Roygatone Festival

The Roygatone Festival is a buddhist holiday celebrated November 24th. It's celebrated all over the country. I celebrated it in Mae Ramat. Me and Terra took the truck to drop off about 10 of the girls at their school and then we headed to Mae Ramat to see the happenings. We had to drop the girls off at their school in Mae Jaroung because they had to get ready to do a dance. They were all going to be part of the parade that was going through Mae Ramat for the celebration. Once we arrived at Mae Ramat we got to see everyone setting up for the parade. A couple of our Agape children were already there. It was so exciting seeing them all there. I was so proud of them. I found out I'm going to be that annoying mom that embarasses my children. As we saw the kids I was hooting and hollering for them and hugging them and kissing them and telling them how proud I am of them and how excited I am to see them in the parade and that they're going to do an awesome job. They kept laughing at me. I told them I was going to yell their names when they walked by me in the parade. My kids are all going to be embarrased by me, but at least they'll know how much I love them and how proud of them I always will be.

Anyways, as we waited for the parade to start (we got there at 4 and the parade didn't start until about 8) we learned what the festival is all about. The buddhists celebrate Roygatone as a way of letting go of all the bad things in their life. They make little flower boats and they put money into them and send them down the river.

As they send their flower boat they send all the bad things in their life right along with it. It's like a new beginning for them. If they only knew all the bad things could be forgiven and forgotten forever with Jesus. They wouldn't only be gone once a year when they're put into a flower boat, but they would be gone and erased "as far as the east is from the west" every day.

As we waited for the parade to start we walked all the way up and down the parade line. Everyone was standing there ready to start the parade. It was awesome because we got to stop and look at all the floats, talk with all the people, and get some great pictures. We wouldn't have been able to take such great pictures or anything while the parade was in motion. It was a blast! A couple of the teachers from the Huai Bong school met me and Terra in Mae Ramat and we all watched the parade together. It was so funny because as we watched the parade, the parade seemed to be watching me and Terra. So many people that were marching in the parade came up to me and Terra and asked to take a picture with us. Here we were admiring them and they were admiring us. It was really funny! As the parade continued on we began to see our Agape children and there went me screaming their names and cheering for them and taking tons of pictures and videotaping them just like any proud parent! They did such a good job!

After the parade finished, the teachers took me and Terra to a lovely dinner in a restaurant alongside the river. As we ate we began to see some of the flower boats floating down the river. They put candles inside the boats so they looked beautiful as they lit up the Moei River. We finished dinner and we went and got our own flower boats to send down the river. Kruhawm made me and Terra our very own flower boats. I really enjoyed sending my flower boat down the river. All I sent was my flower boat because I already have a savior who doesn't reside in a flower boat. A couple of the Agape girls also sent their boats down the river. It was fun watching the river fill up with more and more flower boats.

After our flower boats were out of sight, we walked to the big celebration. It was like a fair. They had rides, games, shows, and it all ended with the grand finale of fireworks. It's funny how different they do things in Thailand. The fireworks were lit practically 1/2 a mile from where I was standing and exploded right above my head. I think I could even feel the heat from them. I think in America we have laws for how far away the fireworks have to be lit, and I'm sure we were breaking that law here :) It was a really pretty firework show though.

After the show we all piled back into the truck and made our way home. We were all exhausted, the girls more than us as they walked for two hours and danced. They all looked beautiful though, even with being so tired. As we drove home the girls chatted and sang beautifully in the back of the truck. The perfect ending to a wonderful day!!

*****I uploaded some pics from the festival, check them out if you get time!!!

There's no pilgrims in Thailand?

So this is the first time since I've been born that I haven't celebrated Thanksgiving. But this is the first time since I've been born that I feel I truly understand what it means to be thankful. I have so many things to be thankful for I can't even begin to list them. When I look at the 100+ children that surround me who don't have much, I know if they were to write a list of things they were thankful for it would be huge! They don't have much but they'd give it all away in a heartbeat to help another. There may not be pilgrims in Thailand, but there sure are a lot of people here who remind me what Thanksgiving is all about!

"Praise the LORD, I tell myself; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. PRAISE THE LORD, I TELL MYSELF, AND NEVER FORGET THE GOOD THINGS HE DOES FOR ME. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. HE RANSOMS ME FROM DEATH AND SURROUNDS ME WITH LOVE AND TENDER MERCIES. He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle's! THE LORD IS MERCIFUL AND GRACIOUS; HE IS SLOW TO GET ANGRY AND FULL OF UNFAILING LOVE. He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve. FOR HIS UNFAILING LOVE TOWARD THOSE WHO FEAR HIM IS AS GREAT AS THE HEIGHT OF THE HEAVENS ABOVE THE EARTH. He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west. THE LORD IS LIKE A FATHER TO HIS CHILDREN, TENDER AND COMPASSIONATE TO THOSE WHO FEAR HIM. FOR HE UNDERSTANDS HOW WEAK WE ARE; HE KNOWS WE ARE ONLY DUST. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone — as though we had never been here. BUT THE LOVE OF THE LORD REMAINS FOREVER WITH THOSE WHO FEAR HIM. HIS SALVATION EXTENDS TO THEIR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. Praise the LORD, everything he has created, everywhere in his kingdom. As for me — I, too, will praise the LORD." Psalm 103

I will continuously praise the Lord for all that He does for me. For everything in my life that I'm thankful for. Not only on November 22nd will I celebrate my thanks and my giving, but I will praise the Lord and celebrate every day because I have so much to be thankful for and I can't help but continue to give because of all that's been given to me! Happy ThanksGiving to you all! I pray that you see all the things that you have to be thankful for, from the sunrise that woke you up this morning to the turkey that sits on your table. I love you all!







*So in honor of Thanksgiving I bought some pumpkin pie in Mae Sot (there is a restaurant owned by a Canadian man and he was selling pumpkin pie). The pumpkin pie was delicious! Yet another thing to be thankful for.....good ol' pumpkin pie :)

Girls, Exercise....Puuying, Oklumungai

It's funny as you walk around Agape Orphanage you'll hear the boys and girls saying "Girls, Exercise" in the exact same tone and voice that I say it every time I call the girls for exercise. Every day at 4:30, I open up my mouth and yell (if you know me, you know I have a very, very loud voice :)) "GIRLS EXERCISE". They all rush into the worship hall and we have exercise class. They love it, and I love it too because it forces me to exercise every day :) Today I decided to do exercise class a little differently. I yelled "GIRLS EXERCISE" and I heard little voices all over Agape repeating it. One little boy named Nowah loves to run up to me say it, put a huge smile on his face, and then run away. It's so cute! I told the girls that today we were going to go jogging. I had my running shoes on and I was ready. As we all lined up outside I said "Prom rian- Are you ready?" I heard a lot of yes's so we began our jog. As the cars drove past us the passengers faces turned from solemn looks to precious smiles. I'm not sure if they were smiling because they saw a foreigner or because of how funny we probably looked. Here's 4o little girls running down the road, half with shoes on (and most of the shoes were flip-flops that were way too big for them) and half without shoes on (most of the children don't really like shoes...it's strange) and there's one girl who's the tallest of them all who totally stands out leading the pack. It definitely had to of been a funny sight. The girls had a blast! We ran about 2 miles down the road, had our stretch time and then ran the two miles back. As we ran back we were running right into the sunset. It was beautiful! One of the best jogs I've ever been on. The Thai air going into my lungs, the mountains and sunset filling up my sight, and the sound of 40 girls laughter and voices speaking to me and to eachother filling my ears. I've decided exercise class is going to have more days of jogging filled with more sunsets, more of God's creation and more laughter filling the Huai Bong Village!



*I put up a couple new pics :)

Frogs aren't just for hopping

That’s right, frogs just happen to be for eating too. It’s actually quite a delicacy.

Well, once again I resorted to thinking “I can’t come all the way to Thailand, live here for a year, and not try _______ (insert any strange/disgusting food you can imagine here).” So as I sat with the female teachers at one of my favorite restaurants, Gnow Pi, eating lunch the male teachers who sat at the other table called me over to their table. They kept saying “Gope”, which means frog in Thai. I stared at the plate of frog sitting in front of me and inside I worked up the courage to try frog. They gave me a huge frog leg to try and were telling me “Andrea arroy (delicious)”. I’m not quite brave enough to try a whole frog leg, so I took a little piece of it off. I dipped it in the chili sauce (I’m not sure if that’s cheating, since I kind of masked the flavor, but just a little I promise), snapped a picture and then popped it into my mouth.

The idea of eating frog was disgusting to me, but the taste was actually pretty good. It kind of tasted just like chicken (it’s funny how all strange meats seem to resemble the taste of chicken). It was really, really chewy though and it took a while to finally break it down enough to swallow it, but all in all, I hate to admit that I actually think frog is tasty. Although, I don’t want to eat frog ever again just because of the thought of it, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wanted some.

Tonight in English class we finished writing our letters to our pen pals. The past 2 weeks we have been focusing on learning how to write our letters and learning the information that goes in it. The kids really enjoyed doing them and I think it made it more exciting knowing their letters are going to friends in America. One of my amazing teachers (my 8th grade teacher) is having her students write letters to my students. I took pictures of all my students and printed up their pictures so they put their letter and their picture in their envelopes and got them all ready to send off. Some of them included pictures of their houses, of their family, and some drew pictures for their friend. It’s so cute! They really loved it! I can’t wait until my students get letters back. It really makes them want to learn English even more!!

After English class, I had the awesome opportunity to lay out on mats in the field with about 10 of the kids. It’s not the rainy season anymore so the clouds have left our Thai sky, leaving only stars to fill the sky at night. There are no city lights or street lights or anything to block our view of seeing the stars. We all laid there singing Thai and English songs and spoke to each other in the blend of English and Thai that we know and lifted our laughs up to the sky. One of the songs we sang had this line in it “And I’m so happy, so very happy, I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart”. I truly am so happy. Not only do I have the love of Jesus but I have over 100 kids love as well. I can’t even explain what that is like. What it’s like to simply lay in a field with 10 of my favorite children as I look up at the sky that is almost white with stars, and as if the night wasn’t already amazing enough, God blessed me with a shooting star to top it all off! He’s so good to me!

dare you to move

Boy have I been busy. Those farangs being here was definitely a blast, but we really had our days booked :) We prepared a fun-filled weekend for the kids. We called it our Halloween/Fall Festival. We explained to the children that in America many people celebrate Halloween and we also talked about Thanksgiving and the Fall season. It's really hard for them to grasp the Fall season because they only have 3 seasons here, but a couple days ago while I was teaching at the school I saw yellow leaves falling off the trees and the ground was slowly turning from green to yellow as the leaves painted it. It was beautiful. I actually get to experience the Fall season. I think it's hard for us Phoenicians (not sure if that's what us Phoenix dwellers are called, but oh well it sounds good :)) to understand the Fall season as well because we really only have 3 seasons too- cold, pretty warm, and "oh my gosh I'm sitting in an oven and baking". Well, anyways our Fall festival was a hit! We went bobbing for apples, did a cake walk, played pin the nose on the pumpkin, carved pumpkins, did a mummy wrap, made masks, and so much more! We split the kids into four teams and they had a blast! They loved the games and they did an awesome job carving the pumpkins especially considering they've never done it before. And considering they looked at us like we were crazy for wanting to do anything with the pumpkins other than eat them :) The kids also did an awesome job making their masks. We had each of the children model their masks and then we sat at the front like professional judges and picked 15 of the best masks to win a prize. We all wore our masks (our costumes) the whole night and really had such a good time. The children loved it! We finished our night with cookies and punch and even with all that sugar the children were exhausted!
The next morning we woke up super early (well it was like 6:00, but that's super early for me :)) and put on our lice killer faces. We scrubbed all the girls bedding and hung it out to dry. It was hilarious because the girls are awesome at hand washing their clothes, whereas us lazy Americans have our washers and dryers, so me and Dee Dee looked like fools trying to ring out their bedding, which were huge blankets. It took us forever and it took them about a minute. We decided we would let the girls ring out the bedding and we would hang them up. We could for sure do that, right? Well, me and Dee Dee carried the tub with the blankets in it through the field to the bamboo rods we were going to hang them on. The bucket was heavy and we dropped it then we bent down to pick it up and when we came up we bonked heads, all the while this is happening the girls are staring at us, probably thinking "crazy Americans". We almost peed our pants we were laughing so hard. And let me tell you they already think I'm crazy, so everything I do just adds to it. They all told Dee Dee she's "crazy like Andrea, but Andrea's crazier" :) I always have them all laughing. Being crazy is fun :) Once we finally stopped laughing we finally were able to start hanging up the blankets to dry. Then we attacked their hair with the lice medicine. We had our rubber gloves on and sleep still in our eyes from waking up so early but we were ready to kill some bugs. We coated their heads and then covered them with plastic bags. It wasn't the most pleasant smell, but atleast we knew it was killing them. The girls laughed at us as we coated their heads. We felt a little bad because the girls had to keep the medicine on their head until nighttime so we had about 35 girls sitting in church Sunday morning with plastic bags on their heads. It was so cute! That night, at the girls relief, we told them it was time to wash the stinky medicine out of their hair. We had a salon set up for the girls. We called it Andrea's, Dee Dee's and Terra's salon. They started with me where I shampooed their hair. I scrubbed those suckers out of their heads, and they kept saying "Sabai" (nice in English). I gave them little head massages too :) Then they went to Dee Dee to get conditioner in their hair. Then the children went to Terra so she could comb their heads with the lice combs. After they were all combed out they came back to me so I could spray their heads with Listerine (this is a little secret from good ol' Grandma....it's true, lice don't like Listerine.....don't you love grandmas....thanks gram :)). It was so funny when I put some of the Listerine in my mouth because the girls thought it was a chemical. They started freaking out, but then I told them it was ok to gargle with and they all lined up to try some. They didn't like it at all :) They can enjoy the bugs, but Listerine, now that's just disgusting :) Every night now I go around and comb their heads and spray them with Listerine. The girls like it though because combing their hair feels really nice. I had one fall asleep while I was combing her hair to make sure she's clean. It was so cute :)
I started back to teaching this week. It was so nice to see all the children at the school after having a break for a month. We had really fun English lessons and Dee Dee came to the school one day to see all the kids. It was really fun! Krudam shared with me that I'm going to be teaching Friday at the school. They are having a huge buddhist celebration in Thailand on Friday and at the school. Celebrities are coming to the school, and the news, and the head of the department of education. I am going to be teaching a lesson, with microphone and all, to a class in front of the head of the Department of Education and in front of the news cameras (you can keep that in your prayers :)). May also told me they're going to have me play the sports games with the children and they're going to put me on TV. I'm going to be famous here ;) It should be really fun tomorrow. It will be an awesome opportunity to share Jesus' love with even more people!
Last night our wonderful Dee Dee went back home. It was so sad to see her go. The children gave her gifts and sang a song for her and as she bawled her eyes out I bawled mine out too. I just knew the girls were going to miss her a lot. They all loved her and it made me sad to know they would miss her. I wasn't even the one leaving and I was bawling my eyes out. We took Dee Dee to dinner at Khao Mao Khao Fang for dinner. I love that restaurant. I ate enough to last me weeks :) It was really fun because it was just us girls who went out for dinner- me, Dee Dee, Terra, and May. We had so much fun! After we finished our wonderful meal, we rushed back to the orphanage to do our drama and allow the children time to all say good-bye to Dee Dee before she had to rush to the bus station and get there by 9:30 (Pastor told me this morning she did catch her bus, but he had to drive behind the bus and stop it. Nothing like freaking out about not catching your bus :)). We had an awesome drama planned for all the children and staff and Pastor Jack and his wife Jo (who are staying with us for 2 weeks from Australia). Our drama was about serving. We did it to the song "Dare you to move" by Switchfoot. We basically were daring the children to move and obey Jesus when he tells us to serve. I was the poor person in our drama and we had a rich person, an old person, a tourist, a selfish person, and Jesus. I gave the short little message after and explained our drama. I shared the scripture verse 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.....read it :) In our drama Jesus first served us and then we all served each other and in the end it finished with us serving Jesus. We made the point that when we serve each other we are actually serving Jesus....."as you do for the least of these you've done for me". We also had black hearts on us and when we served someone Jesus came and removed our black hearts and gave us a big red heart. If I do say so myself, we were pretty amazing. But what our drama represented is so true. We are dared to move. Are we going to obey and allow our heart to become a big red heart or just sit there and always just be served and allow our heart to stay black? In 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about how he became like the Jews to win the Jews, he became weak like the weak to win the weak. Are we becoming hungry like the hungry to save the hungry, poor like the poor to save the poor? Jesus is daring us to move........are you going to move?


*I put lots of new pics up, so check them out when you have time. Some are pretty funny :).....you can see me as a lovely poor person :)