Iven was out this evening and I was getting hungry.  I left our little room in search of food, and went back and forth over whether I should walk one block and get some garlic chicken on rice for 30 baht (a dollar) or walk 4 blocks and treat myself to Burger King (4 dollars). [...]

I have mentioned before that there are women working the streets of our neighborhood 24 hours a day, which is true, but sometimes hard to believe, even living here.  Late-stage pregnancy has brought roving insomnia on me, nothing serious but enough to find me laying in bed at 4:30 am this morning, wondering why in [...]

One of the adventures of having a child is naming a child. This is an awesome priveledge and gigantic responsibility. We are excited about this very important task, which will soon befall us, but we are also a little stressed about it too.  It really comes down to the fact that we both have pretty [...]

32 weeks pregnant now.  Its crazy how quickly this pregnancy season is passing!  I feel this little baby wiggling and kicking inside of me (In Thai the literal word is “dancing”), and I wonder who this little person will become.
As my belly grows and grows we are getting increasingly more smiles, questions and excitement from [...]

I found myself connecting with a woman whose sad situation both mirrored and was a blaringly stark contrast to my own… As we chatted more she explained that she is 28 years old, pretty much homeless herself, and sells her body in the neighborhood to get money…

Recently Kashmira was walking home from the bus stop by herself in the early evening. We have often seen a homeless family (3 young children) sleeping on the sidewalk, right in the middle of the Loop where guys are waiting for customers.  On this particular night these children were still awake and in the middle [...]

It is 10:00 pm on Monday night and I am sitting in the back seat of the #47 bus, on my way home from outreach. I am listening to the Bible (Romans, chapter on my ipod.
Sitting directly in front of me is a ladyboy (the preferred term chosen by transgendered people in Thailand [...]

Last weekend an English-speaking church in the city spent their Sunday morning seeking to serve people in need, rather than gathering for their regular weekly worship services.  One of these groups asked us to help out in leading about 30 people to come to our extended neighborhood, share some take-away meals and seek to listen to [...]

From Thai National Congress 7

One of my mentors is fond of using the phrase “God has no accent in any language.”  I have heard her say this many times and it has struck me as cute, and even a bit profound, but this last week it really hit home for me for the first time.
All [...]

Now this blog post, by the very nature of its content, is hard to write – though not for the reasons you may be thinking.  Not because it is painful to share, or of a controversial nature, but because it is about oral story – and orality is something that is rather unconventional to write [...]