Day 6 Revised...

Today we had plans to meet Chris and family at 11am down on the south part of the island. Chris has been a very unexpected blessing on this trip. I think I mentioned before that Chris is kind of a consultant who travels between Thailand, China (where he now lives), Tibet, and other such places aiding and inspiring leaders. He's an aussie, so he has a certain sensitivity to Western involvement that only a citizen of a British commonwealth state could. What I mean is that he is really into empowering the indigenous peoples as opposed to colonizing them with Western Christianity. That's the last thing that is needed here... I'd like to think that we have been at least somewhat as sensitive.

So, since we had until 11am, Holly and I drove to the east side of the island to hike to a waterfall. Not much water, but found a little friend along the way. We were pretty much the only people around...


Beautiful drive there and back...


Afterwards we headed down to Chris and Vicki's hotel. And we had lunch and talked about what God is doing in this part of the world... good lunch... good stuff...




After we finished with lunch late in the day, we drove up to Thalang to meet Pastor Sujit and Peter (our friend from China who was visiting with Chris) to head up to the Thai Mai fishing village. We decided that it would be better for the gypsies to find a technician on their own and then pay for it. This way, the Thai Mai men are performing their duty and not just having everything done for them. This is a huge thing in attempting to help, but not Westernize: Help them do it themselves. If we had more time, we would find a boat builder and rebuild the boat with them... but we are leaving soon.

After we spent some time in the village (which we found out has a couple hundred people), we headed to dinner with Peter and Sujit. It was cool talking with Peter about the history of China and their religions. We both recognized that God has been at work there for a long time. It's interesting that I had heard in my world religions that in early (before common era) Chinese thought, they worshipped God (shen)... in fact, many Chinese still call China Shen Zhou or God's Land... but later on, they worshipped heaven (T'ien) and now (Peter says) they worship man. That is his critique of communism (and many a person's critique). I guess in America you would say that we have gone even a step further and begun to worship "stuff". At any rate, good conversation.

After dinner, Peter and Holly and I journeyed to a cell group and worshipped with them.




Then we headed back down to Chris' hotel to stay the night and catch the morning boat to the Phi-Phi Islands. This is where the movie "The Beach" was shot. It was also destroyed badly by the tsunami. We plan to be there for the day and come back in the evening. So long for now. Lah-gorn-krap.