Sunday - a day of thanks and worship

On Sunday we attended the Methodist Church in Pattaya which is the church that "owns" the Blessing Home" and it meets in the same space as the Blessing Home. THere were probably about 60 there including the 9 of us. The service was very contempory with lots of praise music - in fact the first hour was all praise songs (in Thai). The entire service lasted 2 1/2 hours! THe nine of us contributed by singing two songs in Thai - (didn't think we could do that, did you!). We sang "Praise Ye the Lord" and "How Great THou Art". They seemed to enjoy it alot and joined in with us.

After the service there was a potluck dinner - I think there is one every Sunday but this time we were their guests and what a lay out it was! Alll Thai food including fried fish that was the entire fish lying there on the plate! Very few spoke English but we were still able to communicate in other ways. It was wonderful fellowship and by now we knew some of the members from our work during the week and when it was time to say good bye there were lots of hugs and pictures and much "waiing". And always the same question..... "Will you come back next year?"

As we left Mike and Sherri, I told them there were some of the saint of our faith, which I really believe as they work to bring Christ to the people in Pattaya and save as many children as they can from the child trafficking. A little shining light of love in a very dark city. But as our devotions tonight reminded us, nothing is impossible with God.

And with that we said good bye to pattaya and headed to Bangkok for a few days of seeing some of the rest of the country. I'm writing this on Monday night - our internet access is very limited and I'm not sure we'll be able to get any pictures on at least for a while.

One more little interesting tidbit about Pattaya - as we walked the streets, one of the most unusual food vendors we saw were those selling fried insects! BIG grasshoppers, deep fried... no batter.... just very crispy. Beetles, slug looking things and worst of all, scorpions! About 4 inches long, tails still curled up and now very crispy. People here really like snacking on these things! None of us could bring ourselves to taste these critters! UGH