day 18- 21

day 18 (Monday)
Being in Thailand you have to be ready for the culture. That is easy to say and really only learned fully when you get here. Time is a huge difference in this culture. They abide by "Thai time". This basically means nothing... and gives them a free pass to be late, early, or never show up. We have found that usually it means very very late or more likely not showing up at all. Monday we were supposed to have practice for our prison concert that we were going to be putting on. But no one showed up for that. Also that night we had dinner with a couple that was getting married. My sister was going to play in her wedding, so they wanted to hear some of the music and meet us all. Everyone showed up a little late, but not bad for Thai people. The funny news came on Tuesday when we found out that Joci was not doing the wedding at all after all that practice and dinner. This was followed by another practice being skipped by everyone but my sister and I. Then on Tues. night we found out that we were not doing the Prison concert at all. So that is how it is over here. You just have to be ready for anything and be slow to anger.
Another issue is that it is a saving face culture, so the people do not want to cause you any harm, anger, or anything. This leads to them not telling you things are canceled, giving you wrong directions so that they will not have to tell you they do no know, saying you can play a wedding when they don't want you to, and just flat out telling you whats going on. With the language barrier and the difference in culture it gets really tuff at times to know whats going on or what is going to happen, but with patience and grace things get done.

Day 19 (Tuesday)
Like I said, another practice was skipped and unfortunately all of these changed plans and things really effected our schedule because we were planning on practicing, so that was frustrating, but we had a good time and still got to meet new people and different things.
The orphans are now in school so in the mornings we usually have time to do devo's and get things done that need to be done until around 3ish when they begin to get out of school. So We have been practicing alot in our spare time and getting work done. Wednesday night we got to go to an international bible study that was really cool. It is an English bible study but the people who attend are from all over the world. There were like 5 Americans, an British guy, a girl from the Netherlands, and some others. It was refreshing just to talk and studying with English speaking friends.

Day 20 (Wednesday)
Wednesday was a very busy day. We woke up and visited the biggest Buddhist temple in Chang Mai. It is on the top of a mountain and is very beautiful. It is just sad to see all the money, the time, the beauty, the artwork, and everything put into these buildings. They are everywhere and all of them are beautiful, but this one in particular is amazing. It's so disheartening to see people still worshiping idols so diligently. They just look so hopeless even when worshiping kind of staring at the statue while holding incense. It really just breaks your hear. There is no passion. The temple really just reminded me of the Bible where Jesus goes into the temple and flipps all the tables, because these Buddhists have turned this worship temple into a tourist destination and though it is still used for worship there is a coffee shop, booths of random gifts and jewelry, and photographers running around taking peoples pictures for money. I just felt offended for the Buddhist people that they let this happen in their own religion. I know if this was in a church setting I would be furious. Needless to say it was a beautiful place and on the way down the mountain we stopped at an awesome waterfall that cut through the rocks and jungle.
As soon as we got home we left for "the farm". This is owned by Asia's Hope and is a very beautiful large piece of land an hour outside of Chang Mai. There are many different crops grown there. At the moment the main crop is corn, but they have a ton of leechy fruit trees and other veggies and spices. They also have many cool technological things to help with productivity and to keep coasts down. They have water tanks under the pig pens that are warmed by the manure and pigs so they can have hot water. They also have a filter for the pigs manure and wastes that turns it into gas to be used for the stove. They have quite a few pigs for food. They have a ton of chickens as well. They have 3 fish ponds to breed the fish in, so they are doing very good for themselves. Tutu's parents live on the farm along with one of her brothers. There there is also a family of I think Niece of Tutu's who lives there with her baby and husband. They have a widows house on the farm that has room for 6 widows. There are currently 4 widows living there, They have been rescued out of their hopeless situations and now help out wherever needed on the farm. They also are begging to make bags and such to make money. In the future the Goal is to have an orphanage put on the farm so that the widows can have jobs to cook and take care of the kids not only for a job for them, but so that Asia's Hope will have another orphanage. The current problem is simply just provisions to pay for the rest of the farm land and especially the future of an orphanage. I believe they need like 30,000 dollars still for the land, so this is the current prayer of Asia's Hope so that they can simply keep the farm.

While at the farm we got to witness the sloter of 2 pigs. This was a delightful gory adventure. hah At least I know how to kill and butcher a pig if I'm starving in the wild or living in Thailand. Everything the rest of the day smelled like pig blood. It is funny how different food is over here. They just kill and eat. There is no such thing as grocery stores, the closest thing are markets where you still either buy the whole animal dead or huge chunks of it cut up laying out in the heat. So its Pretty manly here to say the last. I had the freshest pork ever that night though! literally like killed, butchered, and eaten. I had Liver and good pork meat. It was very tasty, kind of different, it was cooked in mint. Then I was talking to Tutu and her family and I had the chance to try pig heart and raw pig... So I did it. Surprisingly it was very good, especially the raw hah.

it was a wild day.

Day 21 (Thursday)
We spent the night at the farm and the next morning woke up and slotered another pig to take home to the orphans. On the way home there was a very cool hot geyser, the biggest in Thailand so that was interesting. But when we got home we spent the rest of the night practicing a tone, because we are doing a concert for the orphans this Friday. so that's literally all we did all day.