This whole idea to go to Thailand came about one Sunday after church, a couple weeks after the tsunami had hit. One of the members of our small international church told us that he was leaving the next day with his (adopted Chinese) 14-year-old daughter to head down to Phuket island. This guy, whom we’ll call ‘Jim’ (which sounds like his name in Thai) is from the Midwest in the States. He is a former large-truck mechanic/truck driver. He and his wife of 27 years, both very American, have two grown, married boys. Almost ten years ago, after they both became believers, Jim’s number-one thing that he was trying to overcome in his walk was his racist attitude, particularly toward the Chinese. Long story short (after a string of incidences), one year later, he and his wife were sitting in an orphanage lobby in Henan Province, China, waiting to pick up their first adopted Chinese daughter. Three more legal adoptions were soon to occur after that from Stateside. The whole clan moved to Beijing about 2 ½ years ago to work more directly with Chinese orphans. Currently they are running a foster home right outside of Beijing. I think they’re up to about 11 kids (legally adopted and foster) now.
So, you can imagine that this couple needed a little break, having had no vacation together since living here. In November, a guy they bumped into (who happened to work for Thai Airways) offered them a steal-of-a-deal package to go down to Phuket, Thailand, for ten days. This couple’s heart-after-the-Lord-and-the-lost led them that week to become pretty good friends with a number of Thai people there.
When Jim dialed up his internet connection on December 26 and first beheld the devastation where he and his wife just were, he immediately felt the urge, almost a duty, to go down there to help. Unsure of the capacity in which he was to serve (should he go alone or with a team?, help rebuild infrastructure or do more counseling/ministry?), the next few days, Jim searched to figure that out. A few days later, Jim woke up one morning to read an email from another foreigner living in China. Towards the end of the email, it mentioned the possibility of this man’s going down to Thailand to help with the tsunami. Jim instantly replied back. This other foreigner, ‘Bo’, an Australian who’d previously lived in Thailand for 15 years and spoke completely fluent Thai, was a little befuddled to receive Jim’s reply. Apparently, Bo hadn’t sent the email out in the first place, but it was an automatically-generated one sent out from his secure email. Bo, somehow, didn’t know how the Thailand information got on there. Strange as it may sound, whatever happened, the two teamed up – having never met before (only having mutual friends) – and began to round up a few volunteers to go with them.
These two, along with their daughters and some high-schoolers and college kids from Bo’s international church in another city in China, got there a week before Frank and I did. Frank and I had planned on getting there a little earlier, but as I wrote to my mom that week, “I’m sick. I’m between the bed, the bathroom, and the floor.” We had to postpone our flight a few days. While preparing to leave, though, two incidences struck me – both about generosity. Though more people than we imagined gave us things to take down there (money, toys, medicine, etc.), two people really gave the widow’s mite. Some of you may have heard me talk or write (in a previous blog entry) about our ‘Ayi’ – housekeeper lady. Wang grew up a peasant, married a peasant-turned-construction worker, and, over a year ago, was fired from her cow-milking job. With a daughter in college and debts to pay off from medical bills, we found out about her through our connection with the local house congregation and hired her for 15 hours a week. Though we most certainly enjoy the help she provides, we’re basically just trying to give her a bit of income. We pay her a livable income. The week before we were to leave, it was time to pay her. She wouldn’t have it. She handed it right back to Frank, absolutely refusing to let it go to herself while knowing the great need of brothers and sisters in Thailand.
The second act of kindness was from a 13-year-old girl who lives upstairs from us in a one-room apartment with her mother. [I have also written about this girl before.] She’s the child prodigy pianist. She is from south China, moved up to Beijing to learn from the best teacher (free lessons offered by the teacher because this girl is just that good), separated from her father, and the mother is not allowed to work (government regulations – outside of her home province). The school gives SiJing 50 RMB each month (~$6), and she had been saving it up for a few months. Before we left, SiJing and her mother wanted to give us some money to take to the people. The mom had in mind an amount to give us herself, but SiJing couldn’t match it, so they settled on 150 RMB each (~$18.30). We were told by the team that was already down there that toys and other children’s goods were wanted, so the two went out and bought with that money all kinds of stuff for us to take. Our hiking backpacks were almost spilling over from all their toy donations.
Okay, on to the part about our time in Thailand… Frank and I, after having a 10-hour layover/sleepover in the Bangkok airport (and taking a night-tour through the city in a cab – that’s one city where you can still see a lot going on, even at 4 a.m.), were beat when we arrived in Phuket. Jim and Bo were ready to go, though. After Bo gave us a very brief orientation to Thai culture (don’t pat children’s heads, boys greet differently from girls, exchange rates, etc.), we drove past a lagoon that was right across the street from the sea and stopped. As it was one of the few remaining lagoons still being pumped out, a large crowd of solemn, still, dazed Thai and foreign people were waiting to see if the body of a loved one would show up. Jim and Bo, as was their habit all week that I admire and like very much, walked around the grounds, silently praying for those people and their families.
This was our first introduction to Thailand. Before going, Frank and I had little time (between buying tickets – at least a three-day affair here, recovering from my sickness, and getting things together) to research what we’d be in for. CCTV (China Communist Television, as it’s called here) gave, what I would call very poor, coverage of the tsunami – no footage of the waves, only interviews of the Chinese government ‘volunteers’. We came with very little expectations, both for what the Thai culture would be like and for what we’d be doing down there.
It was lunch time by then. Bo and Chris couldn’t wait for us to meet someone that they’d all grown to love during the previous week. During the first week, Bo, Chris, and daughters got to stay for two nights free of charge at the $500-a-night Marriot Resort Club. Yep. One of the local church ladies worked in management there, and since it was nearly completely vacant, she pulled some strings for them (after Jim and Bo had been sleeping in a humid, mosquito-laden, single-bed hut for a couple days). One morning they were all looking for a cheap place to eat. Jim noticed out his back window a hut about a hundred meters away in the middle of a bean field. They went on foot, through the field. The owner’s name was “Granny” (her Thai name sounded similar, though she was only in her late 50s). They all sat down for a meal fresh out of the ocean. Over the meal, Bo talked with Granny and her two sons (both in their twenties) about their tsunami experiences. Jim and Bo noticed that one of Granny’s sons’ arms and legs had open-flesh wounds. As the first wave (there were two) was edging back into the ocean, he was ‘lucky’ enough to grab onto a palm tree and hang on for dear life while the next wave engulfed the area. Bo, because of his incredible fluency in Thai, got to be the one to talk with Granny and her sons about the possibility the God has preserved their lives for a reason. That day, Granny and sons professed to be believers upon hearing the Good News. The team gave them New Testaments in their own Thai language.
When Frank and I arrived at Granny’s hut, we first saw her plodding through her bean field with a towel wrapped around her. She’d just come from bathing somewhere in the back of the field. She unexpectedly gave me a big hug with a beaming grin across her face. She got dressed and then made us some Thai tea and cut a fresh pineapple for us. I looked around her restaurant/shop/home – which was an open-air bamboo hut – to see that her all-plank wood bed had on it a pillow, a folded-up blanket, a pair of spectacles, and a New Testament, opened and faced down to mark a page. Besides serving us up the best tea I’d tasted in a long time (besides my Mamaw’s & Aunt Tammy’s, of course), she asked us if we could come share with her friends the same Good News that she’d received. “Of course,” Bo replied.
Bo contacted the local church there that we were working under and lined up a Thai lady, ‘Ad’, who had just moved from Bangkok, to come talk with them, per Granny’s request. As we did every morning before going out, the ‘China team’ had our devotional time together in Bo and Jim’s hotel room. No, we weren’t staying at the Marriot, but at a place far nicer than Frank and I had anticipated. The whole area was so starved for business that the manager of this hotel (the place where Jim and his wife had stayed earlier in November) practically made no profit on our stay – AND offered us free breakfast/lunch all-you-can-eat buffet every day. That morning we, among other things, prayed specifically for the friends that Granny had invited.
Late that afternoon, our team arrived at Granny’s. When we wheeled around the curvy road and pulled up in the gravel driveway, there were more Thai ladies there than local fire laws permitted for such a small space, I’m sure. Standing room only. After going around and introducing ourselves, ‘Ad’ began to share and relate to these ladies in a way that only a local Thai person could. Bo was translating for the non-Thai speakers there. I really admired the way Ad shared her faith. Nothing about it was manipulative or out of sheer emotionalism, yet it wasn’t dry and trite. It conveyed her love and sincere care for these ladies. So much was her care for these ladies that after most of them professed to believe that day, Ad brought them along side her and has been discipling them in the faith.
Right afterwards, one of the few men that came to that meet-up told Bo about the fishing village where he and his wife come from. It is a “sea gypsy” village. This group of people doesn’t really historically belong to either the Thai heritage or to next-door-neighbor Burma. For centuries, this nomadic people-group have lived on the sea and settled back and forth in different places. You can tell, too, just by looking at them that they are distinctly different from most other Asian faces. Very striking eyes. Most notably, the tsunami swiped away all of their fishing boats, which they solely rely on for their daily survival. The man and his wife reported to us that they had no one to turn to since they are not legally registered with the Thai government and are not citizens of Burma either. They are the survivors of this type of people – thousands and thousands of unregistered wanderers living in Thailand were swept into the sea, and no one has any record of them to account for their disappearance.
Though their village and huts went unharmed, their lack of fishing boats were a major problem, as they lived as subsistence fishermen. More major, though, was that – according to what was translated to us – these sea gypsies had recently been involved in satanic worship (including all of the horrors of such – like incestuous births and even child sacrifice). And before that, they were practicing Buddhism. They seemed to be searching for something not-of-this-world.
We agreed to go with the couple back to their village, but only to initially survey the scene. Knowing the task ahead of us and before going to visit there a while, we wanted to make sure that we went in there prepared – and by that I mean two things: 1) that we had thoroughly prayed over the situation, and 2) that we had something to give them – either some songs in their language or games for the children, etc. We loaded up in our rental vans, where you drive on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side, and headed over to their camp. It’s hard to describe the kind of welcome we received. Mind you, our group of foreigners-living-in-China were staying in the resort area of Phuket, but there are definitely places that you can drive to from there where few foreigners have been before, and this had to be one of them from the looks on these peoples’ faces. We were giggled and laughed at a lot by the children (mostly in a good way, we think), with some younger ones hiding behind their mother’s/big sister’s legs. I had my digital camera out, and the children got so excited seeing themselves in the display after I took some shots. They began to pose and then gather in huge groups, drawing a crowd of others from around the camp. No one seemed to want to be left out.
The next morning, we started off the day with a longer-than-usual group devotional time. Then we went to the local version of Wal-Mart and bought up all the little plastic toys they had. On the long drive out to their village, we tried to learn the Thai version of some oldies-but-goodies Sunday school songs to share with the kids. When we finally drove up (we were running late, but on “Thai time”, that’s not such a big deal), they were all standing there waiting on us. More people than were there the day before. A lot more. Some kid shouted out that we had arrived, and then more people came out. They must’ve called the other nearby huts beforehand to join them in hanging with the foreigners. They just kept on coming. Ever heard the expression, “Coming out of the woodwork”? This could be where it came from. Literally I saw a guy climb out of a tree. I think he was considered the outcast (he had a very serious facial deformity). Our team didn’t know where we were going to hold all these people in one big meeting place. It was such a sight to see the pure excitement in these people, especially in the children. I’m pretty sure that these kids don’t go to a formal government school, so this could’ve been the most amusing entertainment they’d had in a while.
Long story (made) short: Well over 50 children that afternoon (and into the evening) said that they believed in Jesus and prayed to accept Christ. A few of them had had some volunteer teachers in the past who had shared with them the same message, so this wasn’t all that new to them. The kids who had heard before were even helping teach some of the other kids by the end of the evening. Though a little less receptive, several adults in the sea gypsy village also made the same decision. Update: More adults since then have also decided that Jesus is the answer since we were there the first day. The local church has also since then planted a church there, and the sea gypsies seem to be flourishing in the truth, worshipping sea-gypsy style, if you can imagine!
Among the people that Jim and his wife met on their anniversary to Phuket in November 2004, one Thai family that he Jim wanted to check on owned a beach-side barbeque dive. Or so they used to. It was all washed away, even the down to the palms trees that provided shade for their livelihood - the sand surrounding the roots was gone, and the tall coconut trees were quickly dying. The mother, father, and their two school-aged sons were, like almost everyone else there, in serious need of getting their business (and tourists) back. Before we arrived, another group of foreigners befriended this family and personally helped them build an even better hut restaurant than before. Then along came the Thai government, who tore it all down and hauled it off because they didn’t have a permit. I’m not blaming their government; I understand the need for having those things regulated and controlled, but this seemed a little too swift-and-severe after such a devastating blow had just hit their people.
Before the whole team went to visit them, Jim and Bo walked over just to make sure they were even still there. When they came back, they warned us about what shock the wife was in. Jim said that she was just off in a daze the whole time, a very marked contrast to the sprightly little woman who’d served up some fine fixin’s for them months earlier. When the whole team arrived, we saw that they’d set up some lounge chairs that they’d found washed up, put up a stringy tarpaulin over a large ice-chest, and had a sign set up that basically said, “Take what you want, pay what you will”.
On the first visit, we saw that they were in need of some clothes. We knew just where to get some for them. In our hotel we met a couple from somewhere in middle America – the husband a pilot for United and the wife who’d just recovered from breast cancer – who had just flown over and brought some hand-me-downs collected from their neighborhood. On our next trip, this American couple came with us and brought their bagsful of stuff. The little woman’s face was just starting to light up towards the end of our time with them. When we left, she was smiling and hugging us and telling us to come back again soon. Walking away, we actually prayed (among other things) that God would bring the life back to those trees for that family.
Bo brought his guitar on our second visit. He walked up to the hut singing Paul Simon, which attracted the younger beach bums and European retirees lounging there. It was a Sunday, and we had just come from church and still hadn’t changed clothes yet. Our clothing puzzled some of the foreigners there, which opened us up to share with them why we were in Thailand at all. More than I expected were open to listening, and some wanted to sit around the circle and try to sing along with us. I met a German lady, Claudia, in her mid-60s who had been there since the tsunami. She was still visibly upset and was crying and crying to me telling me about the morning that the waves came in. She and her husband, since retiring, have lived half the year in Phuket and half the year back in Germany. Their condo is on a low cliff right above the barbeque restaurant. Every morning, she and her husband usually are the first ones on the beach. They try to go for a swim before the crowds start coming out around 11a.m. December 26th, however, she slept in. Her husband had gotten up early, but had not gone to the beach – he just went around the corner to read the morning paper. After arousing after 10 or so, she could see that something wasn’t right – only because of the overhead view she had from their oceanfront condo. Then when the water started to gradually draw back, she went out on her balcony and stayed to watch. When it all came tumbling back in and then right back out, she could see from above a little girl in the water that was looking right at her, calling for her to help. Claudia was helpless as she saw the girl’s head bobble up and down, grasping from breath, calling out to Claudia, and reaching out her arm for help each time her head was above the surface. Eventually Claudia saw the little Thai girl give up her last breath and be swept out into the Indian Ocean.
Claudia kept thanking us for coming and telling us that our eyes were so beautiful. She had a few other interesting stories about the tsunami – like about her Swedish friend’s husband who was told that his wife was seen in the undertow and was actually happy because then he couldn’t be found out about on his affair with a local girl, only to see his wife walk in the room alive three days later and catch them together. I got to meet this lady, Lizzy, and she was a wreck. What could I offer these people? It’s sometimes incredibly frustrating to not be able to speak every language in the world at my own command, and then sometimes it makes it so much simpler just to smile, hug, look into their eyes, listen, and watch hand and body gestures. Sometimes so much more is communicated when languages differ, especially in times of crisis.
But for children, I think that may be a different story. When our team went to visit a temporary school complex where many of the children had lost a mother or a father or a sibling or all of them, they all seemed so joyful. Really, they did. That day we teamed up with the Marriot and brought huge barrels of ice cream to the school. We served the world-wide favorite snack to the youngsters during their afternoon break. The team made three visits to this same school throughout the week. Upon the first visit, most of the children were wearing hilarious clothing. All of their belongings were gone, so they were just wearing whatever they found that washed up on the side of the road. Little boys in only BigNTall button-up shirts down to their knees; girls in men’s overhauls (as Jerry Clower called them); junior high boys in frilly pink pants. You could tell that they thought it was a little awkward, but probably just because they were used to wearing their white buttoned-up shirt and plaid pants/skirts as their uniform. They weren’t embarrassed. Everyone was doing it. They had set up makeshift tents outside. I have one picture of a table full of boys doing their math studies and right next to the table was a washed-up ski boat. On the other side of the lot was a green little compact car that looked like it had been wrapped around a palm tree about three of four times, limbs and debris sticking out of every crevice. After our team ate some lunch that was served up by the Thai military (chicken fingers sent directly from America were cooked outside under one of the tents), we got to hang out with the children a bit. I, once again, attracted some 4th graders with my never-before-seen digital camera. Of the small crowd of about 8 or 10, a couple of the boys could speak bits and pieces of English. One of them was telling me that some of the other children in the group were not Thai. They were from Nepal and Burma. I didn’t catch all of what he was trying to tell me, but I’m pretty sure that they were not there legally (mostly escaping because of the Maoist rebels in their home country) and that they didn’t have a home. They are hoping to be grafted into the school system without being noticed.
After the school had emptied out their ice cream barrels, we re-stocked and went to another site – the DNA identification and forensic center. Heavily guarded by friendly Thai soldiers, the entire area was boarded in. On these walls were all kinds of tsunami memorabilia. Drawings, paintings, letters, flowers, flags, and signatures were sent from places around the world to let the Thai people know that others out there cared. I got to read some of the sweetest letters from an elementary school in Lubbock, Texas. It would’ve made their mommas proud [and all the other Texans out there, too, as if they need more of that ;-)]. Clothing distribution centers were set up outside, dispersing second-hand garments that were sent from who all knows where. I couldn’t resist purchasing the “I (heart) XO” vintage sorority t-shirt when I saw it in on top of the piles. What a memento to take from your possibly only trip to Thailand ever. Closer to the entrance, there was a section of booths for bulletin boards of “Missing” pictures/descriptions -- “Last seen on ____Beach…”, “Last seen wearing ____”, “Has a birthmark on____”. I could’ve stayed at that place much longer and just prayed for and empathized with the families that may have been suddenly separated by this “Act of God”, as the insurance companies refer to this as. Reading what a Dutch mom and dad wrote about their yet-to-be-found little four-year-old, white-haired baby boy makes all the numbers from this disaster very real and very personal.
On into the taped-off area, we served ice cream to workers coming out of refrigerated storing trailers, covered from head to toe in bio-hazardous materials suits and masks. They had come from all over the world. Many of them have been there for the world’s floods, earthquakes, fires, train derailings, plane crashes, mine explosions, and hurricanes in our recent history. These are the people that are there before others come and stay after others leave. I knew nothing about these people and yet I admired them in so many ways for their service to the global community.
I think, though, that the real continuation of service will come from the local people. And the Hope of Talong Church is definitely on the ball with this one --- seeking out people that would otherwise be overlooked for government aid, digging in and meeting these people’s material needs firstly, maintaining that relationship at least on a weekly basis, and then bringing them into fellowship with other believers. Our team went with this local church group to a temporary housing complex for an afternoon. The church came armed with electric fans, snacks, and the Good News of hope to bring to these very devastated people. One five square meter room – with concrete flooring and unfinished particle board walls – served as places of residence for about 100+ families. Passing by handing out some cold water, I noticed some rooms filled to the brim with kids and other family members and all their stuff and lots of noise. In some, there would just be one person, sitting alone surrounded by nothingness and silence. I was glad that a lot of the new church members were there with us, the ones from Granny’s. One of the new believers partnered with me, and she and I went into one of these single-person rooms to assemble a fan for a man. My partner spoke in Thai to him and shared with him some things (I can only guess what). His expressionless face and blank-staring eyes were hauntingly like the lady’s from the barbeque beach hut. I’m pretty sure that he’d lost everything. Wife, young children, house.
The next group of about seven people that we talked to was in a pretty similar situation. This time, though, Jim and Bo and one of the local church pastors were on hand. Frank and I just got to stand there and marvel at their openness (both toward talking to us about their experiences and losses, and toward listening to what the young preacher was sharing). We were standing right outside one of the buildings, and the whole time, we heard someone weeping and moaning. We just assumed that it was the old man sitting off to the side on the edge of the plank with his head hung down. But as we were walking away, Jim saw that it was actually an old lady sitting in the corner inside the house.
I thought a bit about this lady afterwards, whom I couldn’t even look at, just had listened to her crying. She got me wondering about the grieving process of different people / people groups all over the world. With the international church that we go to in Beijing, one of the things I think I’ve learned is that God is definitely not confined to my North American ideas of how He works and moves in people’s lives. After hearing testimonies of people from Ukraine to Liberia to Iran, I see that God can use the cultural and individual setting in which we’re in to speak to us and call us to Himself. The Africans, for example, will say that He speaks in vivid dreams to them, while I doubt that the average American church-goer could say that. Generally, the Africans seem to be more visual and expressive than some other cultures. In tragedies, they do not grieve quietly. Most often there is loud and completely unrestrained wailing. After knowing this about our African friends in Beijing and from stories told from our pastor here who used to live in Malawi, Africa, and then seeing this elderly Thai lady, it made me wonder about my own American cultural requirement to try to maintain composure when tragedies happen. When I hear others tell people to, “Be strong” after, say, their spouse dies, I don’t understand what that means. Does it mean to “be strong” in the Lord and lean on Him, or does it mean to subdue our real emotions and try to keep on going in our daily lives? Maybe a mixture of both. Hebrew culture in the Bible is not lacking in expressions of deep emotions, both high and low, inside the temple and outside the temple. On a few occasions, from outside our little Beijing apartment window, we’ve heard deep wailing cries from some mysterious man in another apartment. Even though Chinese people seem to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Africans in terms of expressing deep emotions publicly, there are exceptions, as with any group of people.
Our last day of service was spent repairing a temporary schoolhouse in a very predominantly Muslim district. Directly across the street from our worksite stood a mosque complete with a minaret, and all around the neighborhood atop telephone and light poles were megaphones bellowing out static-y incantations of prayers at certain periods throughout the day. I painted shutters inside the schoolhouse with the other women while Frank lay concrete flooring outside for a playground area with the men. Our ‘China team’ was all there along with several community volunteers and some teachers from the school. After we broke for lunch, Bo asked me if I would be willing to talk with some of the volunteers there about the Good News while he translated. I was hesitant at first, not at all because I wasn’t interested, but only out of my own ‘fear of man’. I knew, though, that it was a challenge that I needed to arise to, I just had to let the Spirit speak through me with His words, not my own. I returned to the room that I had been painting before lunchtime where I had been chit-chatting with three teachers who were re-organizing their filing cabinets and trying to repair water-damaged class pictures (pointing out to me which students were sadly not going to be returning). As we were standing around preparing to get back to work, I just started asking them a few questions – where do they think the beauty of such a paradise comes from?, what do they believe happened to their young students who had their lives taken away? This obviously opened up the conversation to more serious talk, and two of the teachers were keenly listening. I very basically but thoroughly tried to explain to them who Jesus was (not knowing their background at all – whether they practiced Islam or Buddhism or what) and why Jesus came. I asked them if they were willing to allow this Jesus to completely rule their life, and all of them instantly nodded their heads. To my North American mindset, I was a little surprised in some ways. I doubted, “How could someone just give their life to God in fifteen minutes after hearing some girl they don’t even know talk about it?”, “Are they serious about such a commitment, or are they just trying to appease me?” I am not completely to the point where I understand all of the theological points to all of my related questions, nor am I sure if we humans are even supposed to. But I do trust that God is in control of their souls above all.
Right after that, one of the teachers grabbed me by the arm and took me over to her motor-scooter (as my dad calls them), asking me to go for a ride. I hopped on. We winded up and around hills, passing eagles and monkeys along the way. We arrived at a little hut community and parked at one of them. I hopped off and followed her down to where her four-month-old baby boy was hanging from an all-cloth Thai-style baby holder (for lack of a better description). Her sister-in-law and niece, who live with the teacher and her husband, were watching the baby for her. They asked me if I wanted some oranges and then pointed to an orange tree and a ladder in the backyard. They laughed the whole time I struggled to keep my balance while tugging them loose from their branches. The teacher took me on a tour all over their home, pointing out the line of mud all around the walls where the water had risen so high. It was at least up to my chest. The bottom floor was bare; everything had washed away. They didn’t even have kitchenware to cook. She took me upstairs to their bedroom and showed me wedding pictures and baby pictures. From the looks of her at special events and upon seeing other veiled women in their family, it seems that she was Muslim. I wondered what her husband was going to think, how she was going to tell him… Earlier in the day I had complimented her on her hot pink pants. Little did I know that in Thai culture people are willing to just give it to you on the spot. Most all of her clothes were washed away, too, but did that stop her from giving me those pants AND a tropical wrap skirt? I couldn’t refuse them; that would be rude. Every time I wear them, I think of that sweet lady and pray that she will continue to seek the one true Lord.
Update: The team returned to the school the next week. After telling Jim that this teacher had no clothes and with some leftover clothes donations from the American pilot and his wife, Jim went back to give this lady the rest of them. When Jim opened the van door, the first thing the teacher saw in there was a baby stroller. She giddily said (in Thai), “Is this for me?” No, it actually wasn’t bought with her in mind, but for one of the sea gypsy villagers whose baby boy had a severe case of cerebral palsy and had to be carried in his mother’s arms everywhere. But Jim certainly could get another one. The teacher apparently was far more thrilled about the baby stroller than her new clothes.
On our way out of the country on our long layover in the Bangkok airport, Frank and I passed by a large group of Chinese people. About 60+ in all, the men were all wearing Muslim head coverings and the women were all veiled. Of course, I couldn’t help but stop and ask which part of China they were from. I asked in Mandarin if they were from the Uygur people-group in Xinjiang (the Western Territory of China on the border of Kazakhstan & Turkistan) because a lot of the people in that region are more Middle Eastern looking than typical Chinese, and most practice Islam, at least culturally (no pork, veils, etc.). They replied, “No”, but pointed to a smaller group of people who were. They were all making their once-in-a-lifetime hajj to mecca. The group of four from Xinjiang had apparently been in that same spot for 50 days. Two older couples – very old, hard to tell, but could be pushing 90. After having their passport and all other pertinent travel documents stolen in some travel agency scam, they were stuck in the airport without anyone being able to understand their little-known mountain language – until, that is, this fellow Muslim group passed them by in the airport and one of the men in the group was somewhat familiar with their language. Frank and I passed by while the large group was waiting to board their flight to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Many of the people in the large group were giving the Xinjiang couples food and money. But they needed even more money to buy a flight to get back home. Frank and I knelt down by them, tried naively to talk to them in Mandarin, but again, it seemed that a warm smile and a touch to the hand, particularly to one of the ladies, did more good than a thousand words in a mutually understandable language --- maybe just to know that someone cared, or maybe she was just ready to get home to people and places she knew, or maybe she was downtrodden after spending their life savings on a trip to mecca and couldn’t even attend after all the work. She began to cry, and then hung her head and covered up her face with her veiny, wrinkly, yellow, and dirty hands. We asked if it would be okay if we prayed over them. The other group knew we were Christians, and a few of them overlooking the scene seemed to dissent, but most just watched with curiosity. Then Frank and I decided that we could try to help them out instead of doing the usual airport layover routine of eating fast food, people watching, and browsing gift/book stores. We thought we’d just go around to various conspicuous airport-goers and explain in the world’s common language, English, the plight of these four people and point them in the direction of where to give money to them, if they were interested. This sort of task doesn’t require a lot of guts for me. I have bagged many years of experience going door-to-door selling everything from Girl Scout cookies to gift wrapping for high school band fundraisers, but for ol’ Franko, this could have been a first at going up to complete strangers and asking for money. We talked to a middle-aged French couple, a young Russian athlete (who let us go through the whole schpeel, to only at the end say, “Huh?”), and a Brit. Then we came to an African-American who works in the Bush Administration and had been on several trips to Iraq with then Sec’y of State, Colin Powell. Very stand-offish at first, he gradually warmed up to us. His disbelief about the number of days that they’d been sitting in the airport triggered us to seek a higher authority in the form of airport security. He convinced us that that’s where one is likely to make something happen instead of through random passers-by. When we returned to the group, a Thai-Chinese airport worker was ushering the group along, collecting tickets. Frank and I, along with members of the larger group, helped explain to him (since he spoke Mandarin) the other group’s situation. He seemed very competent and willing to get the ball rolling. By that time, it was time for us to board, too. We said good-bye to the elderly couples and
