NOT ALL WORK.......

LST workers do take time to experience their new culture and to visit with readers and their new friends. Tom and Helen and Gary and Joanne spent a day touring the Grand Palace and the Buddha Temple Area in Bangkok. What an experience. We have never seen such magnificient gold clad buildings and statuary. This area has been set up to demonstrate the buddhist temples that were always next to the King's palace. The king of Thailand does not live in this palace anymore, but it is used for celebrations. (If you look close, you can see the soldier on guard on the right hand side of this picture. We saw the emerald Buddha and the huge gold reclining Buddha. We were saddened as we watched people bowing down to the idols and dropping money in the many pots that were around the Buddha as 'acts of merit'.

Gab and Guggig, Thai Christians here, went with us. Gab told us about the Thai massage school in the Temple area and said that they were the best in Thailand. So, Helen had a 45 minute foot massage. After the pain was over, the massage was great. They used sticks to poke the pressure points and rubbed special lotions on the feet and lower legs. Helen is ready for another one. The rest of the team decided that they were not ready yet.

Free days are also used to do laundry and shopping for food and party supplies. We invited all of our readers to a party every Friday evening. The first party was a 'Balloon Party'. We made balloon sculptures and played several games with balloons. We are reminded of "Thai Time" when it comes to parties. The parties are supposed to begin at 6:00 PM. When we are invited to be a guest at 6:00, we arrive at 6:00. In Thailand, that means 6:30 or later. For the second party, which was a Birthday Party, we planned for that eventuality and things went better. We had a bubble blowing contest, a 'Birth of Jesus' Wordfind, a Bean Bag Toss game, and paper airplane folding and flying contest. We all had a good time. We also taught the Thais the new Birthday Song. They all sing the same traditional "Happy Birthday" that everyone in America sings. The February birthday people, including Tom and Tuli, were first in line for the brownie birthday cake and cookies. We concluded the evening with devotional songs, a scripture and prayer.

Monday and Tuesday are our 'free days'. We are planning to go to the Floating Market about 2 hours from here on Tuesday. That will be interesting. We understand that there will be many vendors in wooden canoe type boats that are quite insistent that they have wares that we need. We will see.

Our team is still adjusting to the fact that almost everything is open air here. We eat everyday in open air cafes. Yesterday a woman was sitting at one of the tables eating with a dog in her lap. Unique for us! The marketplace is open air. Almost every shop just opens up the whole front of their store with large steel doors to open for business. The church building is also open air. It is a large unusual building that is built on pillars above a pond of water. We are enjoying the location so much. We get a nice breeze which is very welcome on the hot days. Homes are not fully enclosed. They have large glass doors that are open much of the time, with no screens. They keep saying that the mosquites are terrible, but we have not experienced that too bad yet. The ones we have seen are very wimpy, compared to Minnesota Mosquitoes anyway. We are told that during the rainy season, which starts within the next few weeks, that they will be worse. That is after we leave. It is very dry now. No rain since we arrived, but things are still green.

We are all still encouraged by our readers. One of Tom's readers came to worship with us this morning. That was exciting. Others have shown much interest in the story of Jesus. We all have some that don't seem to show up when they are supposed to, but the others more than make up for that. Today we also read with some of the students at the Bible College that meets at the same location as the church here. They want to improve their English skills. That was fun. We are using our usual Luke workbooks.

We continue to keep you all in our prayers and covet yours as we continue our work here.

Love you all, Gary and Joanne, Tom and Helen