loy krathong.

Loy Krathong is one of the biggest festivals in Thailand. They were shooting fireworks for a month prior to the day to prove it. This is a traditionally Buddhist celebration where they float these little rafts that are slightly bigger than a cd and made out of banana leaves out on the river. It happens on the night of the first full moon of the 12th month of the Thai lunar year. The rafts are floated to honor Buddha and also are used to represent letting go of grudges and anger. They'll usually put a piece of hair or a fingernail on the raft to represent letting go of the bad parts of oneself. The Thais we were with said that it all started to thank the Goddess of Water for all she provides. They also think it will bring them good luck for the coming year.

One of our ESL students invited Damaris and I to spend the evening with him and his friends for the festival. We didn't float the Kratongs b/c we have Jesus, but it was still wonderful to hang out with the Thais and observe this beautiful custom. This is the group photo we took when it was still light out. Our student is standing on the back row on the far left. This is a family putting their float on the river.


Damaris and I letting go of our Khom Loy!

mekong friendship festival.

Thursday night, after the big meal, Phet and I met up with Lek, a girl from church to go to the Mekong Friendship Festival. It's a celebration of all the countries that border the Mekong River, China, Burma, Laos ad Thailand. It was a big festival, complete with what appeared to be used fair rides, traditional dances and fried bugs. They had everything from different artisans from those countries to people selling fake Prada. Lek, Phet and I had a fun time, the highlight was when we played this game where you paid 10 Baht to "go fishing" and you pulled a plastic egg out of this little kiddy pool and it had a number on it and the number correlated with a prize. I pulled out 16 and got this incredibly lumpy pillow with movie stars on both sides! So lucky!!

Thai Phrase of the Day- Duan naa dichan ca pay khao lak, klay talee. Next month I will go to Khao Lak, near the ocean.
**If the letters c, k, p don't have an h behind them, they are un-aspirated, meaning you say them without really pushing any air out of your mouth. The "p" in "pay" sounds a lot like a "b" like in spaghetti.

Jesus is rad quote of the day - Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men in possible with God."

yes, there was turkey.

Many of you may be curious as to the Thanksgiving that we had here in Chiang Rai. Yes, there was turkey. A few grocery stores have them imported and one of the families here had a group of us "farang" (foreigners) over to share in the big day. Here are a few pictures of the spread. We had turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, sweet tea and a few other specialties. It was awesome and I ate my little heart out.

Afterward, we played wii, and sat around and shared laughs, just like a big family :) it was beautiful.

like a river.

so this is what ive most recently learned...about pride and all that...is that ive really had this mentality about how life is only so short - I have to do all this and this and this and fill my life with all these projects and God is like..NO..it's not about what YOU can do, it's what I can do through you and I will bring you into relationships i want you to have and more than all that, you're just MY child, Jessie, that HAS to be enough for you first before I can use you completely, b/c other wise, your whole life is going to be about what YOU can do.

its like this...instead of me trying to give out cups of water - God wants his river to flow through me.

what does that look like?

symphony.

There's this beautiful symphony of our lives being played as we live...sometimes it's fast, other times cacophonous, frequently somber and yet often harmonious and beautiful...but not a second goes by that the grand conductor will pull his hand from directing it all. Sometimes caucophonous/somber/sorrowful music isn't what the ear (or heart) longs for...but rest assured, the sweet melodious chorus of love and beauty are near.

broken heart.

I dont know if this is socially appropriate b/c I've always been a little socially akward and with the new internet age, I dont know if there is certain protocol. I'll only leave it up a short time, and my sole intent with this post is to get everyone who reads it to pray for this family.

my heart was broken this week for one of my good friends from college. She lost her 7 week old baby...I'm pasting this from an email.

Last week she (the baby) was having a problem keeping milk down but theythought it was reflux. They took her to the hospital on Wednesdayafternoon and the doctors ran bunches of tests and ruled it a "virus"that had to "run it's course." On Thursday they brought her back fora check in and she had lost 2oz. so the doctors just told Christy and Aaron to keep giving her Pedia-lite every 20 min and keep feeding her. They did this throughout the weekend and she seemed to be recovering well. However, on Sunday night at midnight, Christy noticed Emeline was disoriented and very lethargic during her feeding. They took her temp and it was right at 100 so they immediately took her to the hospital because they knew something wasn't right. She was whimperinga lot and clammy. Once they got to the Abbeville hospital she had passed away. Christy said she died in her arms. Christy and Aaron had time with her from then until 5am.

it's just been so heavy on my heart this week and wanted to share it so that you can pray for this family. If you'd just take a minute right now and just lift up this family...that'd be awesome. Rest, peace, comfort, safety and healing are suggestions.

burma border hopping.

With the type of Visa I have (passport, not credit card) I have to leave the country every 90 days and get a stamp. The closest place to cross the border is a little town called Tachilek in Burma (Myanmar). Yeah, there's a lot of bad happening there right now. Here's a few questions that arose in my mind as we were travelling, and may shed some light...
1. What's the difference between Burma and Myanmar? Myanmar is the new name given to Burma when the militaristic regime took over.
2. What's up with Burma now? Seems to have quieted down since the initial protests... read about it here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071111/ap_on_re_as/myanmar
It's a super-oppressive country, and people try to escape to Thailand. This picture with the barbed wire is the border. The side closest is Burma and the other side it Thailand. There's a river in the middle you can't see from this angle.
3. Why are these policemen boarding the bus? When you ride the bus to Chiang Rai, or anywhere really, police board every trip and check everyone's citizenship card to make sure there aren't any illegal immigrants. Really by everyone, I mean anyone that looks Asian. We don't really get asked for ours.
4. Is going to Burma safe? Oh yeah, the little town we went to has a large market and we just stayed there and shopped for a bit. The most dangerous thing we encountered were the boxes of Marlboros being shoved in our faces...no less than 50 times. Also, evidently I had "lucky money" and they wanted me to spend it. haha. If you were going to travel through the country (which you could...and go to China), Burmese officials would accompany you, and make sure you spend the night in hotels, and not in homes with residents.
4. Are they going to keep my passport? So when you walk through the border, no lie, they ask you to step into this little room, behind this curtain. They take your picture, 500 baht ($15) and hold your passport until you come back through. They give you this "entry permit" that's good for 2 weeks, and you just turn it back in when you leave.
I hope you learned a little...I did. As we sit here on our computers, safe and peaceful, I implore you to do 2 things...Thank God you live in a democracy and PRAY FOR BURMA!!! We have no idea how blessed we really are.

Passaa Thai Phrase of the Day: Khun pay nay Burma phrungnii may kha? You will go to Burma tomorrow?

Jesus is rad quote of the day: By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. John 13:35

new rice festival = thanksgiving.

A couple Saturdays ago, October 27, we went to a "new rice" festival in a Akha hill tribe village. It was the same village that we visited about a month before. It's time to harvest rice, and for Christian villages like this one, time to thank God for the rice. The girls and some of the women dressed up in their traditional hilltribe attire and sang and danced. This is them hanging out after the dancing.It was very similar to a church service...except longer. A lot of people spoke, we sang Akha hymns and it was held in the church. Afterward, they went and had a big feast. They had chunks of what i thought was bananas and turned out to be pig fat, and pork, bowls of very oily substances and new fresh rice in a banana leaf. You just scoop the food on your rice, then eat with your hands. I love it. This is the Thanksgiving table we sat around.


How rad is it that God gave me a desire to eat rice with my hands over a year ago?

God writes the bEsT love stories.

That's the quote of my other roommate, Damaris after the story we heard tonight. Our neighbor, Vita, came over to tell us about her trip to Laos. Vita is from Lithuania, 29, beautiful, has been in Thailand 3 months and works with refugees. Well, did work. Her job ended a few days before she left on her trip. She went for about a month, started in the north and headed south to see Laos.
Well...as it turns out...she had a companion on the trip. He's from California, but is a pastor of a church in Albania. An American (no doubt) thinking that Lithuania is close to Albania, tried to set them up. Well, after emailing for about 3.5 months, he decided to come "see Laos". Right. They trekked all over, small villages, big cities, tree top houses, temples, jungle, rice fields, muddy mountains, and cavernous rivers. Well, it may have been the way the Laos light shined in her hair, but 2 weeks into the trip, they were dating and a week later...they were engaged. It's so sweet, they bought dollar jade rings at a market and exchanged them at a meat cutter's stall.
She says is amazing how God guided everything and how there's nothing really about him she has to settle on. Good love story, eh? ;)

it's like we live in Helsinki.

That was the comment my Thai roommate, Phet, said jokingly as we walked to a neighbor's house last night. The temperature may have dropped a degree or 2 below 70, but I think I'm acclimated now, so it's hard to say. It was a cold front though, and it's raining today. She just looked at me like I'm crazy for telling her to "bundle up" before going to the market. Of course, I had to explain what "bundling up" means, but THEN she looked at me like I'm crazy. Of course she was going to. The kids playing outside yesterday had on "toboggans" or whatever you call those stocking hats.
side note: My brother got made fun of in Canada for calling his hat a toboggan, and I just looked it up on dictionary.com and all 6 definitions said it was a sled. I wonder how southerners got the 2 mixed up.
Anyhow, I thought one of my students was a little crazy the other day for saying that his father had built a fire in their fireplace. I wondered why he had built the fire and why they even had a fireplace. Makes sense though. Our house is very nice, but has no heat or air. If you want to be cooler, turn on your fan, if you want to be warmer, build a fire.

Jesus is cool quote of the day: Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven - for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little. Luke 7:47

Thai phrase of the day: Sapparot tawray kha? How much is the pineapple?