Welcome to PlaaPlaaPlaa!

So you may be wondering why PlaaPlaaPlaa? What are those strange fish symbols above? What is ปลา and what does it mean? In short, this is a blog site, so surely there's going to be plenty of rambling. Unfortunately BlahBlahBlah was already taken, so I had to settle for the 'Plaa'. But there's actually more to it then just ramblings. The first fish symbol is actually a Christian symbol meaning ICTHUS - a greek acronymn which means "Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour". The other strange letters you see in the last fish is actually the thai word for fish which funnily enough is pronounced "Plaa". So when you put it all together, this site is going to be my ramblings in telling people about how Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour in Thailand (with plenty of good stories about food in between). Happy reading.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Suebsiri Church

Suebsiri Church is one of the churches that the team got to work with in our time here at Korat. It's a 'small' church (by aussie standards) which has a bunch of great brothers and sisters in Christ who have a huge love for God and willingness to want others to come to be a part of God's family. The SEA (South East Asian) Game played here in Korat last week i think turned what seemed to be an initial disaster in teaching in schools into a real blessing, as it allowed us to spend heaps of time with some of the keen youth group kids like Peace, Proud, Shem and Bang who were able to come along and join us as we taught english camps. It meant that we could really get to build some great relationships with the church people. One of the major highlights was going caroling with the church last friday night - who knew you could go singing in the street in front of someones house (and all the neighbours for that matter) at 12.30am! it was a real blast (apart from having to sing Jingle Bells for the 50millionth time).

But one of the big highlights for me in the past few days was being able to help Suebsiri church make a video (which they don't yet know about) which they will use next sunday for their Christmas service to help the church introduce the idea of Christmas and the greatest gift that any of us could ever receive. They've NEVER had any multimedia done for them before, so it was kinda interesting trying to work out what to do and how to do it, not to mention what the response will be to it. Plus having to try and edit in Thai and make the cuts was rather amusing, even with Tong's help. But i think it worked well all up given our major time constraints and lack of direction. It's been really cool having the chance to work a bit with Tong and to hear the vision he has for reaching non christian youth in Korat. It's such an encouragement to see how hard he does work in wanting to serve God and the way he wants to be relevant and engaging with those he has such a heart and passion for. This video was actually his idea after he caught a glimpse of the team video i edited up last weekend. I know you're not going to understand any of this (apart from 1 aussie guy's comments), but i wanted to share with you some stuff that i hope will be helpful to the church. (Tong is the 1st guy you'll see in the video).

PS - i was majorly excited to discover that i could incorporate Thai fonts into Live Type! Very COOL!!

For those praying:
- pray for Suebsiri Church, that the christians there will grown in their love and knowledge of God and for their outreach and eagerness for so many others to also know God
- pray for Tong as he leads the youth and that he will continue to love and serve God in all he does
- pray for the youth group kids, that they will build a firm foundation on Christ and grown in their love and knowledge of God