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, January 5, 2009

Bethany House Christmas Party

So now that i've got a few minutes, i thought i'd post up a few quick pics and blog on how the Bethany House Christmas party went on the 26th. For those who don't know the background, for the past couple years, my church has sent over a short term mission team which spent some time at the Orphanage. Last year, unfortunately there was no team that came, but the church was really generous in wanting to support the orphanage still, so sent some money over for the kids. There are plenty of things that the kids need, but one idea we had for the kids was to use some of the funds to host a christmas party for them since the foundation that runs the orphanage has been short of funds in the past year, so has had to cancel all 'non essentials' which included a christmas party for the kids. So even though there was no 'big' team that came last christmas, i though i'd rally up whoever i could to be the pseudo team from Oz. So it ended up being me, denise and my friend Kim, who went up to run the night, along with my folks and my niece and nephews.

So on the night, we played a few games with them - poison ball and another game that we call 'Bzz' - i won't even begin to try and explain that one.

kids playing 'bzz'
Ratree was awesome in organising a special dinner for the kids.

Originally what was going to be pizza, ended up being a buffet of ham, duck, pork along with prawns, stir fried veggies and a couple other thai dishes. Then afterwards, i thought we could try and do something with a bit of an 'Aussie' flavour for the kids, but that also had some meaning to it. Over here, when they do carolling at christmas, they do it american style (well it's kinda what i've seen on the movies, so i assume it's more american) where you go from house to house, sing a few songs, pray for the people there and get fed before moving on to the next house to do it all again. This can go on til like 5am!! (thankfully our church's finished at 1am this year!). So i thought i'd introduce them to carolling Oz style where we all come together, hear the story of christmas and sing LOTS of carols together (rather then 2-3 at each house).




By doing it this way, i was hoping help the kids understand the meaning of lots of christmas carols more as they sing the context of the songs within the story of Christmas. So it was awesome to have Kim come along and tell the story of christmas, while i played the guitar for it, and denise ran the powepoint stuff. Originally, we were going to do it all outside, but it decided to rain (unseasonally) that day, so we ended up inside - which i think in hindsight was a blessing in disguise, because when they sang, it was really loud and sounded awesome and was really encouraging!!

I also was up the night before to make up a video for them of them singing at the hotel (check out the Le Meridien post if you want to see the video). So they were really excited to be able to see themselves on the big screen, then see some photos of them at the hotel.

At the end of the night, we handed out some gift bags for each of the kids which consisted of some snacks and some money which the kids could use to buy something they wanted.



Some of the kids have been shopping already and were really excited to be able to go buy some stuff they wanted. For each of the house parents i gave them a copy of the email from DPC and other friends who have visited the orphanage in the past (with translation of course), a print out of some christmas cards
that the kids from DPC did for them, and a dvd of the video i did up for them and photos from their carolling at Le Meridien.

Overall, i think it was a really great night, which was lots of fun, encouraging and helped everyone to remember what Christmas is really about. Here are a few extra pics of the night. Since we were down on numbers running the night, mum ended up being photographer :)