Thai Teamwork
Josh
and Paige here reporting from Thailand…yet again friends! Day 10 and what a
day! Backs are definitely hurting after this one!!!Today we worked at the youth
center to finish our project/adobe hut. First the ladies started out by getting
in a line and doing something like an assembly line with bricks down to the
adobe house/foundation. In detail that meant that we had to help uproot the
bricks from the Earth and then pass it down the line of about 10 girls. Once we
finished that we started going through each brick and in a way “sanding” them
down to the right size/shape it should be. Let me tell you friends just how environmentally
friendly we have been over here with this adobe house! First of all the bricks
are made of mud and the foundation is made of rocks, water, and cement sand
(the boys did that yesterday and did a great job!) So everything about this
house is super environmentally friendly! Once we were finished “sanding down
the bricks” the ladies (including me-Paige) started making walls with these
bricks and handmade mud made by the wonderful gentlemen. The walls that we made
were one meter tall (so in English terms like 5 layers of these 5 inch bricks…)
We were told that to make an adobe house that you have to do one meter first
and then let it set for 30 days! CRAZY! Yes 30 whole days before you can even
make the next meter. I’m happy that we could start/ be helpful with making the
first meter.
When we were building the walls the
ladies split up into two teams, I got to work with Kayla, Elizabeth, and Carolyn.
Friends please be proud of Elizabeth carrying the bricks over from the pile
when we were ready for the next brick! Carolyn received her nickname which was
Nikcone (meaning mud) because she carried/filled our mud buckets back and forth
from cement that the boys made. Kayla was a blessing to us with her wonderful
stories and encouragement. They were a great group of wonderful ladies I was
blessed to work with.
Hey this is Josh now!! So while the
ladies were doing their thing us men had to finish mixing the cement for the
foundation. It went a lot quicker today
than yesterday due to the fact that we actually knew what we were doing this
time! (I may not have but the other guys did at least!) Once we got all the cement poured into the
trench that we dug yesterday we moved on and started cutting clay out of the
side of a hill and smashing that clay into little tiny pieces that we then
proceeded to turn into mud for the adobe hut.
It was extremely hard work, involving a lot of upper body strength. I myself have none of this strength, but
these guys Scotty, David, Kyle and Ben have tons of it. They were carving through that rock like it
was butter. Ok maybe a slight
exaggeration but you get the point.
After many prayers for strength, and many broken tools (We broke all of them!)
we finally finished. Even though the
work was hard, seeing the end result of that one meter high wall was incredibly
cool. Just yesterday it was a flat piece
of ground! It was bitter sweet though
looking at it because it meant that for the majority of us the project was
done. We would not be setting foot at
the youth center again. There truly
could not have been a better place to work, the sky was blue, the sun was
shining, the cows were playing in the field next to us, you could see the
mountains in the distance. Best of all
was the company of each other. I cannot
speak for the rest of the team, although I think they would agree with me, but
this is truly what I think God intended.
Being outside enjoying his wonderful creation, enjoying each other and
working to help each other. Even though
it was hard and my back is now gone I would not trade in this day, even this
week of work with these people for the world.
Handing it off to Paige. Once we
finished our day at the youth center we went back to the hotel and cleaned up
for dinner. For dinner we had the normal, chicken, rice, pork, noodles. Anything
Thai you can think of we had it and of course the wonderful sticky rice with
mango! Yum! After dinner we broke up into groups and went through the Night
Market. I love the Night Market it is like a place where you can shop and buy
pretty much whatever, but you get to barging with the people. I think the US
should really consider this method…because I love it that much! My group of
shopping buddies consist of Meghan, Scotty, Kayla, Elizabeth (who is awesome at
bargaining) and Carolyn. A great group of people and fun if I may add. We
brought some souvenirs and returned back to the vans to load up and return to
the great place that is home for the moment at the YMCA in Chaing Mai.
Back to Josh, while Paige was off
doing her thing I went to the tailors with Mr. and Mrs. Karkan. This tailor named Daniel was a very unique
man. On his business card was the verse
John 14:6, “Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life.” In a country where the Christian population
was .7% here was this man of faith in a tailor shop. I wanted to get to know this man better so I
asked him if it was hard being a Christian here. His reply astounded me, “No it is the easiest
thing in the world, sure the people here do not accept me as much as they would
if I was Buddhist but I have Jesus and that is all I need.” He then showed me a stack of Bibles he keeps
in the shop and one of them was a Bible that was half in English and half in
Tai. I could see Christ in this man, he
treats his customers with the utmost care beyond anything I’ve ever seen
before. I had never met this man in my
life and he talked to me with the love given to a family member.
It reminded me that because of Christ’s love of us we are all one
family, we are all one. Daniel is part
of our family, the family of believers that includes all reading this. Just the thought of that is incredible. I may never meet the majority of you who are
reading this but you are my family because of Jesus. I don’t know about you but that definitely blows
my mind. He is truly the God of love,
peace and harmony. The more I learn
about him the more I love him, as I hope you do.
We had devos lead by Elizabeth and then
talked about what we have learned so far on this trip. A lot of people have
learned (including us) how great this culture is and how great God has been to
us in our lives as well.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, it
is midnight and we were not able to get them up. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and
prayers. We truly have needed every
prayer we could get! We cannot wait to
get back home and tell you about all of the rest of our experiences, there are
far to many to type!
Love you all In Christ’s name!
Josh and Paige
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