Ric and Sharon Bruce On a journey with you to Thailand
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…)
The largest open-able bible in the world.
This week was a rough one for us. We lost over $3,000 worth of camera equipment, our passports are gone and on the way back from Bangkok our bus was involved in a serious accident. Our first days back from Bangkok many of our Thai friends visited us or called us checking to see how we were doing. Saturday we called friends and family back home, our pastor came to visit us and we had a language session Saturday like nothing happened. We’re moving on. Our friends here and in the states have helped us see the silver lining: this week we caught a no-frills glimpse of Thai culture, put a magnifying glass to the Thai church and learned a few things about ourselves in the process. (more…)
Never fear faithful blog readers. Yes, our two best cameras were stolen but we never leave home without a backup plan. Sharon keeps a little Canon point and shoot in her purse all the time so we’re still able to share video and pictures from Congress 7.5! It takes pretty decent pictures. For your viewing pleasure we added a gallery to our photo page of the 20 best photos we took during our trip. But not just that! Below we’ve embedded a new video of Bill Hybels making his opening remarks toward the end of the conference and a video featuring various other aspects of Congress 7.5 at Thammasat University. Enjoy. (more…)
Not real bag contents
It appears someone stole our cameras and passports today. We got talking to some really nice people on a songthau and I forgot my camera bag on it. I realized I’d left it in about five minutes, took the next available bus and tracked down the driver back at the conference center. He said an elderly man had gotten off a different truck, saw my bag and volunteered to walk the bag over to the lost and found by the main desk.
As you can guess, the bag with expensive DSLR camera equipment and our passports never made it to lost and found. (more…)
As I write this on my iPhone laying on my hard-as-a-rock dorm bed I’m staring at my glow-in-the-dark wristband with the words “With-Him-We-Can 1 Million 2015″. The first words that come to mind are, “Not-In-This-Lifetime”. But that’s not quite right is it?
(more…)
On the road again. This time it’s to a four day leader’s conference down in Bangkok. The gathering’s primary purpose is to work toward unity in the Thai church, to discuss strategies and progress toward goals and to pray for Thailand. We have the privilege to participate this year.
For us the opportunity couldn’t be cooler: over the course of the next four days we get to rub shoulders with the leaders of the Thai church, meet other missionaries and sense their heart for this nation. We’re going with friends from a local seminary that we plan to spend more time at this next school year so we’re praying this will be a time of getting to know them and experiencing this event with them. Other prayer requests for this time include: (more…)
"Only Jesus pays for sin"
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…)
For your viewing pleasure I’ve placed dots and drawn arrows all over a map of Thailand illustrating the places we’ve visited. Pictures and captions show you what the place looks like and explains when we went, why we traveled there and for how long we stayed. Don’t miss the small text in the lower corner of each caption linking you to the pictures of that event.
This map thing is designed to take the place of our regular April newsletter which would have been all about our travels anyway. View it here>>> (more…)
It’s been raining almost every afternoon as the rainy season begins here. Today’s rain was the hardest we’ve experienced yet with strong winds, hard rain and lightning for about ten minutes. Today’s rain reminded me to pray for those who live along the Mississippi River in the US and for families of the recent victims of floods in southern Thailand. Fortunately no one died in this rain. All it did was give our motorcycle a wash. Our neighbors were bummed by the rain though. They didn’t get their clothes off the line in time and they had to scramble all over their flooded yard in the rain scooping up clothes! (more…)
Several friends in the past year have mentioned they sponsored or are currently sponsoring a child through Compassion International in Thailand. We don’t know all 32,700 children Compassion sponsors are involved in helping but we’ve met a few dozen at least. Yesterday we went to a graduation ceremony for an elite group of Compassion kids: those that went through the grueling five year Leadership Development Program for college students. Pictures (more…)
Every single night we hear a nocturnal male Tokay gecko making his “tookay” call and occasionally we hear him crashing around our house somewhere. Today we got to see him for the first time and he’s HUGE. The pictures embedded on our website show him in all his blueish-gray orange polka-dotted glory. For reference we measured the screen hinge he’s near and it’s an inch and a half long. (more…)
If you needed it, here’s HD proof that Sharon and I have no idea what we’re doing half the time – especially in unfamiliar situations. Embedded on our website or at our Youtube channel is a video of us learning a new worship song in Thai on the tallest mountain in Thailand. (more…)
Six hours from our home in Chiang Mai there’s a small village tucked back in the mountains near Mae La Noi, Thailand. Few foreigners will ever have the privilege of visiting but this village is special. Of all the Lawa tribal villages in Thailand this was the first one to be given the opportunity to understand and respond to the gospel in their language. Today it boasts the first Lawa Church in Thailand, an unassuming wooden building near the center of the small group of houses. (more…)
Lots of things make Chiang Mai famous: stunning temples, the zoo, jungle adventures, etc. Beyond that, however, the thing Chiang Mai may be best known for is its annual water fight during Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year. It’s insane. Today we walked for five hours around the city’s moat throwing an empty bucket into the moat, hauling it up by a rope and dumping the contents (trash, muck, scum and leaves among other things) on people as we walked. Check out our short video (more…)
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Blog Announcements
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Thursday, May 19th, 2011Sent by a blog reader.
We have a few general blog announcements as we prepare to fly to a province we haven’t visited yet. This past week we were so encouraged by the comments, emails and notes showing your support. Thank-you!
A friend sent us the picture you see in the thumbnail of this post. In just seven words it sums up what we spent 383 words explaining in our post about eating more rice. Speaking of pictures have you seen the pictures I took today at the temple? Personally, I prefer videos like the one we posted about the monk parade on Tuesday. Our most popular post this week was definitely a short summary of the “Rigors of Missionary Life.” (more…)
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