Missive 3 – 2015

I don’t want to rub it in, but the weather here has been magnificent for the last three weeks. While Adelaide sweltered in an over 40 degree heatwave we enjoyed days of sub-30 degrees and nights that were down in the teens. The mornings have been so cold that the Thais are getting around in parkas and coming up for hugs just to keep warm. To fill you with envy let me describe morning tea on the building site. Two of the Thai women come to the site bearing plates of watermelon, sliced pineapple so sweet you eat it last so all the other stuff tastes OK by comparison, cubes of papaya and refreshing pomelo. Jugs of cordial and iced water complete the table. As the girls appear the cry of “smoko!” goes up across the site and we all sit under the trees, enjoying the refreshments and the cool breeze which has prevailed during our stay. This is then repeated in the middle of the afternoon. At 12 noon “khin khow” is shouted (lunch, or literally, “eat rice”) and we all troop off to the dining room where we sit down to a beautiful range of Thai food each day, deliberately “mai phet” (not spicy) to suit the tastes of the “ferengues” (foreigners). Now that should make our building team bigger in 2016!! The work is going ahead quickly and well. As I begin to write this we have topped the walls around the outside and the trusses go up this week. Over 3,500 blocks have been laid in this time. After 7 days of block-laying I have lost the fingerprints on my left hand (I’ve taken to wearing a glove on my right) and the cement dries out the skin to the point of cracking. I asked Ben (see Missive 2) jokingly if he knew anything about safe-cracking that he could teach me now I didn’t have fingerprints. He said that would be no problem, he’d done a few in his time!! Isn’t the grace of God good?!! And now to introduce another couple of team members. Marty Kuhlevein comes from Queensland and owns a large fleet of school buses, a fleet of skip collecting trucks, and a fleet of liquid waste trucks. He is a bit over 30, became a Christian a few short years ago, celebrated by having “RIGHTEOUS” tattooed across his chest, and has taken up boxing in the middleweight division to keep fit. Becoming a Christian didn’t go down well with his second wife and he is praying for a restoration in that relationship. David Hill is an older bloke from Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. He came out of the army as an alcoholic and with two broken marriages behind him. Becoming a Christian healed him of his addiction and he is rejoicing in what God has done in his life, including meeting his third wife at church. He is an electrician and has been put to good use preparing for the wiring through the house and this week will install switchboards and wiring. He has worked mainly with Ben and it has been great to see the mentoring that is happening. He offered Ben 1000baht if he didn’t swear for a whole day – and then said if you can choose to do it for one day, you can do it for the rest of your life. I spent some time with Ben today explaining the freedom that comes from choosing righteousness. It’s great to see God’s grace at work! Whun rang the other night to say she has bought her motorbike and had quite an adventure on the first day she rode it into work. She leaves Ban Meata about 8am and has to ride about 25km into the city of Phrae. She doesn’t finish work until about 7pm so she has to ride home in the dark. On that first day she found that her headlight wasn’t working so with some ingenuity she put the light on her mobile phone at the front and rode home very slowly. Sharon and John (Managers at Ban Meata Phrae) told her where to get it fixed the next day so she duly took it in for repair. To her great embarrassment she discovered that it works perfectly but she hadn’t turned it on!! A couple of Sundays ago a few of us went up into the mountains near Ban Meata to a place called Khao Kho where there is a new Buddhist temple with the most amazing and extravagant mosaic decorations and where their signature statues of Buddha are made up of five Buddhas sitting in decreasing size in front of another. The complex, including its surrounding gardens is spectacular so we went to visit. It was the coldest day we have experienced in Thailand and the mountain on which the temple sits was in dense cloud – we were able to see the mosaics but couldn’t see the top of the temple and couldn’t see the 40 metre high Buddhas. A bit disappointing for those who hadn’t seen it and fits into the “next time” category. All of this is to a god made of stone and I was reminded of the asherah poles and the Baal worship on the high places in Israel mentioned so often in Kings and Chronicles. And reminded also that South Australia is now the proud owner of a Buddhist temple on one of the high places south of Adelaide, with a giant Buddha due to be constructed! As I write there are 3 days of work before the building team leaves – the trusses are up on top of the walls (much heavy lifting), the ceiling joists are being welded underneath the trusses (more heavy lifting because they are welded into 24 metre lengths) and I am currently laying the last row of blocks so the walls reach the ceiling. That’s it for this week – until next time ……….. God bless Ron