Ric and Sharon Bruce On a journey with you to Thailand
This week’s photo essay was snapped as I at in the back of a tour van followed by the Google Streetview car doing rounds in Chiang Dao, Thailand. Many villagers wore open stares of surprise and curiosity as it passed by. Here’s my favorite shot:
Google streetview car in Chiang Dao, Thailand
This is a video we made for kids from our home church. It’s meant to present our work in a simple, easy to understand way.
This past weekend Sharon and I took a trip with some good friends of ours. The experience was basically this: we’d stop somewhere for five minutes, rush out of the car, furiously snap pictures and jump back in the tiny pickup truck to speed off at 100 miles an hour down the road. We left at 4:00 AM on a Friday, drove 7 hours to Ayutthaya, another couple hours to the heart of Bangkok, 3 hours to Pattaya and finally turned around 12 hours from our home here. The whole trip was 58 hours long. Embedded below (maybe) are a few of the pictures. Click here to see them on Picasa. There are dozens more on Facebook.
Went to a lake a few hours away from Chiang Mai to do what our Christian friends here like to do best: eat, worship and pray. Here are the pictures:
November is one of our favorite months in Thailand for a few reasons: it’s beginning to get cooler at night, it’s almost Christmas and Loi Krathong. Loi Krathong is one of our favorite Thai holidays. People let hundreds of these lanterns float into the sky. Here’s a video of us adding to the chaos:
The water has gone down in our area and is now wreaking havok in suburbs of Bangkok, Thailand’s capital city. This year’s floods are the worst in 50 years and there are a lot of people that have lost everything as a result of this slow moving disaster. Some incredible photos at
are worth viewing and as always visit www.bangkokpost.com for the latest updates.
This weekend Sharon and I took an incredible trip out to Northeast Thailand, an area we’d like to work in full time. This weekend we experienced a merit-making ceremony for the deceased which blew our minds. Here are my favorite pictures from this weekend:
See them all here:
The mountains of Northern Thailand have fascinated us since we arrived. Here are a few shots from the top we took this month:
This year marks the worst flooding Thailand has experienced since 1942. Though our yard flooded for a few days we actually got off a lot easier than many people in Thailand who lost businesses, vehicles, homes, and even loved ones. Please pray for Thailand and for the ongoing flooding in Bangkok and the surrounding areas and check www.bangkokpost.com for more details. We are praying this will be an opportunity for God’s church in Thailand to rise to the occasion and make a real difference in people’s lives. Through this difficult time we hope to continue deepening our existing friendships and model lives of faith.
Today is the first anniversary of our adventure in Thailand. That doesn’t mean we did anything great… we’re pretty sure anyone could live in this beautiful country for a year. This first year is really YOUR victory and something you can be proud of. Without your continued prayers, interest and support this journey would be impossible. One year sounds like a long time but it’s barely scratching the surface of the time we’re committed to spend reaching people groups in Southeast Asia with the gospel.
Thailand has already gotten enough rain this year as far as everyone we know is concerned. It should be lightening up this time of year getting ready for the “cold season” but so far there have been few signs of improvement. We make the best of it on our motorcycle. Just have to watch out for the big puddles and make sure you stay visible. Here’s a picture from our lives tonight:
Under all that plastic is a big computer bag, a purse and a package from the US.
Sharon and I are breathing a sigh of relief this week as our second set of intensive language evaluations drew to a close yesterday. Virtually all we’ve done for the past two weeks since Sharon’s family left was prepare for the evaluation by doubling our language sessions, spending hours reviewing and answering in-depth culture questions that our consultant reviewed before our language check.
It’s good news. We’re both on track to achieve our goal of reaching a “highly capable” language level by the end of our second year of study (a year from now). We feel grateful to our consultant for conducting a thorough check and spending days processing the raw data we’ve provided her into a set of recommendations to help streamline our study time. I can’t imagine doing this alone.
You can help by praying for us as we study this difficult language and learn more about this complex culture. (more…)
Got my conference face on. Has a camera in it.
We spent last week with some of our favorite people: our co-workers. Since many of them work in remote parts of Southeast Asia we don’t get to see them often. The six days flew by chock full of reports from the various teams, workshops and meetings with our leaders and fun times of fellowship and encouragement with fellow workers.
Below I’ve embedded several pictures of Sharon and I taken during the past week but believe it or not we weren’t the only ones there. You can see the rest of the people by visiting our Picasa web albums (also available on our new Google+ account).
This week is one of refreshment, encouragement and strategic planning with other members of our organization serving in this region. We’re thankful for this time, these friends and the clarity the first few days have given us so far. This marks the first week since our arrival that we’ve taken done virtually no language and culture study. Instead our days consist of hearing ministry reports from our various tribal teams, business meetings, praying for Thailand and encouraging our fellow workers. Pray this week will be profitable, encouraging, fun and safe. Thanks!
Holy City Chiang Mai 2011
We participated in this year’s annual gathering of 7,000 Christians for worship and prayer last night. Like last year our church led worship at this gathering which would appear to attract about 2% of all Christians in Thailand if you divide 7000 by the latest numbers given at Congress 7.5: 400,000 Christians in a nation of 69 million. Anyways, there are some sample images embedded below or you can see them all here. (more…)
New pictures of our latest adventures can be found on our Picasa Web Albums and a few examples are embedded below on our website. We went up Doi Suthep, a mountain near our house, with friends and we decided to pay ten dollars for the tour at the palace on top. The tour guide wanted to be our dedicated photographer so that worked out great. Normally there wouldn’t be so many pictures of us in here.
Below are some samples. Click the picture to see it in a larger format.
See all the pictures on our Picasa Web Albums. (more…)
This week I’ve been following a story in the Bangkok Post about a unique cultural phenomenon here in Thailand called “pubpeab.” It’s basically Thailand’s version of “planking“. Lying flat on your face in public just doesn’t fit well culturally so people take pictures of themselves in religious “pubpeab” poses in places all over the world and post them to Facebook.
So this week I’ve been thinking about the culture of sitting. (more…)
Lassie?
So what do you do? You’re a family of three, including Fluffy, but you’ve only got a bicycle with an engine in it… er scooter. No problem. He rides shotgun. Or is he driving here?
I actually saw the dog get up on this thing. The couple hopped on the bike first and the dog waited patiently looking back and forth at their faces for permission to board. The guy nodded and the dog climbed up like a kid on a jungle gym. I think he checked his teeth in the mirror before plopping his rear down and panting approvingly. Off they went.
Here’s a gallery of other angles and motorcycle-related pictures: (more…)
Incidentally, we’re in an organization with other people in it. People we like. Unfortunately because we live in very different parts of a large city we rarely have occasion to see each other (Chiang Mai has a metropolitan population of over a million). Thankfully we have problems to bring us together. Saturday our language helper went up a mountain for a week of fasting, prayer, and reading. No language sessions for a week?
My first phone call was to our national culture and language acquisition coordinator Janna. She told me that Kruu Phaylin, who teaches Anthony and Emilie, could probably fit us in. At first we were nervous… but take a look at this face. Who could possibly stay nervous long? (more…)
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