Posted by Ric and Sharon on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Just heard these two from our teacher. They are full of Thai humor and culture.
A new Christian goes on an evangelism trip with his pastor up a mountain. After the pastor has explained the gospel to an unbelieving family he asks this new Christian to pray for the residents of the house they’re in and to bless the message he’s just shared. The new Christian obediently closes his eyes and repeats the things the pastor asked him to pray for but he can’t remember how to end so he just begins the whole prayer all over again but still can’t remember. Finally after a few rounds of this he leans over and asks the pastor, “Who was that guy again?”
“Jesus” the pastor answers.
“Oh yeah. In JESUS name we pray, Amen.”
Another time the same pastor asked an older gentlemen to pray and bless the food they were about to eat.
“Okay, let’s all bow our heads and close our eyes” the man began. Everyone gathered around the food, folded their hands and closed their eyes. Five seconds went by. Then ten. Still no prayer was uttered. Everyone began looking around and a few people caught a glimpse of the man running full tilt out of the room.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
On Monday we had an informal cooking lesson from a few of our good friends. We learned to cook a fish dish, a shrimp dish and a pork dish… three of our favorites. Here are a few pictures. Go to our web album to see all of them.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
Fresh off the plane
We’ve had a great couple of weeks with Sharon’s family. They came to experience a different culture, try new things and enjoy time with us and our new friends. As Sharon’s father Dave pointed out today, “We’ve certainly run the gamut of experiences here in Thailand.” It’s true. We pretty much tried to give them a taste of every aspect of life here from our daily language sessions and everyday cuisine to tourist attractions and special “jungle” restaurants.
Showing Dave, Kathie and Michelle around these past two weeks has made us realize just how comfortable we have become here in this new culture and language. It has also exposed areas we need to continue digging into as they ask questions we have no idea how to answer. Pray for safety as they travel back this week and look at the pictures embedded below: (more…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
Thai food is awesome
We’re so grateful to live in a country with amazing food. Some dishes tested our resolve but after a few tries our tolerance for spiciness, bitter flavors and different textures have been pushed to the limits and stretched. Eating more rice to cut down on the amount of other food we eat has resulted in some heath benefits as I discussed last week.
This post just covers the food we ate in the last 24 hours but we ate some of our favorite dishes. Just so you know… it will be difficult to find these dishes at your local Thai restaurant unless it specifically sells Northern Thai food. Chiang Mai food is quite different from southern Thailand food for example. Yesterday we had:(more…)
Signs cover nearly every square inch of available space in Thailand (like they do in many countries). With all the noise sometimes it’s hard to notice just one of them let alone read it as we’re driving by so today I spent an hour taking pictures of signs. Weird huh?
When I got home and started reading them I found some fabulous gems to share. The one on the right is a classic example. These little yellow signs are stuck high on telephone poles all over Thailand with short Christian messages that almost seem designed to purposely confuse people. I’m sure they were put there with the best of intentions as were the thousands of other signs in this city. (more…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Monday, April 25th, 2011
We had a great time of fellowship, worship, prayer and encouragement with our Thai church this weekend. It made our first Easter in Thailand and away from family much easier. The best part was this weekend showed us that all our hard work is paying off as people around us began to notice our language ability growing. We’re slowly getting out of that awkward first stage of language learning where you’re no fun to be around because you don’t speak the language but you need to speak the language so you can get better. Below are some pictures but be sure to check out the YouTube video too. Enjoy.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, January 1st, 2011
Day six of our week in photos: a national park with waterfalls and hot springs. Our trip there was quite unexpected and I’m not sure we’d have agreed to go if we’d known what we were getting ourselves into. We’re glad we went though and you can see all our pictures on Picasa. Here’s a taste of what we saw, felt and ate:
At Maekampong Waterfall
With older brother Kik. It's cool that he likes photography too. Good connection.
The sign on the left says "Sharp Curve." We must have passed hundreds of these signs.
Here's the food I ate. Some of it was completely raw... I (Ric) have been sick since eating it. Sharon refrained fortunately.
Boiling eggs in the springs is a big deal... people love it.
Testing the spring water.
Kids like to swim in the warm pools. That water must taste and smell like eggs...
Marco... Polo!
A wide shot of the entire hot springs area.
Food left for ghosts. Some Thais believe you must share your food with them or they will haunt you.
These are a sample of the 50 pictures we have on our Picasa web albums. If you just can’t get enough of waterfall and hot springs pictures check them all out.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Friday, October 29th, 2010
Here are a few pictures of a church barbecue we went to tonight. Quite delicious! Here we eat pretty much every piece of the cow so if you think you’re seeing a cut of meat you wouldn’t get at the grocery store back home you’re probably right. Check out all the pictures here. These are just samples:
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, February 27th, 2010
A lot of people ask us about the food we ate in Thailand, so we thought we’d give you a sample of some of our favorite dishes.
Khao Soi
Thai khao soi is a soup-like dish made with deep-fried crispy egg noodles, pickled cabbage, shallots, lime, nam prik pao, and meat in a curry-like sauce containing coconut milk. The curry is similar to that of yellow or Massaman curries but is thinner.
Thai Fried Rice
Thai fried rice (Khao Phad): The flavor of Thai fried rice is radically different from that of common fried rice, mostly due to the use of Jasmine rice and has various additions not found in Chinese fried rice. It is usually served with sliced cucumber and “Prik nam pla”, a spicy sauce made of Thai chili, fish sauce and chopped garlic.
Thai Suki
Thai Suki known simply as suki in Thailand, is a Thai variant of hot pot, a communal dish where diners dipmeat, seafood, noodles, dumplings and vegetables into a pot of broth cooking at the table and dip it into a spicy “sukiyaki sauce” before eating.
Ground Pork Salad
Ground Pork Salad (larb or laab in Thailand) is an addictive appetizer of ground meat spiked with chiles, lime juice and fish sauce and served with lettuce leaves for wrapping.
Garlic Fish
This amazing lime garlic fish garnished with mint and carrot doesn’t seem like typical “Thai food”. It showed us just how diverse and unique Thai food can be.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
If you Google "Zingerman’s Deli" you will come up with all sorts of mouth-watering results. Just writing this article is making me hungry. Now I’m eating a bowl of cereal as I continue writing. So here’s how the day went down:
We went to our internships just like we always do on Wednesday mornings. During our morning meetings we celebrated Sharon’s birthday with yogurt parfaits from McDonalds and birthday cards. It was nice of Leslie to remember her birthday even though we’d only been working for a few days.
We left the internship early and went south. It took us a while to find Zingerman’s because we don’t have one of those fancy GPS things in our car… too bad. We actually had do the old fashioned thing and stop into a AAA insurance store to get directions. Actually, I thought it was fun to drive around Ann Arbor.
When we arrived at Zingermans and parked we walked in and tried all sorts of new things at the urging of the staff, who are very friendly and helpful as you look through their massive list of sandwiches. After our meal we took a long walk in downtown Ann Arbor and went back to Zingerman’s for desert.
We didn’t have a problem getting out of Ann Arbor and we arrived in Detroit in plenty of time of time to see Sam and Kari step out of the terminal gates into the baggage claim. It was great to see them and catch up a bit while we were looking for a Taco Bell. Taco Bell? After returning from Honduras that’s where they wanted to go. It was, perhaps, strangest birthday celebration Sharon has ever had.
A Year Ago Today:
We were in Cambodia! It was our last day and we went to a nice restaurant to celebrate Sharon’s birthday. That trip was an incredible, eye-opening oportunity (and a hard birthday to beat!).
We hope that in another year we will be weeks away from going to Cambodia to minister. Sometimes the steps seem insurmountable, but we know we have a great God and incredible support from our family and friends.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Sunday, May 17th, 2009
Missouri grew on us. It’s sad to say goodbye to so many people at the end of our two year training here because we’ve made a lot of great friends and memories. Goodbyes, like packing, are part of missionary life. I’ve found over the years that goodbyes also mean new beginnings. So here’s what our new beginning will look like:
Daily Life in Michigan:
Moving is just the first step. After we’ve settled in we will dig into Partnership Development, or sharing our hearts for Cambodia with churches and indivdiuals. This is a huge task since it will require a lot of appointments, informal meetings, formal meetings, presentations, and casual conversation.
Partnership Development is our primary focus, but much of our week will also be spent in our church’s office. Sharon and I are both volunteering 30 hours for an internship with Trinity Church, which will be a give and take sort of partnership resulting in mutual benefit and certainly fulfilling whatever needs we can help with.
As far as housing goes, we will be staying at my parent’s house in Willamston, about 20 minutes from Trinity, where we will intern. The situation couldn’t be more perfect as the rentors of the house just moved out, opening the house for our use.
God’s Provision:
It has been exciting to see how God has been providing for us and going before us in this situation. We are trusting Him to continue to provide as we’re faithful to freely share our vision for Cambodia and our needs.
Ric and Sharon Bruce On a journey with you to Thailand 
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