Church & Birthday

Sunday was a very relaxed day.  We started off with coffee and Pa Thong Ko, Thai version of the American donut, at the Mae Sai morning market.

After a shower at home we dressed for church at Rev. Sunit's Church.  Today is also his birthday and his wife's is tomorrow. 

It was a nice service with a type of election for the person to take care of the money matters as well as care of the church, I think.  I still only understand a small amount of the Thai language.

At the end of the service, after wishing the birthday pair much happiness, the congregation voted for one of the four nominated.  Peter, our friend in the stripped shirt won by a land slide.  I did not vote but I think that was a good choice as he runs a large, established, furniture store here in Mae Sai.

After the service we all eat together and I sang "Happy Birthday" to the birthday folks.  Everyone laughed at me, which was a good thing.

Daeng's sister-in-law, Hlong did a lot of the cooling so the noodle soap dish was very tasty. 

It was also great to to see Pastor Lota.  He is looking good and doing well.  He has been spending his time at ChildLife and the new church school in Burma.  You can read a story about visiting that church by CLICKING HERE.

In the afternoon, I took a nap and Daeng went to the Temple Sauna.

Life is good!

Sunday is for Church?

Although I don't consider myself religious I have been known to go to church once in a while.

We got up and did our morning walk, came back to room, showered and dressed. We then hopped on the old motorbike to go see Pastor Lota's service at the little church run by Rev. Sunit.

We arrived late but I've been told that you are never late if you get there before the collection is made.

I don't know why but Thai parents always want me to hold their kids. I feel like a politician. Usually I scar the kids and they start crying. That may be because I'm almost twice the size of the average Thai person and look pretty scary with all my hair.

It was nice to see Pastor Lota speaking in Thai and then being translated to Akha for some of the member of the congregation.

After church Daeng's family rode over to the new restaurant around the corner. We had driven by the other day and saw it advertised on cable TV, too.

The name of the restaurant is "Coconut Restaurant". I think they picked the name because they have coconut ice cream. Sorry to say the food was terrible and the service was every worse.

The coconut ice cream was average if compared to the ice cream carts that sell ice cream on the road stands.

We had to try it once. The building was fixed nice and will probably be up for sale in a few months.

As we returned to our room we stopped to take a picture of the renovations at the place next door to our hotel called "Monkey Island".

Sunday at CHILDLIFE

It's Sunday morning. We showered and dressed for the motorbike ride to CHILDLIFE, also know as Ban Nana, to see Pastor Lota and the kids for Sunday Church Service.

The trip is only about 20 minutes from where we are staying so we arrived just in time to have breakfast with the kids. Rice and a glass noodle soup was the fair for the morning.

I added a little to much chili pepper to my soup so Pastor Lota had to give me some water.

The kids all love Pastor Lota as he gets right down with them and does extremely well with the older children. He makes learning and worshiping fun. I feel he understand the philosophy of If they don't have fun they won't stick around very long.

Singing and being together was very enlightening.

Guljohn Jeamrum, the founder of CHILDLIFE, announced his marriage will be on November 14th and invited all to attend. CHILDLIFE was founded ten years ago.

We are always happy to be with the kids. To learn more about CHILDLIFE just CLICK HERE.

To watch a video about the CHILDLIFE cause CLICK HERE.

We are going to try and make the trip up into the mountain to Ban AYO this coming week to visit the new children's shelter. We talked to Chom-nom on the telephone as he was with his wife in Chiang Mai having a baby.

The baby is a little girl and Mother and baby are doing well. I don't know how Chom-nom is doing but he sounded very excited on the telephone.