Sunday worship

Today we worshiped with the Thai and the Burmese. We arrived for the 10 a.m. Thai service, which lasted until noon. They sang a lot of upbeat songs and had really nice music equipment. We heard a few testimonies in Thai and the English and Thai pastors gave sermons.
It was hot and humid, so all the fans churning air inside the small church building didn’t help much. Everybody takes off his or her shoes before entering the building and places them in a large shoe rack just inside the door.
Because the services last so long, the children usually play outside in a fenced-in area. Today it was the job of the children’s ministry team to entertain them. Several of our members performed a skit for the kids about Peter and Thomas fishing without any luck. Then they see a man who looks like Jesus on the shore. The man tells them to throw the net on the other side of the boat, and when they do they catch more fish than they can pull in. Then one by one the fishermen jump overboard and swim to shore to see Jesus.
The kids enjoy that, as well as singing the silly songs. Then we had a craft of making necklaces and played some more games. When the adults got out, we all sat down to lunch. The Thai passed out plates and set big bowls of food on the table for us. They eat lunch together every Sunday.

After lunch the Burmese pastor and his congregation came to worship. Their service lasted about three hours. The ministry team entertained the kids during that time as well. We did the same skit, read them a story, and told the meaning of the candy cane (the shape of the shepherd’s staff, the white color for Jesus pure heart, the three small red stripes for the lashes he received, and the large red stripe for the blood he shed on the cross to save us).

Then the Burmese kids decorated crosses and played games. The Burmese worship service was similar to the Thai service, but their music equipment was very old. Yet, they were very good musicians.

After what seemed like a long, hot day, we came back to the hotel for some down time before dinner. On Sundays during certain times of the year, the Thai block off a street to set up a large market. People sell food, used clothes, jewelry, figurines, clocks and lots of other neat stuff. We ate dinner at the market. We tasted fruit, shakes with gummy candy in the bottom, sticky rice, chicken on a stick, fish balls on a stick, sushi, corn, fried things, mini donuts and tons of other Thai dishes. There were children coloring with chalk on the sidewalk and musicians playing for change.

Yesterday we learned some interesting things on the way back from seeing a beautiful waterfall. The Thai are a superstitious people, and when a child died at a construction site years ago, they thought the place was cursed and didn’t touch it after that. It still looks like an unfinished, abandoned building site – and it will remain that way forever.

Then we also learned some unpleasant things. Apparently the police here are very corrupt. On the way back to the hotel, the police had set up this kind of check point in the middle of the street and were pulling everyone over. Brenda was driving, and when they stopped us, she spoke English to them and pretended she didn’t know any Thai. After a minute, they let us go and Brenda explained the police were looking for bribes. They were pulling everyone over – even if they hadn’t done anything wrong – and were coming up with any excuse to give them a ticket. The cops would discreetly hold up one or two fingers to show how many hundred baht they wanted. There’s not much Thai drivers can really do to get out of it, but the Police don’t know English that well so they don’t mess with the ferang (foreigners) so much. Brenda said sometimes they have days when they don’t like Thailand when things like this happen. But they wake up the next morning and love Thailand!

Tomorrow we travel back to Kao Lak for some rest, relaxation and typical tourist stuff. The beaches are better at Kao Lak than Ranong.