MELODY TIENYUN

Our accommodation for the weekend was at the church building where Ms. Chen worked, Immanuel. When we weren’t there, Ms. Chen invited us to her home where we ate fresh fruit from her garden. 

Not only were the dragonfruit/ pitaya/ papaya enormous, they were also beautiful and delicious!

We enjoyed a relatively peaceful stay, except for one encounter with quite possibly the biggest spider I have ever seen (not behind glass walls).

With the help from Ms. Chen, David was able to squash most of the baby spiders that exploded from the sac, and she picked up the mom and flushed it down the toilet.

On Sunday, we attended the service with the Dai people. In total there were about 15 people, with half of the congregation being young children, and the other half older women. There were 2 men present. Since there are not enough members to run a kid’s program, they must sit through service, with the adults trying to calm them down the majority of the time. In this area, there is one other church, the Chinese church. This one, Immanuel, finally got its own building a couple years ago.

Ms. Chen asked my brother and I to sing a song, so we sang “Our God,” by Chris Tomlin. I used 1 of 2 guitars they had, and had to sit very still so that the amplifier would not crackle and send horrible feedback through the echoing room. (This was also the first time we have ever performed together). During their worship time, there was no powerpoint, no microphones, only their voices and a few hymnbooks. The speaker was a young woman, who Ms. Chen has been training to give sermons when she does not preach. There is also a man who preaches once every two months. The sermon was entirely in the Dai language, so I could not understand any of it, but Ms. Chen told me that even a few elderly ladies who attend are Lahu (another ethnic minority group) and cannot understand it either. The members do not live in the area, but reside higher up in the mountains. If they were to walk, it would take them 30 minutes. 

At the end of the service, one of the elderly ladies came up to me and reached out her dark skinned, and wrinkled hand. She smiled at me, and we shook hands. It was the most delicate handshake I ever received, but I knew it was an act of love and respect. Here in Thailand, people do not shake hands, and do not greet each other by touch, but this old woman did something from my culture to greet me. 

My mom and my hosts helped arrange this trip for an eye-opening experience, and it truly was.