Stories and updates from the last few months (pdf format):
Archive for February, 2009
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A few fun facts you might not know about Thailand
Thais don’t call their country Thailand, but “Pratet Thai.”Bangkok hasn’t been the name of their capital since 1782, but foreigners never caught up with the name change. It’s current name is Krungthep (“city of angels”), which is short for it’s full paragraph-lengthed name, the longest place name in the Guinness Book of World Records: “Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.” Roughly translated: “The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn.”
The most common greeting here is not “how are you?” but “have you eaten rice yet?” Which means, “have you had a meal lately?”, because without rice you haven’t really had a meal.
A lot of parents shave the heads of their babies (girls and boys), believing the hair will grow back fuller and shinier
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A slow but powerful paradigm shift
Community organizing within my slum of Phothong has been my primary focus for the past 6 months or so. Things have been happening so quickly, I’ve been on such a steep learning curve, that I’ve gotten way behind on sharing any of my stories or what I’ve learned. Now I’m wanting to do that, but I kind of don’t know where to start. I think this will likely be a series of posts, since I could honestly write a book about all that’s happened since August.
Maybe first a bit about why I’m so excited about community organizing in this context.
In September our team, along with other Servant Partners missionaries from other sites, were part of a great training on community organizing. The week was led by Rebecca Gifford, director of Millennium Tools . It totally changed the way I was thinking about organizing. I had originally thought of it simply as people in a community getting together to talk about their issues and work toward solutions together. That is part of it. But the more I’m learning, the more I see it as a type of leadership development, assumption-challenging, paradigm-shifting, empowering process. So much more than just cleaning up garbage or circulating a petition.
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Sep 17, 2009
Reflections from Bangkok, September 09
Click on the image to read my last newsletter from Bangkok! Some highlights: Six new believers...
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