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.

Monday, March 10, 2008

A Few Random Things

They past week has been another fun filled but busy week.

A couple saturday's ago, i went out for dinner at Muu-ga-tar with my teacher, a few other teachers from school, one of the other students and a few other ring ins that i have no idea how they fit into the picture. All up, it was a really random bunch of people, but a great night out of laughs, waaaay too much food, a few more misunderstandings i think on my half due to lack of language - i'm not sure if now one of the teachers is now my 'girlfriend' :) haha All good fun. Here's a picture of me with Khruu Jai and Khruu Kwan (my teacher).


I've also just started sitting in on the training of Sunday School teachers at church. Just this year, Denise has been meet together with a group of people from church who are keen to be trained up to teach Sunday School which is really exciting. It seems no matter which country you're in, finding sunday school teachers (kids church teachers) is always a struggle. Here, there are people who are keen, but it's just that they are too scared to do it cos they have no idea what to do or how to do it. So it's been exciting to be able to see 7 of them really keen to be trained up and get involved with teaching the young ones while learning how to read and teach the Bible for themselves at the same time. We're currently going through the book of Mark in Sunday School teaching the kids about Jesus. Seems simple eh? but it's also a new concept to many of them here, so it's exciting to see the way that God is working in their lives I'm sure there'll be heaps more updates on this in the near future. For me so far, apart from being another opportunity to spend time with Thai's and build relationships, it's also a great way to build on my 'bible' language, so that's been awesome. Here's a few of the team teaching the kids a couple weeks back.


I also got to go to my first Buddhist funeral last Sunday too. I was 'inviited' along by my teacher. Kinda weird i know, but i thought it was a great opportunity to go and see what happens. Even though i couldn't understand hardly anything, it was really interesting to go. One of the things that struck me, was that even though it was a funeral, the 'message' from the 'head monk' was all about how we all should be living in order to live a good, fulfilling life. But didn't seem to say a huge amount about the person who had passed away. The other interesting thing - given my lack of language, i was just hanging off any word i could understand. Funnily enough, i kept on hearing 'Pra Jaw' quite ofen (which means God). It's the same word that Christians over here use for God too. So part way through the message, i almost found myself wondering if someone were to play me an exert out of a 'Buddhist' message and a 'Christian' message, would i be able to pick the difference given my current understanding of Thai? my guess is not!

Here are some of the monks at the funeral

But it's not all been bad (i'm beginning to wonder what the story is with so many in hospital or dying around here at the moment), on saturday, we went out on a tiaw (like a day trip) to the strawberry fields to pick lots and lots and LOTS of strawberries. All up, we picked 21 1/2 kg of strawberries!!! But at 30bht (about $1) a kg, it really was a pretty cheap pick! the plan is to eat them all somehow - for starters Oum's wedding cake is supposedly going to be a strawberry cake, and cos they've never tried to make one before, i think many of them will go towards trial cakes! :) haha. It was a great day out though as we got to go out with a couple friends from Oz who are over here visiting and a thai family that John & Denise know and spend time with them for the day. So that was good to be able to build relationships with them. Plus it meant we got to eat an awesome choc fondue that night! YUM!!!

For those who are praying:
- pray for continued relationship building with Thai's
- pray for the sunday school teachers who are getting trained up. Thank God for their willingness to serve and learn, pray that they will continue to be challenged by the bible as they prepare the lessons each week, pray for the kids as they learn, that they will learn great truths about God