Yeah I know it's been a long time since this blog was updated. I have a whole bunch of random things to share. So I'd better not try to sort them out and just do it, lest this blog grows more and more forsaken.
So Bangkok, eh. I went there in late October and I really loathed the idea of living in the capital city of Thailand. It's noisy, it's dirty, and there are not that many (cozy... or any, in this matter) coffee shops unlike in my sweet home Chiang Mai. So I went to explore some places in the south, Phuket, Chonburi and Phattaya, before the school started. Chonburi is small town, practically a fishermen's village in the not so deep south of Thailand. I went the to spend time with and see the ministry of some lovely people from Canada (of course :)). Karen and Ricky Sanchez and their four beautiful girls have lived there for a few years. Their burden for abandoned children led them to put every effort to provide shelter for kids with AIDS. A growing facility of Abundant Life Home Orphanage. Spending some time with the kids and workers at Abundant Life Home was a blessing. It was just the very beginning of dealing with missing my Home of Joy for the next 6 months.
I was also blessed to meet another lovely Canadian couple, Judy and Walter Martens. They extended really parental care to me when I so needed it and opened their nice little home for me to stay with them.
Phuket was nice, but too many Russians everywhere, hehe. I went to the resort to spend some time with my Canadian family from Mongolia. And we as always had SUCH a good time together...
Pattaya was not ok, I could barely stand being in this tourists (Russians, mainly) and red light packed town. Later on my dislike of Russian tourists was challenged by this point of view someone had opened my eyes to. Pattaya had been a core of sex industry in Thailand for decades. Years of prayer and ministry in the city were answered by a flow of Russian families coming there on vacation. Family presence of Russian tourists who come to the tropics to escape some slightly cold winters started to change the atmosphere in Pattaya. And now there's another field open for the ministry: the Russian families themselves...
with all these thoughts, impressions, and some rest before the start of the school I came to Bangkok. The Mission base is situated in Ram 2, one of the outskirts of the city and reminded me of my the district I grew up in in Russia, only that there were no drug dealers in Ram 2...
