Learning Thai

We had an activity filled weekend with lots of new, interesting experiences. This weekend was the Loy Krathong holiday- it's amazing that we are now celebrating annual Thai holidays for the second time! Traditionally, people float "krathong" (little boats made of a cross section of banana tree and decorated with folded leaves, flowers, incense and candles). Many Thais believe that floating a krathong will create good luck and they also do it to honor the Buddha and to thank the Goddess of Water. It's also a symbolic way of letting go of anger, grudges, and wrongs so that one can start start fresh (we saw some people adding their own hair to the float to symbolize letting go of the bad parts of themselves).
We went to a local temple and canal to observe the festivities.

This crowd of people at the temple were involved in an amulet making ceremony. Several monks were making amulets from clay. The white strings that people held or had on their heads are all connected to the amulet making process and enabled people to share in the merit making.

Elderly, highly respected monk.

A man meditates before releasing his krathong in the canal.

Floating krathong- beautiful!

Also this weekend, we had our first team and Thai friends "celebration" meeting above a coffee shop in our neighborhood- this one on the theme of giving thanks to God. It was an exciting step for our team and we all enjoyed the corporate worship with Thai believers and were happy to have unbelievers/seekers join us too. A few pictures of the fellowship.....

Sharing a meal.

Giving thanks to God for his blessings.

I was so happy my friend Chaweewan could come. Here she is helping to read the children's story in Thai.

Praise God for what he is doing!!

Then to wrap up our busy weekend, tonight we attended a party at another home owned by our landlords. They are in the process of "blessing" the brand new house. Early this morning nine monks came to perform a chanting ceremony and then our landlords served food to friends at the house all day. Another learning experience!
-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Happy Thanksgiving from our family!

Today was a great day for thinking about how good God has been to our family, especially over this past year. We enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with our our team friends plus Ben and our EMM friends Skip and Carol Tobin. We stuffed ourselves full of chicken, rolls, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and then topped it off with Sharon's lovely pumpkin pie! After dinner we enjoyed Carol, Skip, and Ben's mandolin and guitar playing and had a time of worship. Again this year I miss our families so much, but I'm so GRATEFUL for the family that God has given us here too and all the Thai friends as well. He has been GOOD and we are thankful!

The whole gang at dinner.

Giving thanks.

-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Claire decided that she would like a chance to do a blog of her own. She got the camera for one whole day and took 111 pictures! These are SOME of her pictures of life here and her thoughts......

Lewis likes vegetables and he likes to hop around and I hope he likes his home. I like to hold him and I don't want to let him go to hop around! I give him food and I give him water. I'm happy with a rabbit!!

I put the picture of Eliza on the blog for Uncle George could see and think of Lizey and the picture of the shirt he sent her that says Delaware!! Eliza is getting bigger and we like to watch Barney together and playing leggos and I just hope that Uncle George looks on my blog!!

Lucinda is our fish. And Daddy feeds her and she's interesting to watch and she is orange and she has little white spots and she is a pretty fish.

This is my Thai alphabet chart. I say the letters in school- my whole class shouts them together every morning! And we stand in line for the King's song. And I get kind of bored of it! And I like going to school. And I go swimming and swimming in Thai is wai nam!

Maggie is a pretty doll. She has a purple crown and she has curls in her hair. I like to play Cinderella with her and I like Daddy to play with me. She praises God and she's a Christian Princess! And I like her and she likes me!

My backpack is a purple backpack with red straps and the name of my school is Mahesak and you can read the letters on the straps of my backpack to see that it's called Mahesak.

Mommy is reading Little House on the Prairie books to me. The little girls' names are Laura and Mary and Carrie and Grace. In this book they are moving and they rode a train.

Mommy bought a Hello Kitty plate for me when she was buying pie pans. When I eat my food, I can see Hello Kitty and the poodles on the bottom and the plate is pink and I like it and Eliza has one too, just the same.

Kaew Man Gai is rice and chicken and Mommy likes it the most I think. I like it too.

I have a dollhouse and it can hardly fit in the box because I use lots of little people now. When Grandma was here, she played it with me and now it's not as fun without her playing it with me, but it's still fun anyway to play it with Eliza.

Taxis show little red lights and when the lights are on it means that you can get in it, and if the light is off, it means you can't get in it because it's full. I like riding in taxis because they are cool and sometimes they have toys in the back window!

The King is a person who was in the hospital and people like him and the King either wears yellow, blue or pink, whichever day it is. Lots of people here have yellow king shirts. The King is a good man.

The Thippawan bus is orange and we have our favorite bus driver and he's nice and he blows his horn when he goes by us!

The papaya tree is going to get cut down because it's not growing any papayas and it might fall down if they don't cut it down and that could be dangerous!

We had family church after supper and I took pictures of church. Our Bible story was about Jesus waiting for two days to heal a dead man- Lazarus.

Winn-Dixie was a good movie and me and mommy watched it last night and it wasn't exactly the same as the book.

-Claire's blog

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

When we first moved to the Bangkok area, we used most of our weekends for tourist trips into the city to explore. As the newness has worn off, we've done tourist trips mainly when we've had visitors. But we still have a lot to explore and learn, so we decided to use this past Saturday to check out a place a little closer to home: the Erawan Elephant museum (in Pak Nam, a 10 minute ride from our house).

We've seen the huge three-headed elephant from the road, but we didn't realize that it is surrounded by a beautiful garden and has an interesting museum inside.

The girls posing with some little girls doing traditional Thai dance outside the museum. Claire and Eliza really loved the trip- especially the tiny Thai tea sets, walking up the steps in the elephant's leg and feeding fish in the fountains.

The beautiful stained glass ceiling of the museum which shows a world map and zodiac. The museum is located beneath the large three-headed elephant, and even goes up into the body of the elephant. The bottom level has many beautiful displays of ancient Chinese and Thai furniture and utensils (I saw a ming dynasty vase!), the main hall was a shrine, and the elephant body houses Buddha relics and images.

Photo by Claire. We are with a beast which is said to keep the unworthy out of heaven!

The main hall also has four pillars depicting the four major world religions which are said to support world peace. Interesting to see the stories of the Bible depicted in such a place.

This elephant is HUGE. We always stare in awe as we pass by on the road and it's even more impressive up close. To give you an idea of it's size, it weighs 250 tons and is 29 m. tall (95 ft.).

More photography by Claire.

-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This morning, while Candice and Claire did the grocery shopping, Eliza and I did a little exploring in Pak Nam. This is a town at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River and it's around 10 kilometers from our place. We don't know much about the town, but we're considering it as a possible location for future team members. They have a fascinating market along the river and also have many large ships passing through on their way to and from the Bangkok port. I think that it could be a great place to interact with a lot of Thai people. Since it's outside of the city there aren't many foreigners, so someone living there would likely get a lot of attention and many chances to practice speaking Thai.

We met a group of friendly men sitting near the dock where a boat had just unloaded a bunch of small fish. Eliza enjoyed watching the workers sort the fish and enjoyed the cookies and soda that the men gave her.

We also came across these men making a huge Thai dessert.

After our fun excursion we bought some fried chicken and sticky rice then rode the songthaew back to Thippawan.

-Tom

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Street Sushi Once you brush aside the nagging questions about how long this seafood has been sitting in the heat, street sushi becomes a delicious snack. This friendly couple is out every weekday afternoon with their motorcycle cart, selling sushi that they made earlier in the day. While we lived in the States I never had the inclination (or much of an opportunity) to eat sushi. But here in Thailand it is cheap and plentiful and I'm developing an addiction.