Culture Trekking

Thailand Video

Not to be outdone by Nepal, here is a video of one aspect of what our Thailand - Bangkok team is doing.

UWM - Bangkok, Thailand from Clay Sandoz on Vimeo.

Nepal Video

There are amazing things happening in Nepal!  A couple of our Nepal team members just put out short video of our work there.  It is worth the look.

Ron and Hanna will be taking my place as Asia Area Directors as my role has changed to an International leadership role.

It is hot. Someone's thermometer registered 117 degrees the other day. Just waiting on the rains to start to cool things down into the 90's.

House Church

I love our house church.  We meet every Sunday in someone's house - except this past Sunday we decided to have church outdoors.  There is a Wat (a Buddhist Temple) on top of a small mountain (big hill) near our house.  We met in a clearing a little ways down from the Wat.  It was a beautiful day to be outside worshipping God.

One of the things I love about our house church is that it is interactive.  There is something engaging about dialogue that stirs the heart as we learn from each other.  

I love the Church - all kinds of them.  I love being back in America and going to one of our big churches and I love to see all the forms that churches take across Asia - and there are many.

I love God's Church!

 

Fish Spa

So the new fad in Chiang Mai is "Fish Spas".  They are big aquarium tanks with hundreds of little skin eating fish in them.  You drop in your feet and the fish swarm and eat.  Frannie (who is visiting us on her Christmas break) and R.J. were brave enough to do it with me.  I have to say my feet felt really clean and smooth afterwards. 

 
 

Twelve days 'till Christmas...

It's hard to believe that Christmas is almost here.  Joshua just informed me that today begins the twelve days of Christmas countdown.  I had no idea we were that close.

That is understandable because if you live in Thailand there is very little to remind you of Christmas coming.  It is still hot every day and most days I am in shorts (in fact it is never cold enough to not wear shorts, but for meetings I need to "dress up").  The weather is no indicator here that Christmas is on the way.

We are also (thankfully) not inundated with Christmas "marketing" to let us know it is on the way.  There is a Christmas tree up in the mall here, but I have not been to the mall much lately.  

For Thais, Christmas is just another day of the week.  Nothing is closed, it is not a holiday.  Most will have heard it is Christmas, and there is this fascination with things from the West (thus the Christmas Tree in the mall), but for the most part it is a non-event.

Frannie arrives on Wednesday from America to celebrate Christmas with us.  This Sunday we will have a Christmas dinner at our house for everyone in our home church.  So I am starting to get in the "Christmas Spirit".

I hope you enjoy your Christmas and its meaning wherever you celebrate Christmas in the world.  We enjoy Christmas in Thailand!

p.s. If I make it to the mall before Christmas I will post some photos of what Christmas looks like in Thailand.  Who knew that purple, pink and orange were Christmas colors?  As we were looking at our "fake" tree we have up in the house we noticed our new lights on the tree include the color pink.

 

Should we decorate our banana tree?

Broccoli Pie?

Okay... for years at McDonald's in Thailand not only could you get Hot Apple Pies and Hot Fudge Sundaes, you could get Corn Pies and Corn Sundaes.  I have lived here so long that the idea of corn as a dessert item has grown on me.

But now - Broccoli Pies?  I can't stomach that thought.  Given the choice I would even take the Pinky Milky (see the picture)

Harvesting Rice... in my Backyard

One of the cool things about living in Asia is we get to see and experience things that are very different from North America.  Our house is on the edge of our neighborhood.  Our backyard is only about six feet deep and then there is the wall that surrounds the neighborhood.  On the other side of the wall are rice paddies.

Before moving to Thailand I had never seen a rice paddy.  My only exposure to rice in the wild was through the dramatic backdrop of Vietnam War movies.  Now I live in that backdrop.

This is our seventh rice season in Thailand.  I am fascinated by every part of the cycle.  I get to watch them flood the paddies each year and plant the one paddy that will seed all of the others.  Then I watch in awe as scores of women march in line hand planting each rice plant.

During this time a small village of workers lives in our "backyard" under a large tree until all the planting is done.  This takes a few weeks and then they travel back to their real villages in the mountains, leaving behind a caretaker or two who will monitor the paddies while they are still flooded.  Eventually the caretakers will also leave as the paddies dry out in the final phase and the rice changes from tall green grass to mature golden stalks.

Today as I was working in my office when I heard laughing outside of my window.  The workers were back and they were harvesting rice twenty feet from where I was sitting.  I quickly ran upstairs and snapped a few photos to share.

Whenever I think my work is hard I only have to look outside my window to see what real hard work is all about.  The acre upon acre of rice in my backyard is all harvested by hand.  Families are out there as I speak armed with scythes cutting the rice, and this scene is being played out all throughout Thailand by hundreds of thousands of people working in the rice fields.

The harvest is ripe here in Thailand.

When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Ourselves

I found out about this book from our India team that is reading the book in conjunction with the online class offered by the Chalmers Institute.  The good folks at Chalmers are the ones who put the book out.

This is one of the two best books I have read this year (I will review the other soon).  Having worked cross-culturally and with the poor for years now I intrinsically know some best practices and try to keep things like dependency out of the picture.  But this book pulls together some very good new thoughts on the subject.

The book begins with a story of the author saving a woman's life (a former witch doctor living in a slum) by purchasing $8.00 worth of penicillin for her.  It's a great story with a great ending.  But then he goes on to explain later in the book how that was a big mistake that hurt him and the community he was trying to help.  

I was not able to find fault in what transpired until he unpacked the wrong in it and how it could have been done in a way to build up the community.  The book is filled with teaching stories that change your thinking on how to help.

One of the most helpful ideas in the book is the realization that how I would define poverty as a Western person not living in poverty is very different than how a person who lives in poverty would define it.  A major problem is people not understanding what is broken and then still trying to fix it.

The premise is poverty is broken relationship and we all suffer from it.  

I found so many of the principles transcend working with the poor and are good practices for anyone working cross-culturally.

Pick up this book and read it.  You won't be disappointed.

Back from CN

My marathon travel schedule is one step closer to a break.  I just returned from CN last night.  I was supposed to be home at 8:10 PM, but something amiss with one of the engines kept the plane on the ground for a while.  Thankfully they figured out it needed to be fixed before we took off.

The trip was a good one.  We made lots of progress on plans for the upcoming year.  It is exciting to see how the work is unfolding in this city of 10 million plus.  There is lots to be done and we are privileged to have a small part.

I also was able to meet with all of our team members one-on-one.  That is always a joy.

Now... three more days and Theresa is off to America to visit Frannie and family.