Caroling in Thailand

So what's Christmas like in Thailand? Well, we will be posting a couple of times about all we did and saw during Christmas this year. I wanted to take the first chance to tell you all about a really neat opportunity we had before Christmas. One of my classes had an assignment to do a number of things in celebration of Christmas, one of which was to go caroling. So they loaded up a sleigh (cart) with gifts and somebody dressed like "Santa", and we embarked on our quest. We walked all around the campus at Surin Rajabhat knocking on the doors of the faculty and singing them a couple of Christmas carols. Oh, and there were somewhere around 75-100 students doing this! Yikes, quite a group. Usually you go caroling with maybe 5-10 people... not here! It was a wonderful time though. I brought along my guitar and we sang song after song until our voices were petering out! We walked around and by barking dogs, packs of dogs, and dogs on patrol.



We went for quite awhile, until everybody was exhausted! But it was a great opportunity to see these kids singing the praise of Christ's coming to earth. Now, granted. Many of them sang without really understanding all of significance behind the virgin birth or the coming of the Messiah, but they certainly understood something. Jim and Kathi were able to be there as well, which was wonderful. So we all had a part in building yet more bridges to these college students. I thank the Lord that He has put us where we are, and look forward very much to what He will do in the future! Thank you all for praying so much, God is at work all over the world!

Tribute to a Great Man

Well, it's been awhile since the last post. December has been an extremely busy month! Within the first two weeks in December, we took a week's leave to go back to the US for my Grandfather's funeral. It was quite an event. I've never been so proud to be related to somebody like this. My Grandfather's body was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery on December 10. It was a great trip home seeing family and friends and telling everybody we could about all that God is doing in Thailand. But the real reason for making such a long long long (did I mention the flight was long?) journey was for my Grandfather. He passed away in September, but because of being buried in Arlington, there was a wait for the service there.

My Grandfather was given so many honors. For starters, they took his casket from the hearse and laid it onto a caisson (horse drawn carriage), pulled by a team of horses. Following behind the caisson was a riderless horse with a pair of boots turned backwards in the stirrups. As they were preparing the procession, a military band played "Amazing Grace". Finally, the procession began, and family and friends walked behind the caisson and the horse. Fittingly enough, the horse that walked behind the casket was a rather spirited horse, who bucked and kicked enough that my mother said, "He would have wanted this kind of horse...". We followed the procession through the mazes of memories of heroes gone by, until we came to my Grandfather's plot. There, the soldiers carried his coffin to the burial site, where a short graveside service was held. They folded up the flag and fired off a twenty-one gun salute. Taps was played, a lonely and somber tune against the stillness of that cold and gray December day in Virginia. Oddly enough, the whole time we were in Maryland, it was basically gray and cloudy. But that day, God saw fit to give us some sun peaking out, just for the ceremony.

It is an honor to follow in the footsteps of this great man. I have many precious and dear memories of sailing the Chesapeake with him, eating at Riverdales, getting yelled at for having my hat backwards, picking at crabs, drinking root bear, eating basically raw meat, talking about the civil war... I really could go on and on. Standing there on that cold day I thought, what will my life amount to when it is my time? What will my life have accomplished when people are standing around my grave? In this I find great hope, it is not for me to determine that. God asks me to follow Him each day, and as I obey and seek His will, He will give me a life of purpose and meaning, found in Him!

Inside the Mind of a Thai Student...

In case any of you are interested and want to see some of what my Thai students are up to, I started another blog to post some of their work online. The purpose for this was to encourage them to do their best. See, each week we have a bit of a contest in my Creative Writing class. Whoever writes the most creative assignment gets it posted on the blog as the winner. They seem to really like the idea. Either way, it also is interesting to see their perspective on things, so check it out if you feel like it!

http://srucreative.blogspot.com

Keeping You Up to Speed

Well, it's been a little while since the last post. Let's see, that was elephant roundup, eh? Well, much has been happening since then. Our cat is putting on a little more weight, that's good. I'm always afraid I'll step on him and put him in intensive care or something. We've had some opportunities come up with my 3rd year English Majors at SRU. Apparently, they are supposed to put on a Christmas program at SRU, and asked myself and Leah if we would help them with the songs. So we agreed, I will be playing the piano, and Leah helped them learn parts for five out of the nine songs we are performing. They caught on really fast, even with the parts. Most of the group are girls, but there is one guy who has braved the rigors of all this choral stuff! We are praying we can be an influence for Christ with them. The one girl in the class, May, is the one heading this up. Which makes sense, because she goes to Surin Baptist. So basically, we were able to introduce a whole class of college kids to the church every day this week, as we practiced in the evenings. Later in December, we will help them with their performance at SRU, and then go out caroling with them. (They go around to faculty houses and sing the carols, so they wanted me to accompany with the mandolin)


In other news, our music CD is almost done. Some of you may or may not have heard about this, but we have put together a collection of recordings from the ladies here at Surin Baptist. It's a bit different. Most of them are songs from America, translated into Thai. They are some of the favorite songs of the people here. There are a couple that are purely Thai hymns or spiritual songs. However, as I was in charge of instrumentation, it is mostly Appalachian style. Well, there is one song we do with the Thai instruments, but the others are all guitar, banjo, mandolin, you get the drift. So... what do you call this new style of music? Hence, we created a term "Thaippalachia". I will post the cover we designed here. The title is "Living for Christ", which is one of the Thai songs they sing. It's a beautiful song about the new life found in Jesus Christ. Something that almost has new meaning, living in a culture that is so much Buddhist. To find a Christian usually means they have put up with some level of being ostracized, or experiencing some kind of setback for following Christ. I don't know whether we can actually sell this thing, what with copyrights and such, but we are looking into how we can get it out. Either way, it's been a lot of what we've been doing recently, and I think what we have in the end now is well worth the time and energy!

Pray for us as we are traveling back to the States for a week. My Grandfather, Colonel Brown (affectionately known as Pop-pop by the grandsons), passed away a couple months ago, and as he is being buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors and so on, the funeral itself was scheduled to take place much later. Hence, we travel now. But God has worked this out perfectly, so we are excited about the opportunity to say hello to everybody again. I will probably write again after that, I know it will be a very thought provoking ceremony. So pray as we travel. We have an 8 hour train ride to Bangkok. Then waiting for 10 hours until our plane leaves, then flying for about 20 hours until we arrive in DC. Ugh. Not the most fun in the world, but it's better than swimming!

Till next time!

Andrew