Travel Tips

On yet another interminable flight, where I've read my book too fast again, I began to cook up these south east asia travel tips:
• always book check-in luggage weight for the return journey if flying the budget airlines. Inevitably you will buy some oversized souvenier, too many clothes or be given a gigantic carving by your sponsor child
• Pack toothpaste. It generally doesn't taste right in other countries.
• For girls, the occasional fake wedding ring could be useful. Be prepared anyway to answer the questions "how old are you?" and "are you married yet?" within the first few sentences of a convo with ANYBODY.
• It really helps to get around if you know how to ride a motorbike.
• Do not pull faces or make friends with small children on flights. You can't keep it up for the next however many hours and they'll keep staring. And they are loud.
• Just cave in and buy plane food if it isn't provided on a budget flight. It is overpriced but in the end your ticket is probably still cheap.

"Thankyou God for sending us Pi Jasmine to lead worship for us today even though..."

Last Sunday I intended on going to visit my friend Gade's church. So I turned up on time according to her directions and walked into church to find barely anyone there but a frazzled church leader. She was missing her guitarist (he had gone to Laos) and it looked like it was down to playing bad mp3's for worship so I offered to play. After breaking a string trying to tune their guitar, I even went home to get my own.
Then the congregation arrived- mainly village families from Maejo. The songs were all in Thai and so I only survived playing by having a small boy standing next to me singing and running his finger along the lines so I could guess where the chord changes were. In fact the families were so excited to have a guitarist they kept calling out more songs, so I was originally only meant to play 3 and ended up sightreading 7 songs. And still no sight of Gade.
Finally I finished playing and the church leader prayed "Thankyou God for sending us Pi Jasmine to lead worship for us today even though she meant to go to the church two doors down..."
I thought "WHAT!!! I'm at the wrong church?! And you knew?!!"

The Attrition of the Heart

This attrition of the heart is somewhat horrible in overseas missions. Either you're missing people from your home country, knowing you're not there for major and important parts of their lives, or you're at home missing friends from the mission field. And after a while, parts of your heart are spread out all over the world and even though globalisation and cheap airlines are drawing us together more often; there is simply no substitute for lives intertwined in daily rhythm.
B, I'll miss you.