some supplies up into a mountain village where they will take their project teams beginning this Sunday. Jyup and Ku (pronounced Jip and Goo) work with school and church teams who want to travel with purpose, setting up partnerships between teams and service projects. For instance, last year one of the teams came and repaired a water tank for a village that had been without a convenient source of water, and this year they're returning to do more work for the village. I had been hearing about their work for several weeks and was blessed to get to go check it out first hand. Even if it meant bouncing around in the back of an old red truck, up and around mountain roads with big potholes, dust and exhaust smells continuously, it was a great way to spend the day. After we returned to the city, we went out to eat at the missionary lady's son's place, (it's called Ridgeley's) and it was awesome! In Asia, it's hard to find a good pizza, and this kid really knew how to make 'em. I was impressed, enough to give you this review on my blog, so you know it was good...and cheap. We shared an appetizer, a salad, a large pizza, and a dessert, and we all had drinks, for right at $15 U.S.

Now, the rest of this week, I've been laying low, listening to the incessant sounds of fireworks blasting off right outside my windows, all day, all night! NO kidding. There's a festival happening here, called Loi Krathong, which I gather means floating lantern, or something like that. It's held in the 12th month of the Thai Lunar Calendar, which falls in November each year, and it lasts three days, ending on the night of the full moon. Tonight is the full moon, so tomorrow I'm looking forward to the possibility of a more peaceful existence with my otherwise peace-loving Thai neighbors. If I was afraid for my life, I think I would understand what it's like to live in a war zone, 'cause these blasts sound like gunshots, and sometimes bombs. They are so loud at times, they shake the house a little bit. This is a Buddhist festival adapted from a Hindu celebration where people would float little lantern boats down the river to make a fresh start in the new year. It holds some of the same significance here, as people put these flower wreath lanterns into the river and let go of any grudges or grievances they may have held in the previous year. One of the more beautiful, if environmentally hazardous, traditions is the lighting of lantern kites that float into the sky. Tonight I will go out and see the full moon with the sky lit up with lanterns and see if I can capture any good photos of the event. I glanced out the window last night after midnight and saw several of them and it was impressive.

Meanwhile, I've made a decision to come back to the states Thanksgiving weekend. I should be in San Francisco on Saturday the 29th, and I'm really looking forward to it. I don' t know yet exactly what I'll be doing, but plan to see my family over the holidays, and hope to be in New York City shortly after new year. I am anxious to begin that chapter, and don't really care that I'll be freezing for the first 3 months I'm in NYC. I just want to get there. So, I'm praying that God will open some obvious job opportunities, and that I'll be wise to make good decisions while I start life there. I can't explain this passion, which usually means it's from a much deeper place than my mind.

Thanks for praying with me. Thanks for reading.

Until next time,
LC from TH