Hello from Mae Sarang!

This morning, a couple of the people here had to leave to go to Chiang Mai, and a couple more had to get their visas renewed in the city. So, we come down off of our beautiful little mountain into the polluted town. We have been staying in a small Karen village since Thursday. It is pretty primitive, but not as much as some places I have been. There IS electricity! but there is no phone service except up a huge hill. So we go and take a hike sometimes. :D We arrived here in the city and were informed that we would be staying in this city until tomorrow! I guess I wasn't too surprised. We don't have anything besides a purse with a jacket, camera, wallet, and a couple other necessities. (lol, like toilet paper, because here in Thailand, that is hard to find!) Anyways, that's how I get to check my e-mail!

We have been in a little Karen village that I can never remember the name of. We have been doing visitations, and meetings in the evenings. Yesterday was definitely out of the norm! We worked harvesting rice! I had always wondered what it would be like. Wow, was that ever exciting! I felt a bit unprepared, clothes-wise. I had only flip-flops (and skirts, lol). Well, we ended up taking our shoes off and walking around bare-foot in ankle-deep mud. Only a few of my friends ended up with little friends (called leaches) on their extremities! They were rather thrilled, to say the least. :D I will have to put some pics of this up later, since I have none with me now. We then went "jungle shopping". Ok, it was actually more like "compost-pile shopping". In the soy-bean fields, after the season is over, they leave all the left-over plants and that decomposes and little mushrooms grow. So, we went and picked hundreds of small and tiny mushrooms to eat. I must say that mushrooms are not as appealing to me as they were before. (digging under rotting soy-bean pods and cow patties. . . .) Lol, I know some of you already agree that mushrooms are not meant to be eaten. Anyways, it was quite the experience!

The village people are very sweet! They love inviting us over for meals, etc. One family invited us, and not knowing that we are vegetarian (at least in this program), they made us some fish (more like fish skeletons), and some chili sauce with canned fish, (some other REALLY hot chili sauce when they saw we were vegetarian) rice, and some steamed, bitter vegies! I did try to eat some of them, very hard though! Thankfully we had brought corn on the cob (so delicious!) and some other chili sauce. Another day, a man came running into our house at about 6:30-ish in the morning (after we had cooked breakfast) and invited us to come to his house for breakfast! We ran out, with a few noodles in hand, and followed him home. The food they fed us was VERY VERY salty! WOW! Ricky got sick from it and said that it reminded him of the salt flush we did to cleanse our systems. I do really appreciate the thought of these families, and the first family understood that we are vegetarians.

I have actually not even seen a chair since I have been in that village. I have seen a couple little stools, but that's it. They always sit on the floor (even in church) and they eat with their hands! They also sleep on the floor, with only a bamboo mat (or a little fatter mat if you are lucky, which we aren't;). Eating with my hands is taking a little to get used to. Sleeping on the floor is kind of hard, with a little back-pain now and again. The sitting on the floor is the one I think I'll never get quite used to! My legs are getting less and less comfortable with it! Every time I lower myself to the floor, it takes less time for my seated position to get painful! Lol, I feel like I'm getting old!

It is a very simple way of life, but I really enjoy it! They don't have many distractions, but they do have electricity and so TV is a big distraction. We really need to pray for these villages, because, despite the fact that they don't have a lot of open devil-possession the Hmong villages we were at, they are quite lukewarm and sleeping. I know the Lord has big plans for them, and we need to continue working and praying. Thank you all for your prayers!