Blood and prayer

It was the eve of Narlin's birthday when she received a text message from our friend. It says in effect, ‘the father of our worker is sick and he needs blood.’ Our friend is the director of the agricultural Foundation and he has several workers. This particular worker he was referring too is also our friend.

However, Narlin phone's battery was dead that night and it was only in the morning that she had read the message. She asked me, ‘are you willing to drive to Chiang Rai to donate blood.’ Chiang Rai is about 45 minutes to one hour drive from our home depending on the timing of the traffic lights. If all those traffic lights are green then we'll be there sooner, but if they happened to be all red then it will take an hour or so. But I digress.

Anyway, I agreed to donate my blood. In fact, I already missed doing it. I had been donating blood before that I could no longer remember how many times I have done it. Giving blood is scary. I know many people who are really afraid to give blood and I perfectly understand it. But when you overcome the fear, it is as easy as giving someone a drink, only there is a little pain involved.

So Narlin and I drove to Chiang Rai Hospital. Upon reaching the hospital, we called up our friend on the phone and told him that we arrived and I am ready to bleed. He met us at the lobby of the hospital and brought us to the ward where his sick father was. He introduced us to his father, brothers, sisters and nephews. He told them that I am a Pastor and a missionary here in Thailand. Then he asked me to pray for his father.

I wasn't supposed to do this. I expected to go the laboratory and give my blood and then just move on. At any rate, I had prayed for the sick on a hospital bed many times. And I was happy to do it.

My batting percentage in praying for the sick is very low my wife reminded me. It means many of those whom we prayed for didn't make it out of the hospital alive. Nonetheless, I prayed for him. This kind of prayer is the most fulfilling experience for me. Because I'm not uttering empty words, offering pretentious comfort for the sick and his family. I'm praying and I'm giving my blood and it is the least that I can do.

After the prayer, I uttered some words of encouragement to the sick. I then shook his hand and to my surprise he kissed it. I knew it was to show his appreciation either for praying or for donating my blood. But I surmised because I did both.

Faith without faith is dead. Likewise, prayer without efforts or at least an intention to be part to the answer of the things you are praying for is, for me, an insincere prayer.

The old van

It was 2006 when we came to Mae Sai. We didn’t have any means of transportation so we used our feet. We walked going to the church, market and to the places of ministry. Angela, seeing our predicament lent us a very old motorcycle and we used it for two years. Through friends, God provided us with a brand-new Honda motorcycle. However, my children were growing bigger and obviuosly it would take us several trips to go to the church and other events that require the presence of the whole family.

A fellow Filipino missionary in Chiang Mai had been blessed with new pick-up truck and he had no parking space for his almost thirty-year old van. He tried to sell it but nobody wanted to buy it for a decent price. He thought it would be more useful for the ministry. We received the van with open arms and he was proven right, it is indeed useful to us. Not to mention that later, we had started a children’s home and the van was not only useful for the family but it became indispensable in transporting the children to and from School and to the church.

So, we drove the van from Chiang Mai to Mae Sai for five hours and except for its tendency to overheat the van did well. The whole family worked very hard in cleaning it inside and outside. Making it look newer than it really was. However, when my daughter closed the sliding door, it fell off. We could not restore it so we brought it to the mechanic. We pay almost 2,000 baht just to have the door reinstalled. That was the time when we have our second thoughts. Was the van a blessing or another problem that would siphoned down our already depleted ministry funds for its maintenance?

To make the long story short, we have the van for almost four years. It undergone some major repairs that cost us a lot but overall we are quite happy with its performance. We even thought of having body and upholstery works and have the aircon installed.

However, this week the van broke down twice and this reminds us once again that any upgrade is not worth and that we have to pray harder for a new van. Some friends who had seen its condition had contributed seed money in the fund raising for the new van. Jonathan gave U$ 200 and another friend gave 5,000 baht. We thank the Lord for their contributions. We believe that this “little fund” becomes big when we place it in God’s hands for his kingdom work. Please join us in praying for this need.

Desperate for rain

Today I started coughing badly as my lungs are trying to get rid of the smoke that accumulated in there. All of the people in the house were coughing weeks before I did. I think, physically I am stronger but the smoke has been getting heavier each day and even the stronger ones are starting to succumbed to the pollution. We have not seen the sun and the blue sky for two weeks now. And because the sun could not penetrate the thick smog, it is still abnormally cold for supposed to be a hot summer.

The smog came from the farmers in Myanmar and Northern. They are burning the fields on the mountain in preparation for the next planting season. The people in Mae Sai are used to it. This kind of farming is traditionally being practiced for centuries.

We are desperate for rain. A whole day of heavy rain will clear the sky and clean up the air. It rained last night but it was a drizzle which is not enough. However, it is a good sign that rain is coming soon, we are praying that it would be sooner.

Songkran

You don’t need to live long in Thailand to know that they are living different year than the Western counterpart. It’s now 2553 here. The Thai new year celebration is also called Songkran. It is celebrated on 13-15 of April. Thai people closely follow the traditional activities during the three days. Although in some provinces the celebration last longer than three days.

The throwing of water is the most fun part of the celebration. It seems everybody in the community should join because people will look at you with disdain for spoiling the fun. Our children and their friends join in this activity. I drove them around the town on the back of a pick-up truck and splash water to every people we came across on the streets. The most fun however, was when two or three pick-up trucks crisscrossed on the street. It was like a war with water as the weapon. There was a lot of cheers and laughter. And since they are all young people and observing them from afar, it was like a hint of friendship was about to start. But of course, a few seconds of fun really don’t amount to anything in terms of relationship. However, a sense of being in one community was stronger at least for that particular moment.

On the following day, the splashing of water should be over and people should visit temples, shrines, monasteries to watch the washing of the statues of Buddha with scented water. It was also the time to offer prayers, gifts, food to the monk. Following this is the releasing of fish to the water and birds to the sky. This believe to bring good luck for everyone. Our house is just two blocks away from the temple and I saw only a handful of people observed this activity. While on the streets, the people were still having fun getting each other wet.

I’m sure for many of the younger generation, the religious significance of the Songkran have been lost. Nonetheless, isn't the fun and the sense of casual friendship and sense of community that the festival brings were enough to reflect on the goodness of God?

I am missing the van so bad

For the first time in almost four months, I missed my 25-year-old-hands-down Nissan Urvan. The van broke down last year in October and is still in the shop. Holding on for its dear life. The mechanic advised us to change it with a new second-hand engine but Narlin and I are having second thought. We think it’s not worth it. The van’s body has dent, its bronze paint is scratched and cracked, the seats upholstery are are duct taped, the ceiling is falling, the aircon is not working and the steering is not powered. However, it is the only vehicle we have and we love it.

This morning nobody picked up the children going to the church. A co-worker usually does that for us, but not this morning. In the first place, we should not be depending on somebody to bring us to church. So I have to make three trips to the church bringing the children on the motorcycle. Not that I’m complaining, in fact, sometimes I enjoy the ride. But rainy season is fast approaching and I could not do this anymore when the time comes. We need the van so badly.

The van is also being used transporting church members to the church. It is also the church’s school bus. And though I end up as the driver, I am happy that I can help the church and its school in my own small way.

So please help us pray for a new van. Some people learn about this need and express their intention to help. The children home, the church, the Bible school, the Day Care and other ministries need it.

The van broke down

The van spewed engine oil on the road on my way to the church when I was bringing the people to the church last Sunday. I wasn't aware of it until I picked up some church members on our way and told me that the van was spilling a lot of oil on the road.

I really felt bad about it. First because I still had to bring my family yet to the church and second the spilled oil was fatal for hundreds of motorcycles that pass on the road. I stopped on the red light in a turn and I left a pool of spilled oil there. The police found out about it and they put sand on it.

Maybe ten months ago, I noticed the leak from the engine and asked the mechanic to do something about it. He put new gaskets and oil seal, but after a week the oil started to leak again. I mentioned it to him and he started to reason out about the cylinder being loose. Although I think that a loose piston would not cause oil leaks, I didn't argue. It was hard argue with someone you don't understand and can't understand you. So when I called him last Sunday, he was kinda apologetic for doing a bad job.

Anyways, the van broke and the good side of it is I have a break doing the bus run. And it feels good. When I volunteer to do the bus run for the church's school and the nursery I thought it would be a relaxing drive and therapeutic at times. But the school grew and the number of students doubled within six months. This results to an unexpectedly long drive that took two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. It becomes really a serious difficult work. Not that I am complaining.

The van broke down, but it feels good. I almost praying that the repair will take longer. But again, I have to think about the children being driven dangerously in a motorcycle to the school.

The blogger's word verification and typing the characters you see in the picture to post this still annoys me.

Reasons to be thankful

I thought I’m having another bad week when I clicked at the link at the sidebar for Dr Jim West’s blog and learned that it was deleted. I knew right away that it was hacked and my suspicion was confirmed after reading numerous posts about the incident. I was relieved to learn though that after 24 hours, he decided to give blogging another shot. I am one of his many readers who simply delighted to see his blog up and running again.

After a week of brooding over the miserable laptop—cracked LCD and dead hard drive I resolved to get over it. I lost files and pictures but all is not lost. I am still hoping to recover some of them if I would connect the hard drive to another computer in a hard drive enclosure. I just need some money to buy it.

Moreover when I checked the CD I burned to backup some of my files it turned out that some of the data were actually copied although the software would say that the burning failed. I recovered about 50 pages of the dissertation. It’s better than nothing.

I am just thankful to Ben for encouragement and to those who comments (yes the two of you). I was encouraged more than you’ll ever know. :)

A friend and co-worker learned about what happened and she loaned me her HP CRT monitor. The monitor is very good. I also borrowed a hard disk from a friend’s old laptop that she is not using. It has smaller capacity but works great. I’m praying that the Holy Spirit would speak to these people, touch their hearts and eventually let me have these goodies.

A bad week

I had a terrible week. I was so frustrated that I almost cry. If my kids were not with me and didn’t make fun of the situation I might have done so.

First, Narlin and I planned to go to Mae Sot with our friend in her car. We arranged to meet her in Chiang Mai but we didn’t have enough money. So Narlin went alone. She is visiting a friend who is running a Burmese school and we want to know how it is being done. We are planning to run the same kind of school here. So I was left in the house with the children.

Second, the LCD of my laptop broke when my daughter hit it with a wristwatch. She got mad with his brother’s teasing that she threw the thing toward him but I guessed he was able to duck from it that it hit the LCD. Now the LCD has cracks, it looks similar to a car’s cracked windshield, only in laptop the liquid leaks and those like blots of blank ink in the white background screen. If that won’t make you cry, this one will do. The hard disk in the same laptop crashed after a week! This is horrible. My heart stops beating for a while. All the data and pictures (family and ministry) we have been saving in that laptop in the last two years flashed before my eyes. My dissertation and research notes went kaput with it. The laptop bios could no longer detect the hard disk. I should have backed up my data but the laptop’s DVD/CD-RW had not been working right in a while and burning CD always ends up unsuccessful.

I can’t afford to buy a new LCD, hard disk and much more a new lap top. It is a relief that my friend gave his old (Pentium 1 with damaged LCD) laptop to my son and this is I will be using for a while in posting and in my writing my dissertation. The laptop is just too slow that I can only use it for typing, checking emails and browsing the internet. Graphics cause the laptop to freeze. The RAM and the hard disk are very small thus even posting here is painstakingly slow. Cutting and pasting of text takes so much memory that re-posting some of my posts to my other blogs becomes a chore.

This means I can’t blog too often as much as I want too (more limited as it is right now). Please help us to pray for a new computer. I am also hoping that the data on the hard disk can still be recovered. Any suggestions?

The peril of a narrow road

The inner streets in Thailand are surprisingly too narrow. It made me speculate that these streets were designed to be used by motorcycles. I actually was impressed with myself when I could actually fit in the van and made a successful pass whenever another vehicle drove by from the opposite direction. I would make admiring remarks to myself. “I’m an expert driver” and I intentionally said it aloud intending to be heard by anybody who was riding with me in the van.

Narrow streets notwithstanding, people like to park their motorcycles and cars in the side streets. Can you imagine how clog the streets were beside the market? With hundreds of motorcycles, carts, and cars parking along the side of the uphill market road. Can you imagine how agonizing it was to drive on it. Maneuvering the van to pass through those complex obstructions would take all the patient one could muster. Sometimes I wish that I could just run over those files of motorcycles just to give their owners the message that they should not be parking there. Of course that was just a scene I do play at the back of my mind as my patient is wearing thin.

And it happened, as I was trying to maneuver the van away from the coming pick-up truck, I steered the van slightly to the left, I heard people shouting and a screeching sound beside the van. What? I sideswiped a parked motorcycle, I looked at the left side mirror and saw that if I would made a little forward movement the motorcycle would fall… perhaps it was my shadow side telling me to move on and enjoy the sight about to unfold before my eyes, I liked to see fifty motorcycles falling like dominoes. Yes, it would have been fun.

But Narlin insisted that I should stop and back off a little to prevent a catastrophic incident that would earn me the ire of the market goers. And besides, I need to listen with the people asking me to stop. I stopped, back off and then drove on and left as if nothing happened.

Anyway, I think I had done enough damage today—an ugly 2-meter long scrape at the left side of our van.