A week and a half in 1000 words or less... kinda

Well, my pizza hut frisbee is dead, but i'll get back to that.

Prayer walking all last week was so much harder than i ever could have imagined. Just trying to concentrate sometimes on a conversation with God was more of a fight than i've ever had, between the noises, smells, sights and on wednesday some heavy spiritual oppression like i've encountered in my life simply finding a single prayerful sylable was a struggle at times. Talking to the monk was interesting. The wats were all the same in principal but so different. From the loudest most crowded tourist attractions, to nearly abandoned and decaying, from hocking coins and various bird types out front, to refinishing a wat with silver walls made from the silver factories opperating inside and just outside, from food being cooked to treest that smelled so overpoweringly beautiful they gave thomas a two hour headache. Im still proccessing most of that part of the week, but that just the stuff off the top of my head. And then every day but one, we would leave downtown to go to chiang mai university to eat lunch with the college students. Also, i forgot to mention that i ran into a friend of mine from SBU, who graduated in 05. As we were breaking up to go eat after the prostitute street walking, my group was loosely gathered and i saw this guy walking down the street, just kind of a glance, and then i double taked because he looked really familiar, and then his name just came to me, so me being me, just blurted it out not knowing for sure if was him. fortunately for me it was. My group had already hailed a sonteaw, so i didnt have time to talk, but we arranged to meet tuesday afternoon to eat at the university. Found out that after he left SBU, he waited on his girl and got married, then they up and moved to Myanmar to do missions (hence the reason im not listing his name because the tend to be less than friendly to other than muslims up there). So that was cool. And over the days I got to meet some pretty cool students and have fun fighting my way through throngs of them to try and order my dang food in ThEnglish. Man did they laugh at me. Anyways, through the week we made plans for this past saturdays sports camp, and then early (freakin 630 am) that morning left to head to maywong (i know its spelled wrong, but its nearly 120 and i didnt get a nap today) village. Once we got there, we met some of the faculty of the school, and then set up for the "camp." I put camp in quotes because basically Saturday was an official Thai holiday, Children's Day, and we were the entertainment for that morning for the the kids. So we set up a tag area where laurie and joel played different taggish games, a musical chairs area where thomas played his guitar and melissa helped him with playing musical chairs and teaching them "waves of mercy" the song. There was an Ultimate Frisbee area where shawn and andrew taught the kids first how to throw the tricky thing, then how to play Ultimate (kinda) and finally a Soccer area (changed from kickball due to space issues) where brad and andy got spanked. Amy, matt, barb and i all stayed with different groups to lead them to each activity, and wonderful, wonderful ekk floated around and helped with translations. See, what you have to understand is, these kids knew english... they could say hello and thank you. So that made teaching and running things fun. Basically it was controlled chaos. But the kids were awesome, and the faculty of the facilty made things so easy on us. They had instant coffee (i know, i know. No WAY on God's green earth could that taste even close to good, but it was liquid miracleness) and fresh baked that morning pastries waiting on us. Cooked us enough food for every meal that even I got full and there was tons left over (BTW fried eggs made with peanut butter instead of grease... words fail me) But as soon as that was somewhat over, we grabbed clothes and climbed into/onto the sonteaw to go play. And by onto, i mean holding onto the back of the thing for thirty min both ways, my forearms are a little sore, but there is no better way to see the country i am convinced, unless its climbing onto the basket on top. So we rode up the mountain to rent bamboo rafts to float down a mountain river. Thats right, 3ft x 25ft rafts made of large bamboo poles lashed together. I floated down a mountain (mountian repeated for emphasiss b/c it was pretty chilly) river on a bamboo raft, steered by poles over rapids and waterfalls, and guided by a 12 yearold in freakin thailand in freakin january. HOW AWESOME IS THAT!!! and then it gets better. Cause we all got off the rafts, me with a battle scar (its just a flesh wound mom, everyone else... you may believe it was a deep gash that i should have got stitches for, but decided to just be a man about it) got back on the S/T to go up in the hills a little ways to ride elephants. Yeah, that was pretty freakin sweet too. And it was so freakin beautiful up there. Just wait till we get some of those up on these sites. I ended up having to ride with amy, and our rider never got off to let me steer like half the other riders did, but it was still amazing despite all that. Then we headed back to dinner, chillin, and then the locals made us a little treat of a bamboo section, crammed and jammed full of rice, sugar, coconut milk and water, sealed, and then cooked over a fire. They cooked it a little long, but it was still tasty. Then to bed, the parade and Bible story as was told of below, and then sad goodbyes. Came back, bummed around the rest of today, and then went to eat as a group and went to the walking street to shop. I finished all mine finally, and with 320 baht to spare (10 bucks US... almost).

But i saved the best for last, just for you faithful few who actually managed to read this far with no paragraph breaks because Blogspot is dumb like that and wont let me put any in.

Quintin and Glenn talked to us when we got back today. While we were at the sports camp, they disapeared. Turns out, some very high ranking government people (didnt really follow what branch, or construct or whatever since glenn switched in and out of Thai cause he is still trying to learn it all) heard about the group of farangs coming in to play with the kids, and wanted to come see what all was going on. Because Quintin and his wife befriended Gowmone, and with Glenn and Janet set it up for us to go to Gowmone's village to do a sports camp, God used it to open doors for more work to be done in the area. Quintin is leading a worldchangers group this summer and they may end up going to the village and helping rebuild a couple of poor elders of that comunity's house, a brother and sister. They will also be able to bring in more groups to work with the children and just be welcomed in the village in general. Part of that due of course to just how amazing this team is (had to brag on us a little), but its just soo cool see God open doors like that. It doesnt really happen that much here, when the majority of the work we can do in two weeks is seed planting, but when you get to see a gi-normous seed like that get dropped... but anyways, i apologize for writing so long, and just think, these are just the highlights, imagine how long this thing could be if i got into the gories. Leave with that though and love - zac