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.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Trip to Pai

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to head up to a Lisu village just out of Pai, about 3hrs drive from Chiang Mai. Whilst it was a fun weekend to get away with friends, it was also an opportunity to check out some other ministries happening around the area as well as check out possible hill tribe villages that we can take a short term team to at the end of this year. It was a great eye opener to see other ministries happening over here, the needs in those villages, and to see just how remote some of the villages we went to were. To get to 2 of the villages, we had to take 4WD's, otherwise there was no chance that we'd get there. It was the highest hilltribe village that I think I have ever been to! Whilst it was exciting to see that there were churches there, there are still lots of needs there. There is a real lack of pastors who are willing to work in the villages, and who can speak their tribal dialect. There are also very few men who go to the churches, most are women with young children. We got to help run a one off sunday school program for the kids the day we were there, however even we soon discovered the limitations of not having their language and very few of them being able to speak Thai.

In any case, we had a great weekend away with friends. We all got to sleep in the church hall (the boys decided to sleep in the tent outside), go swimming in a hot spring, smoke dry my jeans over the camp fire, have a weekend of great fun and fellowship with friends.

Here are a few pics


with Pi Fon

John & A. Narin

The hot spring we swam in

keeping warm (and smoky) around the fire
roasting sweet potatoes over the fire

teaching SS
the church building
Lisu people waiting for church to start
Amazing views on our way to the 2nd & 3rd villages