Blogs from Ban Nam Khem, South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia

The Absence of Christmas was replaced by the celebration of life and memories here. We marched from Wat Bang Nam Kaem to the Beach an hour away. We started out amidst the banging of drums and the yells of the women. Then we danced. We danced our way down the streets and through the village, past the destruction and towards the future. We danced and sang until the sweat poured down our necks and dripped from our chins. We yelled and screamed in happy sounds, the children played as we marched along and the adults clashed cymbals with our steps…keeping time for the march. We filed past the memorials, the fishing vessels tossed hundreds of yards in shore, the ruined building still partially standing among the new houses and shops. We pounded the dust under our ... read more

When Two Worlds Collide Today was special. But let me go back a bit, first. In November I was honored to meet Peter Gliechmann of Germany, a tall, robust and rough-cut man of his forties and an appetite to match. The near death story he shares of clinging to a taught cable in the tsunami catastrophe and barely surviving is a story no grandpa could tell his grandchildren without complete intense stares into the eyes of the storyteller. Unbelievable, yet true. His wife, Angelika, was also clinging for her life somewhere in the torrent waters and when rescued she would stay in the hospital for one year undergoing over twenty-five micro-surgeries to remove sand deep within the muscle of her legs. She was relesed from the hospital and came home just in time for Christmas 2005. ... read more

Welcome back to my blog. It's Saturday afternoon, January 21 (I had to stop and think about that one) here in Thailand. There's a lot to catch you up on... Yesterday morning I checked out of my hotel (behind Khao Lak Seafood restaurant) and took the bus from Khao Lak to Bang Muang (30 minutes by bus). Once there, I called Pastor Wasan (this Thai cell phone is coming in handy) who picked me up at the bus stop (a.k.a. side of the road). We met up with the YWAM teams at the site where they are building houses, and I started helping out with plastering the interior of the concrete block walls. I think I sweat slightly less plastering than I do mixing the cement, sand, & water...so I kept going back to mixing to ... read more

Ban Lut is a newly constructed housing camp for displaced victims of the tsunami. After doing some other tasks to get ready for the team to arrive to construct the playground at the Ban Nok Na school, I was called by the director of the Ban Muang refugee camp and asked if I would help them by driving a few people to the local market to pick up some supplies for the new daycare center being organized at the Ban Lut village camp. Rotjana, the director of the camp, has started another daycare center in a one-room building where younger children can play and learn during the day while their parents are working and their siblings are in nearby schools. The young girl (20 years old, actually) shown in the close-up photo was a bit of ... read more