This passed week in odds and ends (forgive the disconectedness)

Saturday my team and some of the Christians from the church visited one of the poor neighborhoods in Bangkok. It was Children's Day and the work place of one of the church members was hosting a Children's Day event for the kids of that neighborhood and we went to help watch and play with the kids. It was great fun. Alot of those kids hadn't seen white people much before and were very excited to see us and talk with us and play with some.

Sunday worship was very encouraging to me. I appreciate the woman who translates for me (Ann) so much. She is a very very good interpreter. Also Sunday I finished writting my lesson for Wednesday evening women's class and was very glad to have it done.

Monday (even though it was day off) I hung out at RCC with the people who live there. I played ping-pong most of the day (which I have become pretty good at in the passed two weeks. I've had good teachers) and I got to cook Italian food for dinner.

Tuesday I gained two new readers, and so my schedule is becoming quite full and busy now. I want to ask prayers for one of my new readers. Her name is Way and she is definitely interested in Christianity. I'm trying to get her to set up having a Bible study in Thai with one of my Thai team mates. Also Tueday, Thai language class was very hard. It was about classifiers. In Thai every noun has a classifier so when I memorize vocabulary I have to learn two Thai words for every one English noun (it's a little hard to explain). I'm actually feeling pretty good about my Thai learning right now. I've gotten to the point where I can usually understand the topic that people are discussing, maybe not what they are saying about the topic, but at least the topic.

Wednesday I gave my lesson to the women during evening worship, and I felt it went pretty well (especially considering that public speaking is not my gift). I got a lot of good feed back, so I thank God that he was able to speak through me despite my deficiencies.

I have been reading a book about Buddhism that one of my team mates recommended to me. It has been good to learn more about the religion that is pushed on most Thais. From what I learned in my reading this week, I think that Buddhism is a very lonely religion. Buddhism teaches that each person must work to gain their own salvation and that no one can help them; it's entirely up to them. Salvation is a very individualistic matter and others are not needed and may even hinder obtaining salvation.