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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Surf Where the Need is Great

About 2 weeks ago a sister from Phuket, Thailand, called our Coordinator of Body of Elders (wow…that’s a mouthful) looking for us to come over to help find Deaf people in Phuket. Based on the consensus, there is about 500 or so deaf living in Phuket. The Circuit Overseer encouraged the friends there to learn Thai Sign Language and hunt around. So we thought it would be a great privilege to lend a hand in that virgin territory so off we went.



Now let me paint a picture for you. Tashi, the sister who called us, is from Texas, USA. She is serving in an English group in Phuket. Which in itself is just extending its own roots. She is a wonderful sister…young, feisty, Texan with Iranian blood…so you could imagine her zeal and youthful vigor. It was contagious and explosive like a nuclear bomb (no puns intended if you’re watching the current news on Iran). She is a great asset to the small group there. For us it was an extended privilege for various reasons…1. We found many Deaf, which we will explain later. 2. We did some English speaking territory (missed speaking a language we fully understand) and 3. We asked 2 recent additions to our small signing group in Krabi, two Japanese sisters (who came to help us with sign) to come with us. So you could imagine this conglomerate group 1. An Iranian Texan 2.Puerto Ricans from the Bronx, New York 3. Two , very proper, shy, quiet Japanese searching for English but most especially the Deaf. So you put those ingredients all together and then BOOM!!! Explosion….


With us we also had other wonderful brothers from Australia, UK, Japan, and a French speaking Italian family. All of them with a lot of experience, desire to serve and love for Jehovah…it doesn’t get any better than that. With some English work done, we headed out to search for the Deaf. On the first day out we met one woman and had a wonderful conversation with her in the city of Patong. Now keep this city in mind. She encouraged us to come back in the evening because that’s when the Deaf come out to work and sell things. So the next day we all decided, 1st the beach then to Preach…and there goes our title. We enjoyed a couple hours of Boogie Boardin’, swimming and catching some rays at one of the beautiful beaches in Phuket.



As the evening approached we headed back to the house and got ready for the ministry…search for Deaf. If you remember the place we were heading to was called Patong. Those who are not familiar with Phuket , as we definitely were not, would have realized that we were about to get a big surprise. We realized that we must have passed Lot, by the gates of Patong, because we walked in to a modern day Sodom and Gomorra. What we’re gonna describe now does not come close to what we saw…drinking, smoking, prostitutes, transvestites dancing on poles, people vomiting in the street in their druken stupor, old men with young Thai escorts…real life Sodom and Gomorra. You could really see why Jehovah needs to bring destruction to this system. But you probably asked yourself, what are we doing there? Well, in the first 30 minutes we found 8 Deaf, with good results. While we were searching for more, what kept creeping up in our minds were the poor Japanese sisters…in shock! Since Japanese are much more conservative. But they handled themselves well. With such positive turnout , we decided to head back again, after the meeting ,the next day. With more positive results. We ended up meeting 10 more. 3 of them where tourist from Sweden but were Iranian…so they got along well with Tashi...go figure! As you can see, there is so much work to be done in all Thailand…any volunteers!!!!!
































By the way...the Bible reading went well...thank Jehovah and thanks for all your prayers!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You guys have to come back !

Tashi

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