The Hunt Begins

We have officially begun our search for a new church home. The church we attended yesterday was the only one we could be sure was bilingual. The small congregation was so welcoming and provided, "Kid" to set between us and translate prayers and announcements, all the words to the music had both Thai and English on the TV monitors.We only recognized one song, This Is The Day, it's difficult to sing with others that are singing in another language if you aren't familiar with the songs. I spent a lot of the time in prayer for this group of believers and asking God to lead us each step of the way here. Yesterday was a special Mother's Day celebration, the Queen's birthday is Tuesday and Thailand mother's are honored on that day as well. Because of upcoming Mother's Day they had a video of the congregants mothers and the pastor's wife was delivering the message. All mother's were recognized, including me and given a special present, it was nicely wrapped and from the shape I assumed it might be a candle but when I opened it later I discovered that it was canned milk. I'm not sure if it is a gift of need or symbolism. At one point the pastor's wife had talked of a woman that was in an accident in China and was critically injured. There was a toddler found by her crying, the picture shown on the monitor was of this mother, who appeared comatose and was intubated, with this toddler nursing at her breast. It was a very moving photo. The message was focused on Ephesians 6 and how children should obey and honor their mothers, a translator was on the stage the entire sermon. I met three other English speakers besides us among the 60 or so congregants. It was a very welcoming church who had lots of enthusiasm, the lady leading the music was quite talented and could lead singing and jump up and down the entire time, I was amazed that she didn't sound out of breath. I was winded just watching her. We enjoyed joining these children of God for worship and were challenged by their joyful worship when they have so little.

Later in the afternoon we ventured down the beachside road to explore some.We don't venture out of the cocoon of our hotel much because of all the open sin along the street sides. We're hoping to discover the less touristy beaches of Thailand later but wanted to check out a cheap mall and have some dinner and it feels relatively tame at 4 pm. There were lots of sights to see and I'll post some random pictures for you. We ate in a nice authentic Italian restaurant and enjoyed our dishes of seafood linguine and pizza. We took a Thai taxi back to our hotel which is essentially the back of a pick-up truck with benches and were glad to be safely 'home'. Mark's first official day back at work is today.