The airconditioning on the ship was out for a few days and everybody turned into zombies. It was better to be outside where there was at least a breeze and the air was probably fresher, though I use that term loosely here in Bangkok. I can describe my personal experience, although I'm not sure it was entirely related to the AC. For at least two days everything sucked. I felt like a depressed elderly person with asthma. Climbing stairs was hard, thinking was hard, sleeping was hard, smiling was hard. I remembered being able to sweep the bookshop much more vigorously when I was in Sihanoukville, even though the bookshop is outside and the weather didn't seem any different. It seemed amazing how important it was to have a fortress of airconditioning to retreat to. But on the third-ish day all my regular energy returned, praise God, even though the AC was still down, and even while I was starting to develop a cold or flu or whatever. I will leave the interpretation of those events up to you.
Also this week, I had another one of those E-Days. I went with 8 other guys to a place called Rahab House, a part of Rahab Ministries, to do practical work. As you can possibly guess from the name, it is a place that rescues prostitutes off the streets and gives them a new life and a safe clean place to live. That particular house was run by a guy named Alex, and his wife who I didn't meet, from New Zealand. Alex explained that most (all?) of these girls enter prostitution either unwittingly or by force. Many of them come from the countryside and come to work in bars thinking they will just be serving customers food and drinks. Others are sold into prostitution by families to pay back loans. When they come to Rahab, they are required to attend church and they basically all become Christians because Christians are the only people that have ever cared for them.
Most of us did painting that day. There were also a carpenter and electrician who did some work. The painting was more professional and orderly than at the hospital in Cambodia, but still pretty ghetto compared to what I am used to. Alex had the electrician install grounding wires for a bunch of outlets because that apparently isn't standard here in Thailand.
After E-Day was prayer night, led by the STEPpers. I finally got to drum. The theme of the night was encouragement and as STEPpers we especially wanted to be an encouragment to the longer term members of the Doulos. We had spent the whole week trying to get everybody involved in the music to practice together despite conflicting schedules and scarce access to instruments. In the end we didn't have everything thoroughly practiced. I was even informed of some songs only at the very moment we were to play them! But in the end the night went really well and everybody left in high spirits. We even got to play "God of this City", here in the city where it was first performed!
Prayer requests:
- pray that this annoying cold would go away and not spread to everybody on board or to visitors
- pray for more visitors, we are getting less than in Sihanoukville, which isn't right
- but praise God we are selling a lot more at this port
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