getting ready for the 3rd health fair

Thanks if you're calculating, yes, I (Steve) am up early.  It's 5:30 as I'm writing this and I woke up at 3am, too.  Still jet-lagged.

Thanks for praying for KK.  Her mosquito bite didn't bother her yesterday.  Same for Maddie.  My back was also better.  But it's always a concern, so please continue to pray for our health.

The special prayer request for today is that we heard yesterday that there could be 100 kids at today's health fair.  We're getting better at presenting our material, which helps us give more individual attention to the kids.  But we're going to be stretched today if 100 kids show up.  Imagine applying fluoride to 100 kids as opposed to 35-40!  Pray that we'll be able to adjust and that each kid will feel cared for.

2nd health fair (Mar 31): people and places

The best way to describe this day is in terms of people and their stories.

Mod is one of our translators.  He is the only Christian in his family, but he has a passion to see his family come to know God through Christ.  How blessed we both are to have both grown up in Christian homes!  Would we have the same passion and compassion?  How much does it mean to us that God has reached out to us and saved us and given us new life and a new relationship with Him?  

Mod is also young enough to have the energy to play with the kids in today's brutal heat and humidity.  We had a group of about 35 kids today.  Mod got the day started with group singing (he's a good guitarist) and then had the kids chasing him and playing games.  Our team has some people young enough to keep up with him, but some of us have left those days behind.  And that age diversity is a good thing.

Below is a picture of KK applying fluoride to one fo the kids in her station.  KK also shared her testimony with the group this morning.  Becca shared last night.  

The fact that we had a smaller group led to our health screening station being able to work with parents as well as kids.  Hans could see them looking interested as he worked with their kids and so he spoke to them and was able to assess and give health advice to several.  Some of us on our team are young enough to speak the children's language of play.  Others are old enough to earn a hearing with the parents.  It's good that this team isn't made up of just a single age group (high schoolers or young adults or older adults) but we can reach out effectively to an entire village through our various members.

I (Steve) had several chances to talk with Kristi and found that she was the cousin of a friend of his, Sean Curtis, pastor of Great Exchange Covenant in SF.  Kristi could see that our team was not only diverse in ages, but was also a partnership between local churches, Covenant missionaries, and the local Thai/Isaan churches. She speaks excellent Thai and is completely at home in Roi Et.

We had dinner at a street food stand.  The owner is Wichit, a leader in the church in Roi Et.  His food stand has the best chicken with rice in Roi Et, according to whatever is the local equivalent of Yelp, i.e., the word on the street.  He does great business and Malvin noted that his employees are all happy, indicating that they must be treated well.  Business is so good that Wichit is ready to move into the building being constructed behind his food stand.  Yet he doesn't open on Sundays.  He's taken a stand for Christ (or taken a food stand for Christ).  

BTW, his chicken is really good.  Steve thought it was hands down better than the famous Nong's Khao Man Gai in Portland. "The secret's in the sauce."

After dinner we went back to the night market.  The girls promised Tip Boonrang that they would eat silk worms.  Becca was overheard muttering, "How'd I get myself into this?"  But they all ate the silk worms.  Steve thought they were like soft grainy peanuts.  We'd had mango sticky rice the night before so we washed down the silk worms with strawberry smoothies.

geting ready for the 2nd health fair

It's a real joy to work with the Covenant churches in Roi Et.  There's an obvious expectation that God is at work and a passionate love for their neighbors and fellow Isaan.  I (Steve) didn't realize that the head of the Thailand Covenant was with us and that I met him back in 1999.  Fortunately, he doesn't remember me, either :)  But he did remember the church planting conference, which was the reason I was in Roi Et.


One thing I didn't mention last night was that the health fair was supposed to be limited to 60 kids.  We ended up with 82, even though we started with what looked like about 40.  The group just kept getting bigger!  And that reminded us of why we're here: we are helping the local church to enjoy greater favor with their neighbors.  Most of the kids were not Christians, but now they (and their parents) know of the presence of this local church and love of the people of the church for them. 

Please pray for us as we start our second day of health fairs.
- KK and Maddie both have multiple bug bites on their legs that required oral antihistamines.
- Steve's back is still ache-y and requiring wearing the back brace.
-  It's supposed to be 97F today!  We need to stay hydrated. 

Day 2

As expected, it was a full and tiring day.  We completed our first health fair and made some necessary adjustments.  For example, Steve and Eric started out working with Patrick Boonrang in the personal hygiene station.  But we discovered that Patrick was more than an interpreter, he was an excellent teacher.  We also found that Hans needed more helpers because doing a health screening for each child was too time intensive.  So Eric ended up the day working with Hans.

Bob warned us that we needed to be flexible.  He got to work on flexibility as soon as we got there.  Bob wanted us to start setting up as soon as we got to our location, which was a fish farm and camp and church.  But to our surprise there was a full-on welcome planned, including traditional Isaan music and dancing and speeches.  

God blessed us with a day of cloud cover and cooler temperatures than had been expected.  In fact, it rained!  But the rain waited until we had finished the health fair and were almost finished putting everything away.  

We went to a nearby seafood hotpot restaurant for dinner.  

After dinner we had singing and testimonies and debriefing.  Becca got to share her faith journey.  Then for those with the energy, we went to a night market for mango sticky rice!

In our debriefing, I (Steve) was surprised to learn that the neighborhood adults who came to the fair were surprised that we farang (foreigners) wanted to eat with the children.  They expected us to think that kids’ food was beneath us.  I was glad for an opportunity to help build relationship bridges between the neighbors and the local church as they saw us expressing God’s relational love.

Starting the day (Mon-Thurs)

It's 6:30am Monday in Roi Et.  Most of you will be reading this on Sunday afternoon or evening.  Our schedule is pretty packed in the morning.

We have breakfast at 7 in a restaurant next door.  Morning devotions are led by Steve, 7:30-8:30.  Then we leave for the site of the health fair (different each day).  We have an hour to set up with whatever the local church has to offer.  The fair goes from 10am-4pm, including lunch with the kids.  Then we break down and return.

Our hotel is pretty nice: built just a year ago and excellent wifi!  But the surrounding homes have lots of chickens and the roosters get to work early, like 2am, according to Hans, Steve's roommate and brother-in-law.  Becca is rooming with her cousin Kathryn and KK is rooming with Maddie Chin, fellow freshman at The King's Academy.  Maddie's brother Chris went to Thailand with Steve and Becca 2 years ago, but he's in Ecuador right now.  Both of Maddie's parents are in Thailand with us.

My (Steve's) back is doing OK, but isn't 100% so I'm going to wear the brace today and see how that goes.

Breakfast is in 15 minutes.  Gotta go.

Getting there and Day 1

Have you had a McDonald's Samurai Pork Burger yet?  Probably not, unless you've eaten at a McDonald's in Thailand.  Why is this significant?  Our travels to Roi Et started out pretty smoothly, from a logistics point of view.  We all met at SFO at 10 am on Friday, March 27.  We had a short layover in Seoul and ended up in Bangkok late Saturday night/Sunday morning (i.e., after midnight).  We got up early (no one got more than 4 hours sleep) and a couple of shuttle rides later ended up at the old DMK airport in Bangkok for what we thought would be an 11 am flight that would arrive in Roi Et at 12:15.  But our flight was delayed until 1:40!

Meanwhile we were waiting in an increasingly congested terminal with 7 gates that had at least 2 flights waiting at each gate.  The terminal had seating for only 3-4 flights, so 14+ flights made it ridiculously crowded.  And there was insufficient air conditioning to accommodate the huge crowd.  The airline apologized repeatedly and to show their contrition gave us all a free McDonald's lunch: a sandwich (Samurai Pork or McChicken) and a bottle of water with a McD's logo on it.

The Covenant churches in Roi Et were so excited that we were coming that they sent 20 people to the Roi Et airport to greet us.  But because of the flight delay they had to leave.  Bob Shim, Patrick & Tip Boonrang and Kristi Byford, a Covenant missionary in Roi Et, did return to greet us (below you can see Bob and the team greeting us).  They got us to our hotel in Roi Et and we had 30 minutes to settle down before our orientation began.

We walked from our hotel to a nearby building for orientation.  Our interpreters joined us and we heard stories of how God has been working in Roi Et through the Covenant since 1971 and how there is a renewed work of God going on right now.  We had dinner together (including leftovers from what was to have been our lunch!) and then assembled gift bags for the kids who would be coming to the health fairs (below is a picture of us assembling the gift bags).  Bob told us that there would be 60-80 kids the first three days and that there could be as many as 200 on the fourth and final day.  The reason for the increase?  The people of that church have a good reputation in their neighborhood.  Our prayer is that through these health fairs we will help all the churches to gain favor in the hearts of their neighbors.

After the assembly line we took some time to sing and hear Patrick's story of how he converted to following Christ from being the president of his university Buddhist society.  We closed with prayer together.  To be honest, by this time we were all pretty tired (after 4 or less hours of sleep the night before and over 20 hours on airplanes).  To be even more honest, some of started sleeping before Patrick had finished his story.  By now (11 pm) most of us are asleep. 

At SFO

We made it!  Here's a photo of our entire group inside the international terminal before going through security.  Sadly, Mark Chan wasn't able to travel with us because of his father's illness.  Please keep him in your prayers.  You can see me (Steve) standing up straight in the back of the group.  Many thanks to Dr. Alice Chow for the great back brace.  And thanks to prayer warriors Susan, Robin, Linda and Chun who anointed and prayed for me yesterday afternoon.  I slept really well last night and my back is only complaining occasionally.  In fact, the brace is working so well I didn't bring the back support pillow (Susan, thanks anyway).  We're waiting in the terminal now and board in about 30 minutes. The girls have gone to get food (even though we're getting lunch on the flight: teenagers are always hungry!).

Our prayer requests

KK is praying that we not get bitten by any bugs.

Becca is praying that we'll be an authentic expression of Jesus' love.

Steve is praying that his pinched nerve heals quickly!  I (Steve) went to the chiropractor today.  Thank God for Dr. Alice Chow at Grace Community.  Long story short, she told me that I have a pinched nerve and my latest fashion accessory is a back brace.  If I don't heal quickly it's going to be a loooong plane ride!  We leave on Friday at 12:25 pm and arrive in Bangkok on Saturday at 10:55pm (with a layover in Seoul).