Greetings friends and loved one,
It has been a week since we first arrived here in the Venice of the East. We have already experienced so much and still have much more to go. Saturday was the first ASEAN English camp. ASEAN is an economic community between the nations of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Philippines. Our day started at 8:00am. We traveled to Nakhon Pathom the day before to set up the gym for the camp. We were assigned a nation and were split into pairs. 5 of the Christian schools were represented at the camp with 25 students from each school. They were split into groups of 11, and were assigned a home country. We spent the day singing with the children, teaching them about the various countries of ASEAN that we were assigned to, and helping them practice their English. They even taught us a few things. We had a lot of fun with them. The kids were amazing and loved to learn and were excited to be there. They were very generous, sharing their team prizes of cookies and crackers without any prompting. Emily was surrounded by kids giving her their treats. On Sunday we went to the Sapanluang Church, which is a bilingual Thai/Chinese church in Bangkok. The service had two preachers, one would speak in Chinese and the other would translate in Thai. We had to wear a radio and earpiece to listen to someone translating it into English for us. Afterwards one of the ladies from the church took us to a restaurant a block from the church. We then went to a Sunday Market. The market really opened our eyes. It was very crowded with so much going on around us. There were beggars, booths everywhere, and it was pretty cramped. It was hard to tell where you were, and we just had to go with the flow of the crowd. We moved carefully as a group as I was made the group watchmen making sure nobody was left behind or went anywhere without someone else. One of the highlights of the market was the fried mealworms we ate. We have video proof of it. Later we went to possibly one of the nicest malls, it had a Lamborghini and BMW dealer on the 4th floor in the mall. We went to the movies there. Yesterday we took a boat to the Grand Palace. We took lots and lots of pictures. We had a tour guide lead us around teaching us about all the different temples there. We also saw the temple of the Emerald Buddha. It was very hot out and we got lots of sun, leaving some interesting tan lines on us. Then we went to a really nice Christian jeweler. Sarah and Judy decided to be wild and get their ears pierced. Today we went to the FEBC radio station and learned about how they use their radio station to send the Gospel to unreached people groups. The work they do is amazing, even bringing whole villages to know Christ. We got to help do stuff around the station. We even got to do recordings that will be used by the station!!! Tomorrow we are going to visit programs that work with prostitutes and a program that works with street child. We continue to learn the culture and try many new foods here. Please continue to pray for us and that we have safe travels as we prepare to travel to Nakhon Srithammarat on Thursday night.
Eric Juengel, Summer Service 2012
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