Our Church Home in Bangkok

Every Sunday morning we go to Lat Prao Rd. Soi 87 for worship at Peace of Bangkok Church. We have grown to love and appreciate this tight knit church family and we would like to introduce you to some of our friends and give you a few pictures of what our Sunday morning and afternoon routine looks like.

Church starts at about 10:00 am and they are usually not to far off that mark. We arrive by either taxi or bus and are greeted by a series of "sawadee krap" (by men) or "sawadee kaa"(by women) and chat with friends until the worship band is warmed up and we are ready to sing. Everything is in Thai of course but regardless of how much or little we understand everyone's love for Jesus comes through crystal clear!

From Peace of BKK Church

After about 45-60 min of worship there is normally a time for people to share testimony. Then the sermon. Sometimes, depending on how much other people have to share, it seems we get two sermons for the price of one!

After the sermon there we usually sing another song and then close with the doxology, in Thai of course. We still can't quite sing all the words of the doxology but we are learning more every time we sing it.

This church loves to eat together and we do so every week. It is usually about 12:30 or so until everything is ready and we are enjoying a delicious Thai meal. This is the time when we really get to practice our Thai. Thai people have a wonderful sense of humor and we have lots of fun telling jokes and teasing back and forth. There are many jokes that we don't quite get because we are not Thai, but we do get some of them. We also love to listen to peoples stories of how they came to know Christ. We have heard some amazing things.

It is usually 2:00 or 2:30 in the afternoon before we begin to say our "sawadee" and go home.

It may seem like a long day but it goes by quickly. They really have been a blessing to us during this season. It will be difficult to say our good-bye and move to the Northeast(Isaan) region of Thailand.

Christmas Time

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

From Chat and Biak

Well, our Christmas was definitely not what WE would call traditional, but it was fun and splattered with special moments in which we reflected on the reason for CHRISTmas. We are surprised at the amount of Christmas decorations we see in stores and on the street. The extravagance and commercialism is astounding. We went out with friends Biak and Chat and took some pictures which you can see if you click here.

Our school had a party to celebrate Christmas. We personally were celebrating the start of a break after the successful completion of six months of official language study!

Pic. 1 – Becky dances Thai style with five other girls to a Thai song…one of the teachers choreographed. Personally, we are fairly certain we were a disgrace to the finesse of Thai dancing…but, hey it was fun.

Pic. 2 – Some classmates wrote a fun song to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas, in which they describe the atrocities of learning Thai. Some of the words are below, if you care to read.

We wish you all a very happy new year and many blessings.

Jon and Becky

On the ___ day of Thai Class my "khun Krew" (respected teacher) gave to me:

12 baht for coffee (suggested donation for coffee and tea products at the school)

a 10 minute break (we get one between each hour of study)

9 hours of homework!

8 haw nams (add this in front of certain letters, and what once was one tone suddenly becomes a different tone)

6 new exceptions (believe us, there are many more than six…spelling exceptions, tone exceptions…)

5 brand new tones!!

3 dozen consonants (a total of 44 Thai symbols)

and 1 ton of vocabulary!