The day had finally arrived. After 20 months of preparation, fundraising and training, we were ready to leave the Memphis airport, catch a connecting flight in Atlanta and fly the 20 plus grueling hours to Bangkok, Thailand. We said our final goodbyes to our loved ones, knowing we would likely not see them again for at least three years. Even though it was sad, we were ready to go. Eager to hit the ground running and start off our mission on the right foot, we didn’t want to waste any time, which is why we had decided to begin language study the morning after our scheduled arrival. We knew it would be a challenge, but we felt confident that God had worked things out for us. The week before leaving the States, we had talked with our partners, Ricardo and Alicia Palacios, who were enrolled in a language school in Bangkok. They told us we would arrive only two days after the start of the next session, and if we were up to it, we could begin the module and catch up on the days we had missed. It made perfect sense to us to dive right in and begin building our language ability.
We arrived in Bangkok at about 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night, having gotten only minimal sleep in the previous 20 hours. After retrieving our four 50 lb. check-in bags, we found Ricardo waiting for us. As we stuffed our bags into two taxi cabs, we were enfolded in the sticky, humid outside air. I felt beads of perspiration forming on my unwashed skin. I’m glad I left my winter clothes in the States, I thought to myself.
It was after midnight when we arrived at the Thailand Adventist Mission. As we said goodbye to Ricardo, he told us we would need to leave by 7 a.m. to arrive at the language school on time. I began having second thoughts about jumping into language study so quickly. Maybe we should allow ourselves time to rest and get settled in first. But that would mean having to wait until the next class begins. Thoughts like these paraded through my mind as I drifted off to sleep.
To my surprise, Cindi and I were both wide awake by 4:20 a.m. and unable to fall back asleep. “Since we can’t sleep, we might as well go to class,” I said to Cindi. She agreed, so we began getting ready for the day. Not having taken showers in two days, we were both looking forward finally getting cleaned up. To our chagrin, however, we could not locate a shower in the building, so we had to settle for sponge baths.
Just getting to the language school was an adventure in itself. Crossing six lanes of traffic on foot, standing in the median of the road with cars, buses and motorcycles whizzing past us was slightly unnerving to say the least. However, none of the locals seemed fazed. Standing nose to nose with strangers on packed buses, seeing myriad street vendors selling everything from cucumbers to crab meat, and taking in the unique aroma of the city gave us our first real taste of Thailand. I marveled at the controlled chaos and the quiet, peaceful demeanor of the locals who seemed perfectly content amid the morning’s mad rush.
As we started into our first day of class at the language school, it didn’t take long for us to realize that we would have to study hard to catch up. As we listened to the teacher and tried to echo the unfamiliar sounds, I felt like a toddler learning to talk for the first time, and I wondered just how we silly we really sounded.
After finishing our first day of class, Cindi and I both felt ready for a good night’s rest. But since it was only noon and because we wanting our bodies to adjust to the 12-hour time change, we ate lunch, did our homework and started unpacking and settling in, determined to put our bedtime off to 6 p.m.
For the next week, we tried to balance homework and study time with getting moved in and adjusting to life in a completely new context and environment. Unfortunately, Cindi came down with a fever, cough and sore throat that put her out of commission for an entire week. This caused her to fall even further behind in class and made it almost impossible for her to completely catch up. Because the module was only twenty days long, and because she had already missed seven, we felt it would be best for her to drop out and restart the module in the next session. It was a tough decision to make, but we both felt it would allow her to get extra time to rest and recuperate before hitting it hard again.
If we had it to do over again, we would have allowed ourselves more rest and adjustment time. We wanted to get started on the right foot, but it felt like we had begun on the wrong one. All is not lost, however. In our experience thus far, we have learned some valuable lessons. Most of all, we have been reminded of our utter need to seek the Lord for His wisdom and not trust in what makes sense to us. First Corinthians 1:20 says, “God made foolish the wisdom of the world.”
Our success in carrying out the mission in Thailand will be determined by how earnestly we seek God’s wisdom and how willing we are to surrender our human wisdom. Our initial mistakes here in Thailand only affected us. But there will be much more at stake when we begin reaching out to Thai Buddhists. We desperately need the wisdom of God in order to carry out His mission in Thailand.
