Following Strangers to Thanksgiving

Rusty was chatting with one of his former students about her church's upcoming Thanksgiving celebration, and she wanted us to come. Her group was supposed to dance to a thanksgiving song, and she wanted Rusty's help in finding a good song. Rusty started investigating the location of the church, and no one seemed to know where it is. Finally, Esther sent him a map, and we were able to see the route.

When we started off Saturday morning, things were going really well. The distances seemed farther on the map, but we were making our turns easily. Everything was making sense until we got to the very end. We weren't completely sure of the last turn, but the map made it look like the church could be seen from the road. So we were looking for a building with a cross, but we couldn't find one.

After turning down a couple of side streets, we stopped to ask directions. The younger girl said there was a church in the direction we had just come from, but she wasn't sure how to get there. The older lady knew about one down the street in the opposite direction from what the map had said. We didn't think that was right, but we set off in the "wrong" direction anyway. There was a church there, but it was the wrong one. It was amazing that there were two churches so close together.

We went back to a side street that we had already been down and decided to drive down farther than we had been before.  We passed all of the houses, stopped in the road, and contemplated turning around to return home. A motorcycle passed us with two people in their Akha tribal clothes, and Rusty decided to follow them. We knew we were either following them to the church or to their village. :) Thankfully we soon saw the young people directing traffic for the parking and the church building.

We had a great time even if we were the only westerners there. It's interesting that there are some instances that you don't feel like such an outsider because the local people expect you to be there, and then there are some where nobody knows you and everybody wonders why you are there. This was probably the latter since the one student suddenly became too shy to really talk to us. Thankfully we were able to connect with another student who had moved a few hours north of here, and she seemed very excited to see us. She even got a little teary-eyed when we had to leave.

The meeting was like an associational meeting where each church presents a special, and there's preaching and singing. There may have been business, but we left before that part. They also sell their produce before they go home. The girl in the middle is the student we have not seen in several years.

This is the local church group that led the worship. The female student in the middle is Esther and the one who invited us.

We had to leave early because we had errands to run before we went to eat with the assistant principal from the elementary school. We had a great time talking to his whole family, and they fed us a great meal of ribs, stir-fried sunflower sprouts, Thai salad, and corn with coconut for dessert. It was a full day with full stomachs!