Last night we went with some of our Karen friends to Hoi Geaow and sang a bunch of Karen Christmas songs with them-
Here are pictures on our Picasa account of our trip to Turtle Mountain, our church’s sister church. The bullet holes in the cross are a from an incident a few years ago where two men came onto the church property at night and blasted the church building several times to scare off the members.
Up, Up and Away is video we posted a while ago that no one really noticed. During November youths in Chiang Mai compete to make the biggest and best “Com Fai”s. Here are a few of the entries:
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Last month's Songkran parade
Nope. This thing is serious. Check out this video I took today of a passing parade and threw on our website. We’re not completely baffled by these things anymore but I will say that every single one is different. We’re still in the process of figuring out what certain aspects mean… like what’s the symbolism of the guy holding the statue and the long quill pen? No one’s riding a horse in this one but there’s a carved horse’s head on the tricycle cart they’re pushing the drum on. What do you notice? Help us out by watching this video and the previous one then noting your observations and questions in the comments. We will investigate the parades further and as always keep you informed right here.(more…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, May 14th, 2011
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…)
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…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Sunday, March 27th, 2011
Embedded on our website and, like always, posted on YouTube is a video of what we thought were men acting out what was once a traditional tribal dance at Chiang Mai’s cultural center. After showing it to friends at our church and hearing them say it was an old Thai dance we’re not sure exactly what the history of the dance is. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty cool act. Check it out: (more…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Friday, March 25th, 2011
At the risk of saying too much about how we learn Thai we’ve posted a new video on YouTube and embedded it on our website with a detailed breakdown of how we learn Thai. The step-by-step process depicted in the video only misses the part where we review the dubbed video over and over until we understand the entire thing. These are the highlights of a three hour session last week for us: (more…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Sunday, March 20th, 2011
This video shows you what our lessons are looking like these days. We play videos of everyday activities we saw in the community and our teacher dubs over them in Thai with what is happening in the video (step-by-step description of the actions). For example in this video he is saying something like, “The other morning at the restaurant a woman cleaned off a table. (more…)
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, March 19th, 2011
We’ve created a new video showing you more of the activities that take place at the local temples. To get this footage we had to drive up Doi Suthep, a mountain near Chiang Mai and then climb hundreds of steps to the temple. The earlier you get up there there better so we left at 7:00 AM. See it at our website or on youtube.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Friday, February 25th, 2011
Embedded on our website and available at YouTube is a quick video of us driving in a section of our new home, Chiang Mai. It shows the east side of the famous “moat” surrounding the city and Thapae gate. Thanks for watching.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Friday, February 18th, 2011
On our Youtube account and embedded on our website you will find a video of an important religious holiday here in Thailand. Days such as these see hundreds of people gather at local temples to make merit, light candles and incense and listen to sermons and chants by monks. As you watch the video think about the creative and unique ways mankind has devised to worship anything other than the one true God. Thanks for watching.
Rom 1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Monday, January 24th, 2011
This video trailer of our first three months in Thailand has a bunch of really random things in it… a trip up a mountain, waterfalls, and a silk factory. Click the video below or watch it on Youtube if you don’t see it here.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Monday, October 25th, 2010
We’re now officially in “stage one” culture and language acquisition here in Thailand. Up to this point we’ve been in a “warm-up” phase which basically entails getting our ear attuned to the new sounds and our minds and hearts used to our new way of life. This new stage looks quite a bit different. There are no trips to “the office” for orientation. There are no structured, dictated outings to go on.
Our schedule is completely up to us and our language learning can pretty much be tailored to fit our needs…. as long as we put in at least 40-50 hours per week. So what do we do? Well, there are three basic elements:
“Exposure” time involves observation and participation in our larger context: getting into the community. This can be anything, but it needs to be consistent, varied and purposeful. We need goals – in fact we plan exactly what we want to observe, learn and participate in to maximize our time.
“Language Helper” time is intense. We sit down with our language helper in front of a picture book we created in planning the week before. Our goal is to have him tell us what is happening in the pictures we show him. After he tells what is happening in each picture a few times we begin quizzing on this new material.
“Processing” time is supposed to be minimal. We try to spend as little time as possible putting data into the computer, planning for our upcoming days and doing rote memorization.
Please pray we’ll find a healthy balance of all three elements and also find plenty of time for reviewing our older material. Here is a sample of Thai we’re learning by rote memorization. Not our ideal, but you need a few key survival phrases:
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Monday, July 12th, 2010
For my birthday I got a new video camera. Thought we’d throw a test video up of what we did today. May not seem extraordinary but whatever. You should see more updates like this one periodically with our new Flip camera.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
It’s amazing how God works. Our May update included a list of special gifts that would be a blessing as we move to Thailand this fall. One important item was a work computer to house our many recordings, pictures, and video we’ll be taking during language learning.
A great friend and supporter answered the call giving us her old computer, a docking station, and a wonderful laptop case. The computer is a Dell Latitude D610 with a 1.88 Ghz processor, 1 Gb of RAM, an 80 Gb hard drive and the very latest Windows and Office suite installed on it. For those who don’t speak computer: it’s a great work horse. We’ll use it until it falls apart.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
That title looks like something you’d find on a missionary’s website, right? This Sunday Sharon and I had the unique opportunity to share our ministry with about 200 kids at our home church in Lansing. It was a lot of fun to show them some authentic artifacts, video clips, and pictures from our journey up until this point. But honestly they blessed us far more than we could have blessed them. They prayed for us, asked great questions and thought about where God might be leading them on their journey.
I love their little prayers: “Dear Jesus please keep Ric and Sharon safe as they drive… or… fly…. to…” Other kids, “Thailand! Thailand!” Kid: “Thailand.”
Precious. Please pray some of the kids would be touched by our presentation and that a seed for missions would be planted in their lives. Thanks.
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Here is a video done by Grace International School designed to show foreigners on their way to Thailand what it will be like to live in the city. It’s a great resource and it has helped us understand some things despite the fact we just visited. We will be living in Chiang Mai for two years to learn Thailand’s language and culture before moving to a more remote area without access to these luxuries. We’ll have to enjoy Chiang Mai while we can!
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Here is a short video I put together showing the creativity of the people we met in Thailand. It starts with a radio station we visited and proceeds to a store, a basket weaver, and finally a weaving loom. Enjoy.
Ric and Sharon Bruce On a journey with you to Thailand 
It’s amazing how God works. Our 
That title looks like something you’d find on a missionary’s website, right? This Sunday Sharon and I had the unique opportunity to share our ministry with about 200 kids at our home church in Lansing. It was a lot of fun to show them some authentic artifacts, video clips, and pictures from our journey up until this point. But honestly they blessed us far more than we could have blessed them. They prayed for us, asked great questions and thought about where God might be leading them on their journey.
