Karen Spaghetti & H2O

At their request, I taught “Draw Me Close” tonight at worship. They know the Thai version already, so I decided to teach the girls some echo parts. :) Bright students! Afterwards, a handful of kids stayed behind to go over their ‘new’ song. Since Tanin was meeting with a small group of kids, I grabbed a guitar & went at it. There’s a college in the US that has a course here in Musekee every year (& the students stay at the HRDC), so the center has a book of English worship songs. The kids kept naming song after song, and I didn’t want to disappoint. So I transposed everything to G major & we had a blast. Haha. [As you can tell, I don’t remember much from my semester of guitar, probably because I never practiced!]

We ended the night with a Karen song. It goes like this: May tah chuh guh dah/Luh puh puah guhn neeaw…And it’s absolutely beautiful.

Oh, and dinner. We had Karen spaghetti. Interesting. I helped cook for the first time, but I started feeling light-headed while stirring the pasta. And I’m a fainter!! It was a close call. I know I should drink more water, and I’m all about the 2 liters/day at home. But I just don’t want to go to the bathroom here. It’s too much of a hassle to ‘flush’ the toilet, and if I’m not near my room, I’m scared to ask where the bathroom is; I fear that they’ll point to the jungle & tell me to go there. And I’ll feel bad saying no. And they’ll be embarrassed that they don’t have a toilet. It really is a big ordeal whenever I need to go, so please pray for my bladder. :)

But maybe the light-headedness was from cooking. I don’t think I should cook anymore.

I should mention how their nightly worship works. There are four rows of students; each row is a group, and each group has students of all ages (9-18). They sit like we did during gym class in elementary school. At the very beginning, one or two kids come up & sit in front. They name the list of songs that they’ve chosen, Tanin strums an intro, and we sing. There’s usually a message, kids recite verses, etc. Then during prayer time, someone else comes up and gives each group a specific topic to pray for. More recently, they started assigning me prayer topics. I guess I’ve become my own ‘group’. :) And I never know what they’re saying because I don’t understand their languages, but usually I’ll hear my name or the whole room turns to look at me. That’s when I know to pay more attention!! Then we pray away, Korean-style. And it’s a really cool experience. At the end, the prayer leader chooses someone to close. The past 2 days…that’s been me. Ha.

I am EXHAUSTED.