Sawatdee ka (hello). Let me start with my day on Thursday. We had equipping time like usual in the morning, reading through John, having quiet time, and going through a spiritual discipline. I've started running in the morning, so I did that afterwards. The campus is really beautiful so I usually run once or twice around the campus. On the days they have school, I always see the students walking around, eating, or going to class, and I really enjoy watching that as I run. I also listen to a Christian speaker, Ray Vander laun, as I run too. Well Thursday and Friday were Buddhist holidays so the school was not open- I had to run around just looking at the empty buildings. The beautiful scenery always makes up for it though. What we did later on was go to the "Umbrella Factory". They do not make umbrellas, if that was what you were thinking. They sell all sorts of items (including umbrellas) such as t-shirts, canvases, toys, purses, etc. You can also bring anything of your own, t-shirts, hats, wallets, purses, gamboys, cellphones, etc. They have a section outside where they have painters that will paint on any item you buy/brought. A lot of people get their bibles painted, with a verse on it and with a picture. The pictures they draw are amazing, they draw beautiful scenery pictures, of waterfalls, mountains, elephants, houseboats, canoes, and anything else. We spent a few hours there and then came back to the zone to start preparing dinner for cell group that night. It was the interns turn to cook again. We decided to cook rice and yellow currey, along with macaroni and cheese, and brownies. (The Thais mostly just wanted the rice and currey, but I really enjoyed the macaroni). P'Gahn taught cell group tonight. He is leaving on July 24th for Houston, Texas where he will study there for 2 years, he will be greatly missed by the church here though. During cell group we spent a lot of time praying for other countries in Asia and for the persecuted Christians there. So on Saturday we did some pretty amazing things. We woke up early to go to an "elephant camp" at 9:00. This was by far one of the coolest things I have ever seen. There was probably 15 trained elephants in this camp and they sure did have a lot of talent. Some of them played soccer. They had a huge goal with an elephant as the goalie. As 2 other elephants were standing far, the trainers would roll out big soccer balls to them and they would run up and kick them straight to the goal. some were deflected by the elephant goalie, some made it in. It was amazing. Then, a lot of elephants came out playing harmonicas. They would simply hold it in the trunks and play music (and it sounded good too). At the same time they would be dancing. What was really neat was at the end where they all had their own canvas and got to paint a picture. They would use different colors and painted mostly just pictures of flowers. What was most impressive was those pictures were probably better than something I can draw! After that, we ate lunch and headed back over to the leprocy village. We enjoyed it so much the first time that we decided to go back. There was only about 8 of us but we split up and walked around to the huts/houses where they lived. We would talk to them, see how their day was going. We would sing songs to them, in Thai and English, and then, they would pray for US. They are amazing, sweet people and sometimes I wonder how people who have nothing and have no one to care for them can have such big hearts. We are going back there again this week. Later that night all the Thai girls and us had a girls night at Casey Allison's house. She made us queso dip and cake and we bonded some more playing games over there. Saturday=Great day. Sunday (yesterday) we had church here at the Zone. P'Yut, another one of the guys in the church preached, and we had to have it translated in the back for us. Right after church we got a phone call from Chung Duoy telling us to meet up the mountain at the waterfall, a girl in their church decided to get baptized! So we drove up the mountain to this beautiful waterfall and we all watched her get baptized. We all ate lunch together, and then some of us decided to go to the zoo. It was the biggest zoo I have ever seen. We spent 3 hours there and didn't even see half of it. It was so big they have roads in it with a bus system AND monorail that goes through it so you don't have to walk. Well of course, I thought it would be a good idea to walk and get exercise, but that was before I realized we kept having to walk up hills and hills to see the animals. It also started pouring about 30 minutes into our time there. We figured it would pass since it does everyday, but this is the one day it never stopped pouring rain, so we ended up walking around just getting soaked, but enjoyed watching the animals in the rain anyways. Since it was Sunday, we went to Walking Street again last night. There was one girl, Amy Greek, who is a missionary from Africa visiting with us here and she got to come with us. I got a pair of house shoes because you can wear those inside. I'm not sure what makes house shoes different from sandals but all I know is I'm allowed to wear house shoes inside and not sandals or any other shoes, so I bought a pair of house shoes for 20 baht (about 60 cents). Cheap I know. Today is our day off so I have been relaxing and re-rejuvenating. Thank you for your continual prayers as this internship is wrapping up. Pra-Chow oiye pond (may God bless you).
