"This is Bangkok"

Today marks my three week anniversary for arriving in Thailand, but who's counting? : ) It has been a challenging adjustment period, but it has also been rich in blessings. Through the last three weeks I have struggled with feeling lonely, not understanding my role here, truly understanding the meaning of being a foreigner (although this is the fourth foreign country I have lived in), and trying to be honest with who I am in a place that doesn't make me feel confident that I will be accepted. Through these past three weeks I have also been blessed by meeting an array of new and interesting people, eating exciting new food (some good, some not so good), beginning to learn a new language, exploring a huge and fascinating city, and most of all, learning to depend on God for the strength to literally walk out my door into the unknown streets below.

I had the opportunity to visit a couple of new ministries over these past two weeks and they both have blessed me hugely. The first is a ministry called Hope Cards located in one of the largest slums in Bangkok. Hope Cards is run by a wonderful woman named Nattaya who teaches women from the slum how to make greeting cards. The cards are sold in local markets to help support the women and their families. The women have also just begun dabbling in making jewelry and Nattaya needed some help photographing their products to get up on their website and to make brochures with. I told Nattaya I would be glad to come take some photos for her. This particular slum takes over an hour to get to by bus from my apartment, and although Nattaya does speak english, she did not feel confident enough to explain how to actually get to the slum, she simply told me which bus to get on. I felt a little unnerved about taking my first unaccompanied bus trip to a destination I didn't know how to find, so I decided to walk around the YWAM base asking people if they knew how to get to Hope Cards. I was directed to a man named John who was outgoing, funny, and loud – I'm not sure, but I'm guessing he's American. He looked shocked when I asked him if he could tell me how to find Hope Cards, “have you ever taken a bus here before?” He asked franticly. “Yes, but not by myself,” I said. “Okay, well The Lord will be with you and will protect you and guide you,” he said with not quite enough of a playful tone. Now I was starting to get nervous. He explained in detail what to do, including how to signal to the bus driver that I wanted to board. By the time he was finished there were three other staff members standing around me also nodding their heads in agreement and giggling as John charismatically described my route. Before sending me off John set his hand on my shoulder and quickly prayed, “Lord please go with Katie as she searches for Hope Cards, direct her, Lord we pray for divine protection for her as she rides the bus, amen.” He was definitely half joking...but half not. The only reaction I could muster to this situation was to laugh and say, “thank you so much, I'll be fine – really, I will!”

Needless to say, I successfully boarded the correct bus (which is more than I can say for my second attempt to visit Hope Cards), got off at the right place, and Nattaya found me easily enough. I got off the bus in front of a gas station where I waited for Nattaya to meet me. She arrived within 10 minutes after receiving my call, and began to lead me through a narrow alleyway between businesses and apartment buildings that were lining the busy street. After about two minutes and a quick turn the alleyway turned into uneven cement winding through low shanty houses with tin roofs. There was water everywhere – incredibly dirty water. Some of the houses were floating on the water, and some of the sidewalks were more like rickety boardwalks leading to the next patch of dry cement. I wish I could have taken a picture for you, but I didn't want to make the people feel like a tourist attraction. This is where I encountered my first Water Monitor (pictured to the left), which is a close cousin of the Komodo Dragon. The one I saw was only about 2 1/2 feet long, but apparently they get much larger. As Nattaya led me through a maze of walkways, houses, and occasional wider openings with people selling a variety of meat bbq-ed on sticks under umbrellas, she turned and asked me, “have you been to this slum before?” “No” I said, “this is my first time to a slum at all.” She slowed and looked over her shoulder raising an eyebrow and gave me a smile as she said, “this is Bangkok.” (The below picture is not mine, I found it on a google image search, but it gives you an idea about some of the slum areas -- it's not all this bad). 

  

Some of you know that I have a deeply rooted romantic side – that I like to find beauty in everything, and that I tend to look at things as more glamorous than they really are. I can say this, there is nothing glamorous about the slums. Urban poverty is often even more horrendous than rural poverty. It is certainly dirtier and more disease ridden. Although it is not glamorous, I saw beauty there – I saw rich community. Nattaya brought me to meet one of the women who works for hope cards. She was quietly working on a card when we approached her home. Her 2 month old baby was sleeping in a large hammock spanning the width of her house. She greeted me quietly in english and showed me the card she was working on. As we left her home we were warmly greeted by people on all sides. We came to an old woman's home who runs a restaurant out of her living room. The whole scene was so delicious I was dying to take out my camera. The woman was kind of hunched over and wore a dirty dress with an old apron tied around her waste. She greeted Nattaya, our two companions (women who joined us at the Hope Cards office), and me in Thai and then began talking to the other women as we kicked off our shoes outside the door and shuffled in. We sat next to a window that looked at a brick wall not more than 6 inches away from us. There was a cat sitting outside the front door lounging under the shade of a tarp stretched out over the woman's would be front porch area. The porch area held a small folding table displaying all sorts of sauces in re-used glass jars and bbq-ed meat on sticks. The woman who ran the restaurant and presumably owned the home took our orders and walked through an open doorway to the kitchen area outback. The stove must have been against the wall with the doorway because steam from the cooking would occasionally billow into the living room where we were sitting. I had noodles with shrimp and crushed peanuts, it was delicious. As we were finishing up our food, group after group after group of people arrived, kicking off their shoes, coming in, filling chairs and tables until there was no space left. As new people would come in everyone would greet them and they would walk over to a stack of folded chairs against a wall and squeeze themselves into an already crowded table. It was hot, and loud, and not necessarily pleasant smelling, but it was warm, and loving, and beautiful.

Anyway the afternoon was spent trying to assemble a make-shift studio for photographing jewelry – I became quite the spectacle. I ended up using a piece of tan canvas draped across a wooden board tied to the back of a bicycle outside the front of the Hope Cards office. The sunlight was too bright outside, but it was way too dark inside, so I balanced an umbrella between the bicycle and a railway outside the office to complete our studio. Unfortunately the only umbrella on hand was pink, casting a pink glow over the jewelry. The pictures still turned out fine, but I would really like to come back armed with either a white umbrella, or a white bed sheet instead.

This post ended up being way tooooo long. Thank you to anyone who made it this far. : ) I want to write about the children's ministry I visited this week also, but I will do so in the next few days because I have some additional thoughts about children's ministry in general that I want to share.

I love you all and miss you so much!!

Oh P.S. My first article on the website has been published! Check it out!

http://www.ywamthai.org/news/makeadifference/3120-can-i-be-a-missionary.html