Read my most recent newsletter in pdf format:

Interest in Jesus has been growing in my slum.  Right now there is one full family and a handful of women who seem very interested in Jesus and who would likely want to learn more if we had some kind of meeting.  But how should that look here?  How do we as foreigners help Buddhists connect to the true God?  How do we facilitate an experience and relationship with Jesus that makes sense to Thais and not just Americans?

Over the 2 years I’ve lived in the community (not counting the 5 months I was on furlough) I’ve definitely seen changes in the spiritual environment of that place.  Not that there haven’t been moments when I’ve really wondered if anything was happening– I’ve definitely prayed many prayers of pleading and sometimes frustration with the slowness of seeing any fruit.  But when I step back and look at the big picture, the longer-term trends, I can definitely see God’s work.

When I first arrived it was sometimes hard to even get people to smile at me.  There were a few women who were friendly from the beginning, but I would say the majority seemed fairly cold.  Their experience with outsiders was one of either pushy Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness evangelists, or else child-sponsorship program workers who gave money handouts but remained distant and only came around when their budget was in the green.  They didn’t know what to think of me.

After months of smiling and wai-ing and repeating daily that no, I was not going home now because this slum is my home, people finally began seeing me as a neighbor.  They initially called me “kru” or “teacher” since I helped run a kids’ program in my house, but now I’m just “nong”, “pii” or “nuu”– little sister, older sister, child (an affectionate term used by the older generation that literally means “mouse”).

When I would share about Jesus I generally got smiles– “oh yes, he was a good teacher, like Buddha was a good teacher”, or, “Christianity is good like all religions are good because it teaches us to be good.”  It was still often referred to as the foreigner’s religion, or as part of the Western culture and identity while to be Thai is to be Buddhist.

But in the past year or so I’ve had increasingly frequent chances to talk on a deeper level with folks about spirituality and Jesus.  People have shared with me some of their longings and fears– their desire for close relationships but how everyone is marred by selfishness and greed, their feelings of instability in this economy and how they seek their idols for properity, their fears of death and ghosts.

Lately our language partner Gop, a very practical and strong woman, has been asking me deeper questions– “Why are you here?  I get that it’s nice to help poor people, but what do you GET out of it?”  As I’ve tried to explain what it’s like to follow Jesus who loves the poor, to desire to be more like him and receive from him, she stares at me with an intensity I haven’t seen from her before.  I mentioned the possibility of starting a group for people to learn about Jesus, and while at first she didn’t seem too interested, she later asked “so… if someone wanted to come to one of those meetings, would they HAVE to convert?”  I assured her that she could come and just listen if she wanted.  More intense staring.  I think some of her assumptions and fears about faith in Jesus are breaking down.

Our team leader Kevin recently moved into the slum and has been reconnecting with a family he had invested in previously.  I once had dinner with them and Kevin and watched them listen intently to Kevin’s story of the Gospel for over an hour.  These days they still seem hungry to know more.

So Kevin, Christy and I are talking about starting some kind of “seeker-friendly” group in our slum.  We’re starting completely from scratch.  We know what doesn’t work: debating about doctrine, simple spiritual laws, trying to argue them into the Kingdom.  What seems to connect with folks is experience, community, love.  They seek their idols as a way to connect with a higher power that can offer security and peace.  How can we help Thais connect to their Creator, their wealthy and generous Father?

We are thinking about building off of the Thai practice of meditation.  Rather than try to explain Jesus, how much more powerful if he would show himself to them personally.  We will still use Scripture and prayer, but will focus more on meditating on the words, and asking for signs and wonders, healings, for an experience with the living God, that they may see for themselves the difference between him and their idols.

Pray for us as we discuss how to best do this.  Pray for God’s mercy on us as we have no Thai Christian partnership in this slum and we are well aware of our limitations in connecting to the hearts of our neighbors.  Pray that God would bring people and most importantly that his Spirit would be present.  Praise God that he is the one pursuing these people and that he knows exactly what they need in order to believe and trust him.  What an awesome privilege to be a part of this mystery!

If you’ve looked at all at my photos on this site, you’ve seen pictures of the destruction of Permsup, the slum I lived in for my first year and a half.  A massive freeway is being built, with poor areas in the pathway being demolished.  At the same time, shiny new commercial areas are going up, in anticipation of the new traffic that will be coming.  Here’s one example, between Permsup and my current slum Phothong:

Yes, that is a Starbucks, and a Mercedes.

Phothong, which is not under threat of eviction, is still experiencing effects from this new development.  In front of the tightly-packed community is a large vacant lot.  This has served as the slum’s collective backyard, play area, market, community meeting space, and celebration area.

This picture is from a kids’ program we did a couple years ago.

Ever since I moved in, there has been a sign in front of this community advertising the availability of this lot for rent or sale.  I guess vacant land adjacent to a slum community isn’t in high demand.

Until a new freeway and shopping center begin construction around the corner.  Then it begins to look more appealing.  A gasoline company decided this would be an ideal spot for a new, massive filling station.  They began construction about a month ago, leveling the ground and pouring down gravel.  Below is a picture of the sign that has been up in front of the slum (can you tell how my neighbors feel about it?) and the beginning of construction.

One of the first things that will go up is a three-story wall to “protect” the gas station from my neighbors.  This may have one benefit for the slum– should a house fire start, it will be less likely to ignite the gasoline and cause a major catastrophe.  On the other hand, the wall will now make the slum walled in on all four sides, causing less air flow and limit the evacuation route to a single narrow path (shown on the left hand side of the photo below).

Below is a photo taken from inside Phothong.  You can see how close the construction will be to our community.  My neighbors have already had to tear down platforms they used for sitting and selling food, which were just on the other side of our walking path.  You can also see in the photo the makeshift shack that has gone up, where workers will live during the construction.

My neighbors are pretty anxious about this.  They fear what would happen in the case of a fire, they are worried that the already hot slum will become even more sweltering without the breeze they currently get, and they worry for the children, breathing in gasoline fumes all day.

“It isn’t right,” one of my neighbors said, when I asked how she felt about the construction.  “They should find somewhere else to build.  It’s not right to build something dangerous so close to our homes.”

“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives–the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections–that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.

Let us not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”

Henri Nouwen

photo credit: mekong_virus

Her name is Mae. She’s maybe 20 years old and lives in a one-room shack with her husband and her six-month old daughter (nick-named “Je t’aime”). They are assuming the little girl is his but they really don’t know given how she spends her evenings. But he is fine with that, and even the neighbors keep quiet when they see her leave in the evenings, powdered white with painted-on lips, because she’s bringing home money. At least she’s found a way, they think. At least her doll-like face and porcelain skin have granted her a little bit of power. Maybe it’s a sacrifice, but it puts food on the plate. And she shares with us, so who are we to judge?

There are only a few whispers now, as neighbors feel her absence. She has been in Singapore for a few days so far. A hefty profit to be had in the red-light districts there, they say. Oh, no, she could never afford to travel there on her own. Her co-workers and boss all pitched in. It’s like a business investment. And they’re expecting huge returns– a plane ticket and enough cash for two weeks, and she’ll bring back over $10,000. Then it will be divided between the shareholders, see? And of course she’ll see some of that profit as well.

Neighbors say she doesn’t feel ashamed. That she’s proud, even. But I have a feeling that under the painted-on exterior and the armor around her heart, there are wounds nobody sees. Or maybe they just don’t want to see. But there is still someone who knows.

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.” –Isaiah 55:1-3

A while ago Christy and I spent the day with neighbors at Pattaya, a nearby beach. It is a favorite Thai hangout, as well as heavily frequented by Western tourists. It was a bit surreal to see foreigners who look like me staring at the white girl hanging out with a group of lower class Thais. And to hear my Thai friends make comments about the farangs walking by and then turn to me and say “oh yeah– I forgot you’re one of them!”

I was having a bit of an identity crisis. While I look and talk like the Westerners with their sunscreen and guidebooks and cameras, in some ways I am more like my slum-dwelling, Thai-speaking, sticky rice eating neighbors. When I’m in Thailand there are things about the States that I long for, but when I’m in the States I feel a little out of place and confused by the culture. In Bangkok I long for the quiet countryside of my hometown, a good deli sandwich, and the ability to blend into the crowd; in the States I’m always craving rice, shocked by prices, and sometimes translating my thoughts from Thai into English.

It’s amazing how much this place, language and culture has become a second home. And how much my neighbors have accepted me as one of them. This tension between identities is one I kind of enjoy.

Here is my newsletter I put out this month, in pdf format.

Reflections from Bangkok, April 2008

Enjoy!

It’s so hot that even my Thai neighbors are complaining.

It’s so hot that the slum dogs are too tired to get up to scratch their mange.

It’s so hot that I routinely have sweat running down my legs and pooling at my ankles.

It’s so hot that I actually appreciated the cowboy hat my music teacher made me wear home.

It’s so hot that people in my slum are eating ice cream at 10 a.m.

It’s so hot that my refrigerator is hot to the touch from the strain of keeping the inside cool.

It’s so hot that two showers a day is a minimum.

It’s so hot that a cold drink can soak your clothes with its condensation.

It’s so hot that the pages of all my books at home are curling.

It’s so hot that when I’m in the sun I expect to hear my skin sizzling.

Last night my roommate Christy and I woke up because rats had waged war on us.  They had chewed through the string holding up our mosquito net in two places, causing half of it to fall on us while we were sleeping.  We then attempted to scare it out of the house, only to have it peek out from the wall, run across the wall and outside, and then run back in, over and over, as if saying “I’m not afraid of you.”

Also, the glue trap we had placed out was not only unsuccessful in trapping any of our unwanted house guests, but was covered with plastic bags, which rats must have dropped on it from our collection of them hanging on the wall a little ways away.  And my washcloth had been pulled off its hook and dragged to the corner of the bathroom.

Needless to say, it was difficult to go back to sleep with the sounds of squeaking from inside our wall and the fear of a toe getting eaten off during the night.  I would be thoroughly annoyed if it wasn’t so hilarious– I think our laughter and attempts to scare away the rat probably woke up most of our neighbors.

I wonder who is really trying to evict who from our house, and which side will be successful.