last day teaching

Today was just an amazing day, so I have to write another post.  I had a great day teaching with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and they were really cool when they heard it was my last day, and seemed honestly bummed that I wouldn't be back for a while...they wanted my phone number and email so they could keep in touch.  Of course, they're elementary kids, so who knows, but there might be some time on translation websites in my future to keep up with them!  :)  To think that a couple months ago I was down on this teaching job is just an amazing thing to me, but God has kicked my butt again.  I will miss those kids a lot, and if I do come back I'll know more Thai so I can really communicate.

Tonight, a lot of my Mae Sot/Compasio family met at the Jungle Restaurant for a sendoff of sorts...I hadn't been to this restaurant before and it's a really neat atmosphere of trees, rocks, waterfalls, and lilly pads.  Even the bathrooms are pretty sweet and unique!  It was fantastic, and I was touched by how many people turned out.  I truly have a home here, with wonderful people and amazing work.  I knew it would be so, but it's going to be very hard to leave in three days.  There's a lot going on - Christmas parties to come for the school, Safe House, Baby House, and Dump Community, plus a party at the Thai church where some of our kids will sing.  Somewhere in there I need to think about packing!

Please pray with me that despite the hectic schedule, I do right by all the people here in my last few days, that I spend time where I need to and say goodbye well.  This has been an amazing experience for me, and I sincerely thank you for your support!

In Him,
adam

Ten Days

Time flies.  It really does.  In less than 10 days, I’ll be headed back to CO.  Hard to believe my time here is nearly up!

Since I wrote last, we finished painting, cleaning, and furnishing the new infant care home.  Dara, the new caretaker for Su Su, will move in next week!  Thanks for your prayers on Su Su in particular…her skin looks good after a good picking and lotion application, and she is cooing, smiling, and chattering like babies do.  There is even a family that is (very early stages) considering the adoption of a special needs child that might provide her a permanent loving home, too, which would be a total answer to prayer.  We’re not jumping up and down yet; there’s still some work to be done getting Su Su some paperwork so she can even be adopted, but since this is what we hope for her it’s hard for me to not get a little excited.

Thursday night at the dump was particularly cool.  I don’t know exactly what it was, but everything seemed to be clicking well.  Four kids rotated happily through the four badminton rackets that we brought (I used one until the fourth kid came along and wanted to play) with little to no conflict.  About 20 other little kids went to town on a stack of coloring books that we bring every week.  So many of them came to show me their pages when they were finished, it was pretty sweet.  The medical people went about the houses, interviewing people for health checks and treated a few people for minor things.  Also, this was the first time in a while that I either didn’t see more houses hiding among the trees or a house didn’t move or get built or torn down since the last time, so I don’t have to make any changes to my map this time!  That’s super rare!

Today was a fun day – I went with a few other Compasio friends to a Christmas celebration in town put on by the schools.  There was a parade (that I was in…didn’t really plan on that part) through town, and then a bunch of group games (tug of war, 3-legged race (with 7 people), a few others), music, food, and some light rain that didn’t last long.

Tonight, we had a small Christmas party of our own…more food (Mexican night at Rachel’s), Christmas music, a White Elephant gift exchange, and a movie (Elf).  Fun people that I will miss a lot!  Trying not to think about that too much for the moment.

Tomorrow morning, I leave early with a few friends to go visit a small village between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai called Doi Chang.  It’s a community of coffee plantation workers where Sia grew up and I’m told it’s really beautiful.  It’ll be great!  So I’m on a road trip for the next 4-5 days, returning to email, facebook, hot water, and that sort of stuff sometime on the 21^st or 22^nd.  Good times!

When I get back, it’ll be a pretty hectic pace getting ready for Christmas and getting ready to leave Thailand, so I’m not sure there will be another blog post.  If you’re on facebook, that’s probably the best place to get updates.

Thank you!!

Teaching English

You know by now that I teach English to 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th graders at one of the Thai schools here in Mae Sot.  You also know that this was a frustrating assignment for me until a friend helped fix my attitude.  Since then, I’ve had a lot of fun with it though I still doubt my effectiveness.  My classes today went pretty well.  I taught the 4^th graders from the book; they’re learning “can” and “can’t” and what can do what.  Can a tiger fly?  No, a tiger can’t fly.  Can you wash the dishes?  Heck no, I did them yesterday.  We also talked about sports they play, and I am proud that all my 4^th graders now want to be hockey players.  =)  Fifth grade was tougher…their book is hung up on food, and it’s really kind of boring.  We slogged through this odd exercise telling them how to make a tuna sandwich…really?  But it did give me the chance to teach some shapes (something gets cut into squares in the recipe) and different eating utensils and dishes (stuff gets mixed in a bowl).  Then, we went outside and pointed out stuff in the schoolyard and parking area, and I think they liked that. We mixed it up between natural things like plants, leaves, rocks, dirt and sand, and (of course) car parts.  My timing was perfect, too – we settled back into the classroom, did our “Thank you Teacher” and “see you next week” rituals, and the hour was up.   Then another teacher rolled on up into the room and ruined everything.  The way my caveman self understood it:  No 6^th grade this week, stay here for another hour.  Anyone who has to listen to me for two hours is bound to be miserable, but we made it through talking about numbers and clothing, and not once did I whack my noggin on this low-hanging cage for a television, the way I have done TWICE in previous weeks.  I’m a slow learner.  Anyway, it ended well, and several kids wanted my autograph in their little lesson books.  Ha!

There’s no school next Thursday.  I’m going to miss them.  Strange how things turn around, isn't it?

After a great lunch with the other teachers at school,  I rounded out the day with painting at the new infant care home til about 8, then a quick visit with Su Su and then to Casa Mia for a ridiculous beef burger and fries.  More painting tomorrow.

Thank you for your prayers!

Visa Run

Recently (Dec 3) I went on what the locals here call a visa run – as in, my 90 days are running out, and I need to extend my visa for 30 more days.  The idea, months ago, was to go 3 miles down the street to Burma, walk across the bridge, and get my stamp.  It wasn’t to be, as the border with Burma here has been closed and seems it will stay that way for another 4 months or so.  But, I still had to get out of the country because the fee for overstaying your visa is like 500B/day, which for those into following exchange rates closely, converts to “sucky.”  I selected the cheapest flight I could find, to Kaula Lumpur, Malaysia.  I didn’t leave the airport, and took one picture from the plane as we descended.  I don’t really count it as a place I’ve visited.

The side benefit of such a run though, was another trip to Bangkok.  This time I would visit Ake, a friend of my brother’s whom I’d met several times when she was living in Denver.  She showed me a good time and took me to some great food, including some salty sea bass at a cool place by the river where we could watch the occasional practice firework or lantern for the King’s birthday celebration to come.  I contributed to the agenda by suggesting the Saxophone Club, a cool jazz restaurant and bar with great music and more fantastic food.  All three bands were excellent and the three of us (joined by Ake’s friend Frank) rocked out and ate ourselves silly.  The third night of food came from one of Ake’s favorite places, which I am not to reveal to the immense readership of this blog.  Whatever.   =)  It’s called “Papaya Salad,” and was incredible!  The four of us (this time also joined by my friend Rachel, also with Compasio and happening through Bangkok at the time) topped it off with ice cream sundaes. 

Other points about visa runs:

1.  Don’t write your old visa number on your entry card when you get to immigration in Bangkok on the way back.  You used that visa already, and aren’t really extending anything.  You get a new 30 days with no visa.  Writing it in there gets you a stern talking-to from the immigration guy.

2.  Stern immigration guys are turned into happy fun immigration guys by small electrical fires. 

 

3.  For those ever tempted or have even thought of mentioning the whole Adam and Eve thing (it’s really funny to Thai and Burmese familiar with the Bible story because they don't run into "Adams" very often), wait no longer:  I found Eve.  It’s a guy, and he works at the Starbucks in BKK.  I so wanted my picture with him, but the place was busy and there were ‘no cameras’ signs up.  It was a short relationship, unfortunately:  I gave him 60B, he gave me a banana-chocolate chip muffin, and it was over between us.  A fleeting, magical moment.

Ok, so the story on #2:  When I got back to Thailand something unusual happened - I was in the passport check line and finally got my turn, and I was a little nervous because I'd never done this before.  I could totally see the guy saying "hey, your visa has already been used, what are you trying to pull here?" and having to call Allan at Compasio and tell him I was stuck at the airport.  Because I dorked up and wrote my old visa number on my entry card he had to call me to the desk to ask me about it, and when I explained he was nice enough, but vaguely annoyed and he shooed me back to stand on the line, a bit back from the desk.  All the desks have these electric fans on them.  Little ones, maybe 10" in diameter, on plastic bases that clamp to the top shelf on the desk.  Well - no sooner than the agent shooed me back than I see his fan start sparking inside the base.  The cord had been twisted around and abused to the point of wearing through the insulation - a little fire was starting as the insulation burned.  So I'm like, "Uh, can I tell you something?"  He's looking down at his work.  "Hey, yeah, you got a little fire goin' on there," and I point to his fan.  He looks up at me, questioningly, and right on cue the fan goes BANG very loudly and flashes brightly as the wires shorted together.  He jumped...it was awesome.  The fire didn't last, it just fizzled out after the electricity wasn't flowing anymore, but it was smoking pretty nicely.   After that he was all smiles and laughing with me.  It’s true:  nothing breaks the ice like fire. =)

Slow Saturday

Today was Saturday, and I had the day off.  I spent it on a good long run in beautiful weather, catching up on some reading, and hanging out with one of the intern guys at the office.  Well, not really hanging out.  He was skyping with his girlfriend and just a wee bit distracted.  J  We have some visitors coming in this week, so after our guest room is vacated by its current resident who trained the interns this week, I have the job of prepping the room for the next person:  You know, change sheets, set out some towels, set some booby traps, that sort of thing.  I can add “housekeeper” to my illustrious list of job titles!

I ate lunch at the Stop Light Restaurant, which is not its name, but just what we call it because it is near…you guessed it.  We’re a pessimistic bunch, aren’t we?  No one calls them “go lights.”  Anyway, I successfully ordered me up some “dtam yam ka moo” – a rocking soup with pork and mushrooms with a side dish of morning glory in a great sauce.  It was awesome!  This was a big step for me because I didn’t have anyone else with me this time to help with the ordering.   I do have a new book and set of CDs for learning Thai and Burmese, so I expect I’ll be completely fluent in two or three days.  Heh.

Then tonight, I ate at this cool little “hut” restaurant with Ashlee and Cin Ciin who is a visiting instructor from YWAM in Burma – good food, good company and fun conversation, and an interesting atmosphere.  We ate in these little huts outside, seated on a raised bamboo floor beneath a grass roof and shared a soup, a mixed veggie dish, and a yummy papaya and shrimp salad.  The Thai food here is awesome!  While there are definitely some dishes I like, Burmese food is typically a little more oily and a little heavy on fish-parts-I-usually-wouldn't-eat, so I don't enjoy it quite as much.  Ironically, Cin Ciin, who is Burmese, doesn’t like seafood so there are plenty of non-fishy choices out there.

Tomorrow morning I have a shift with the Safe House kids, which is always a blast, and then I go feed Su Su again in the afternoon.  Su Su had some seizures earlier this week – she’s back and doing alright, but some scans revealed some abnormalities in her brain.  They may be the result of malnutrition in her first few days of life, but no one really knows for sure.  We successfully paid the bill for October, just before the seizures and the expensive scans started.  Oh, yeah:  Kellie told me that Su Su probably smiled last time because she had gas, not because of me! J  On a related note – if you or someone you know works for Eucerin or Vaseline, we need a hookup for some good lotion for her in bulk quantities.  A stat:  her skin disease is so rare, there’s like 10 people in the US and 100 people worldwide who have it!

This week we’ll begin offering health checkups to the residents at the dump, so that will mean some longer days than usual.  During the day, the garbage trucks come all day long every 30 minutes, so we have to wait until evening to start so as not to interrupt their work.  Truthfully, I’m not sure if I’ll have a hand in that or not – I’ll be happy to help if they want me to, but since I’m not a medic I don’t know if they’ll need me.  Pray then for the medical people that will be key - Kellie, Les, and Jen - for their patience and against fatigue, and that communication goes well with and through L John the translator.  Most of all, we’re hoping that these checkups can reveal some opportunities for preventative education that will result in genuine and lasting health benefits at the dump.  Thanks!

Boo!

No, this post has nothing to do with Halloween – though you could draw some parallels if you’re a parallel-drawing sort of person:  1)  It could be said that my blog is pretty dead since I don’t write in it much, haha! or 2) my posts are so infrequent that this one actually took you by surprise!  There, there, you can relax.  Happy Halloween everyone!

It’s been a good vehicle week:  The Rover now has matching (though used) rear tires and mudflaps to keep the garbage dump mud (which is a rarefied and stinky variety of mud, let me tell you) from getting everywhere (including completely filling the hollow rear bumper with putrid goo) every time we go.  They are just about the coolest mudflaps EVER, too, because they say “TURBO” on them in huge letters that positively scream “British Dignity” befitting a classic Land Rover.  At least they don’t have the playboy bunny on them or Hello Kitty – wouldn’t be surprising in Thailand at all.  And, the Mazda pickup runs!  I took the battery to a fellow on the corner with a charger, so now we have spark, fuel, and air.  A guy came by to look at it late last week, so maybe we’ll get that thing sold before too long.  It started right up today, so hopefully it will still start on its own tomorrow…now if I can get the driver’s door to open (both the inside and outside handles are useless now), we’ll be in business!

I’ve started into the rotation that feeds baby Su Su – you may remember from my letter that she’s got a bad skin disorder and is in need of special attention.  My day is Sunday, so I went for the 10-12 time slot to feed her, hold her, and love her.  Though her skin is damaged, she is still beautiful.  The condition kind of prevents her from moving her mouth very much – it’s kind of stuck open in an oval shape that makes it hard for her to seal around the bottle, but she’s doing better at it and it’s great to see.  I swear she smiled at me several times, too!  The hospital administrator stopped in again to show me the bill, but since I am an unintelligible, monosyllabic caveman she gave up on me.  Please pray we can resolve the bill and that Su Su continues to get the care she needs – frequent baths, better lotion, and lots of Compasio people coming in to love on her.

Thank you!

A Compasio Summary

I’ve written some people on my initial experiences in Mae Sot with Compasio, but hadn’t yet started this blog.  Partly out of laziness, some parts of this next post will look familiar to some of you.  Probably all of you.  Why include it, one could wonder, but it seems to me the blog would be lacking without some kind of summary on what Compasio is about, and how much I think they rock.

Compasio strives to show Christ’s love for women and children at risk, mostly displaced Burmese.  There are a lot of Burmese refugees here in Mae Sot, fleeing or kicked out by one of the more brutal military-run regimes on Earth.  Thailand isn’t perfect either, so a lot of these people, mostly women and children, are exploited for labor and the sex trade and trafficked out to Bangkok and other places.  Compasio runs a few shelter homes to try to help them tangibly and show Jesus’s love for them, and I spend some time supplementing the regulars helping out at each.  The safehouse is a home for Burmese kids whose parents are very poor, missing, have abused their children, or some combination of these.  It is always our goal to keep families together, but sometimes there are safety or other concerns at home that lead us to take children in.  A couple of the mothers work there as well, taking care of the children alongside some very giving Thai people on staff.  I’ve spent many great evenings there learning worship songs or games, playing with and cleaning up after the kids, and being climbed on!  The Baby House is a home for kids whose parents are in prison – sometimes for being Burmese around a grumpy Thai cop, sometimes for theft or for violent offenses – and otherwise don’t have a place to live.  The aim of Compasio is to reunite these families, but if the parents fall through after their sentences the Baby House is sometimes an orphanage too.  Another awesome Thai couple admirably and selflessly watches after them, teaches them about Jesus’ love for them, and provides them a family.  We also run a Drop-In center downtown for street kids to get a meal and play some games at lunchtime before heading back out to the streets again.  These kids sometimes have homes and guardians but spend their days foraging and begging to survive, sometimes at the direction of their parents.  My favorite thing is to visit the garbage dump, though – there are a couple hundred people who live there in homes they’ve made of garbage, covered in dirt and teeth rotting away, making their meager living sorting through the mountains of trash for recyclables they can sell for pennies a kg.  We have a medical role there, bandaging wounds and changing dressings (everything gets infected when you live at the dump) and taking people to a small clinic in town in an old Land Rover that used to belong to the Swiss Red Cross.  My role is simply driving, holding limbs or squirting saline solution, or occupying other curious children while the real talent does the work, but it is phenomenal to see the healing happen and watch the trust develop.  In addition to the rotations at the shelters, I have the opportunity to help out with some of the nuts and bolts type things that need done around here – roofs, lights, vehicles, that sort of thing.  It’s fun, challenging, and rewarding, and I have yet to do any permanent damage.

Organizationally, that is a quick summary – there are other ministries at work, such as our Monday evening soccer games with the street kids, but I’ll touch on those later.  J

Compasio is looking at expansion in the next year as a possibility.  There are other border towns with similar needs…please pray with us on if/how best to expand, the timetable, and the people that would have to make it happen.  Thanks for reading!  For more, see http://www.compasio.org/. 

9/7 - 9/9 Travel Time, Part Deaux

Went through customs, no problem.  They didn’t even ask about all my heroin. =)  Rounded the corner, and whose face was smiling and waving and towering above all the Thais?  Her face wasn’t technically waving, let’s be clear.  Face = smiling, hand = waving.  But yeah, Krystle was there!  Awesome!  The van to their retreat would leave at 9:30 instead…and I don’t know what sort of trouble they were in for making it that way.  We had a good, if quick reunion and I delivered the non-pink laptop to an anxious P’Yu.  Any tiredness I’d had was gone, and the three of us got to visit for a little while until no kidding, they had to hop into a taxi and get to their retreat.  Krystle brought me a chai tea she’s found addicting, but it was slightly completely frozen and served as more of a joke than a beverage for the moment, taking the form of chai chunks in a bag.  P’Yu brought me a small band of great smelling flowers as a laptop thank you and Krystle assured me this was an honorable thing, and not the ones the monks have.  Probably a good thing, as I would not want to be mistaken for a dishonorable monk!  =)  We didn’t have much time to plot and scheme for my visit to Bangkok in October, but we’ve got the basics down and it’ll be sweet!  After a year of frustrating failed Skype video calls, to see her and hear her laugh in person was awesome...she introduced me to ministry opportunities in Thailand and I’m extremely thankful for that!

I sipped on my thawing chai out of the bag (which was delicious, and I would learn later that Thais all drink out of plastic bags so no worries there) and had a great lunch and visit with Ake at the airport (which was also delicious – sushi!) before she saw me to security for my next flight.  And that was Bangkok.  My flight to Chiang Mai was smooth and uneventful, the Song Tau (truck with benches in the back, one of the many types of taxi you can take in Thailand) trip a little more roundabout.  I recognized landmarks from my map a bunch of times, but had no way to tell my driver to stop, give up, and let me out so I could hoof it the rest of the way – he insisted on getting me to the door of the Compasio office in Chiang Mai.

I spent one night in Chiang Mai, and met the Browns who founded Compasio – Allan, Joane, and their seven awesome kids, plus Katie a long term Compasio staffer and two of her friends in for a long-weekend kind of visit.  These were really great, really welcoming and fun people…I could tell already I’d made a good choice coming here!  We had fun getting acquainted, playing games, sorting through new schoolbooks, and shoplifting.  Seriously.  The next morning I took a bus with Katie and her friend Amanda to Mae Sot, where Ashlee and Stephanie (more Compasio people) picked us up in the Land Rover of Abundant Character…more on that beast later! 

That wraps up my travel days, so if you hung in there for the whole story you probably need to go take a break.  Thank you to everyone who has prayed for me and supported me – this really was a very smooth trip!

9/7 - 9/9 Travel Time, Part 1

I enjoyed very much my “Last Meal That Won’t Burn Your Mouth for Days” with mom and dad at a small diner near DIA (called “Moonlight”, I think).  A diner where the staff are all a bit larger than average is a good sign!  We won the heart and mind of our waiter when mom recalled the name of Marisa Tomei as the car-savvy heroine in that movie where Ralph Macchio and his pal are jailed somewhere in the south for murder… Herman Munster was the judge, Joe Pesci was the lawyer…little help here…anyway.

Denver – LA, no problems.  I sat next to a nice guy who was on his way to Tonga, then Australia, then New Zealand, taking his first international trip.  We agreed we both had a pretty long day ahead!  We arrived in LA on time.  At LAX, it was a little difficult to find a departure board that wasn’t all United all the time.  It turns out, you have to exit security, exit the building, and walk a couple blocks to another building to actually not fly United.  Ahh, the LAX international terminal.  It’s super inviting.  The international terminal is where they don’t have any shops or food, and where they have about six chairs for every gate.  You would think that for all the enthusiasm in the US for getting foreign people out, the international terminal would be a more pleasant place.  If I was foreign I would let my visa lapse just to not go there.  I camped on the hard tile floor with about ten thousand other people, mourned the tragic and brutal beating of a plum in a sack lunch my mom packed for me (plums, it would seem, are not tremendously durable) ate a couple yummy sandwiches (peanut butter, jelly, and plum juice – thanks mom!!), and watched as all the other flights departed on time.  Mine to Bangkok was delayed, and my window to see Krystle and her roommate P’Yu at the airport in Bangkok the next morning dwindled and then disappeared:  She had to leave at 8AM in order to catch the van as it departed for an MTW staff Pray and Plan retreat.  I hoped somehow we’d “make up time” in the air, but when I checked the plane it was not, in fact, a Concorde.  Instead of landing at 6:40 AM, it was scheduled for 8:20 or so, Bangkok time.  Drag.  The delay was caused by some lavatory vandalism on the plane from the previous flight (I heard later it made the news?), and everyone on board had to be questioned and frisked for Sharpie pens.  It appeared that I would be hauling P’Yu’s new laptop (I was a courier) up to Mae Sot for a few weeks which would disappoint her a lot.  P’Yu, for the record, is well aware of the English meaning of her name and goes by “Stinky” among close friends now and then =).

The flight itself was great, actually, in a Really Long Flight sort of way:  seat-wise, one other guy and I had the four middle seats to ourselves so I could stretch out into the neighboring seat and got some good sleep.  Ok, decent sleep.  Ok, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t awake the whole time.  Thai Air decorates in a pretty loud purple and pink scheme, but I can’t really blame it on that.  I watched a movie on my personal little screen in front of me (Date Night – love both Fey and Carrell but the movie left me wanting a little more) and read from a well-loved (and puppy-chewed) copy of Greg Mortenson’s Stones Into Schools (thanks Dawn!). Towards the end of the flight, I spooled up some worship music on the Ipod and nearly killed the battery on “Grace Like Rain” by Plumbline.  Love that song, and that’s one of the inspirations for the blog name.  The food on the plane was good, too, so that when I landed I wasn’t very hungry and wasn’t very tired.  I did however, smell bad.  Nice.

At about two hours late and doubting Krystle and P’Yu could be there, should I bypass my transfer gate to Chiang Mai and exit the secured area into the public area of the airport?  Of course not!  I was pretty bummed about how late I was, but remembering conversations about ‘Thai time’ I figured there was still a pretty slim chance they could be hanging around a while longer.  Plus, I had a laptop to deliver so P’Yu would want to stay as late as possible!  I also had another friend to meet:  Ake, one of Graham’s friends that I’d met a few times back in the states is Thai and lives in Bangkok, and there was a good chance I could meet her for lunch.  If only I had a phone that worked...

Grace Like Rain - Introduction

And so, without further ado, this is my blog.  It’s about Thailand and my ministry and adventures there in the Fall and Winter of 2010, but I may revive it in future years to recount future trips.  It’s started very slowly, and I’m terribly behind, but with some work I’ll try to fill it in as best I can.   I won’t drag out too many boring details I hope, like say packing.  On that topic, let’s just say that people may notice at some point that I keep wearing the same stuff over and over =). 

So how did this trip come together?  It started with a leap of faith, when I quit my full time job in Aug 09 as a civilian working for the Air Force in order to have extended periods off to do mission-y type work.  It was a great job, with great people, but I was maybe a little too at home in my cubicle and wanted better chances to serve God as well as serve my country.  I have always been very risk averse when it comes to my job – very conservative, and sticking with what I know is there, so this was a big move for me.  I managed to secure what amounts to part-time employment for particular months in 2010 as an Air Force reservist.  This would do a couple things:  one, it would free me up those months I was not on duty to volunteer locally and overseas, and two, by working for the reserves more than the minimum “one weekend a month, two weeks a year,” I would be able to serve my squadron more effectively.  God's plans for me might be different though, so I'm praying to stay open to whatever he puts in front of me.

Why Thailand?  I got reconnected with a friend (through Facebook, no less!) Krystle, who was trying to raise support and funds for her yearlong internship in Bangkok through Mission to the World (MTW).  Through spending time with her and helping with a fundraiser here and there, I became very interested in Thailand and the opportunities to do some pretty cool stuff over here.  Another friend Sarah was (is!) on the board with Compasio, and she really sold me.  It is with Compasio’s mission on the border with Burma, working with displaced Burmese women and children, that I really clicked.  Their mantra is “See. Feel.  Act,” as in see a need, feel compassion, and act on it without concern about “Does this fit my mission?” or “Do we have the budget for this right now?”   They believe strongly in acting for the good of families and children here first, showing them the love of Jesus, and figuring out the logistics and the details second.   I applied, and in a gross lapse of judgment on their part they picked me up for three months.  So there it is:  I’ll be in Mae Sot, Thailand, until mid-December this year.  Hope you enjoy the posts here and there, and please email me and keep in touch with prayer requests or anything else.  Cheers!