Farewell Chiang Mai, Final Weeks, and Mass

Evening friends. As has been the plague of our summer, I've alltogether too much to say and neither have plotted my points nor asked the Thai girl who mans this Internet cafe if, once these two young kids leave me alone in the rows of computers, I'll be kicked out or allowed to stay. A quick aside - if Chinese Internet cafes were the back alleyways that mothers warned their children not to walk at night (and they very well are, hazy with cigarette smoke), Thai Internet cafes would be the manicured public squares in front of civic centers or community buildings. They're not so bad.

Two quick things: my health has returned, and my passport holds a Chinese visa.

This morning I left the city where I was based in the times between village excursions and the prayer journey to Vietnam and Laos on a five hour bus ride to very near the Myanmar border. I didn't expect or plan to make friends this summer, expecting rather that I would be frequently on the move and often with book in hand, but, in one of the small twists God made to my plans, I was blessed to find two wiser-than-I and weathered fellows in Chiang Mai with whom I passed more than a few nights on downtown motorbikes and in discusson of a Christian's peacemaker responsibility during times of immediate and life-threatening violence (which isn't so far of a reality in lands very near), mainstream Christianity's seeming surrender to what most men think is inescapable lust, and how to frame Christianity to fit an Eastern mind and ethos - usually all over a game of cards and a tub of glaringly artificial strawberry plastic "icecream". We've adopted as a group the routine of one "red bull" of an Alaskan's pushup and situp program and just did our final set together last night aside the baby crib of the five-month old boy of one theologically and home church-minded of a Floridan. I said goodbye to both of them this morning, after I sat and they prayed over me and my time past and to-come in Asia this summer. I left with and in a real sense of peace, which carried me to where I now write you and still wraps around me tight. We should all sit and pray for eachother - intentionally, specifically, and in the spirit - more often!

Now it is 9:46 PM on the 17th of June, and as of 9:16 PM I have booked my final airplane ticket to carry me to and from across Asia and very soon across a few oceans in route to what I read on drudgereport.com is a flooded Midwestern USA. What follows below is my planned itinerary up to a much anticipated flight from Hong Kong on July 9th.

18 / 6 - 22 / 6: Snake down the Myanmar border in route to Bangkok, from where I will fly on...

22 / 6: to Pnom Penh, Cambodia, to meet and work with a Cambodian friend and his family until...

2 / 7: when I will return to Bangkok from Pnom Penh, only to catch a flight on...

3 / 7: to Shenzhen, China, in route to Hong Kong from where I will fly on...

9 / 7: to Pittsburgh, PA to spend a week with my best friend Mr. David Kita before flying on...

18 / 7: to Denver, CO to meet my hometown church for Youth Quake, a week-long camping retreat in the Colorado mountains, before then joining their caravan back to Oklahoma on the 26th of July.

Thus all dates are set, and all flights are booked, and now before fleeing to bed I've to tell you quickly of the Catholic Mass I went to this evening.

As my bus from Chiang Mai pulled into town, I noticed a stark-white Catholic Church that I then, after tossing my bags in a trucker's stop of a hotel room for the night, spent the rest of the afternoon trying to relocate. I managed across it about 5:00 PM. After praying in front of the outside altar and what I suppose is a relic, I found the front office door unlocked and, kicking off my sandals at the door, met Mr. "Teh-phil", which means, he told me after this evening's Mass, "lover of God" in a language I do not know. Born in a nearby village and ordained as a priest six years ago, he was quick to ask me if I was Catholic and what I thought of 1. Hillary 2. Obama and 3. McCain, followed by an invitation to join him, a Thai Catholic priest, and his friend for an afternoon's football (soccer) match. Wanting to read and dine, I declined, but said maybe I would see him at Mass.

And I did. Two "sisters" (nuns), a man and his wife who attend to the priests' quarters and tidy the church, and I kneeled on the wooden floor while my friend, "Teh-phil", assisted the elder priest in adminstering the Mass. I read through the Psalms of King David and prayed, but afterward the two priests and I stood cackling on the church's doorstep as the younger priest fumbled with English phrases and idioms. Before I left, he made sure to entreat, "If you see me again, do not remember me!", meaning, of course, that I shouldn't forget his name or face if we meet again. A few more quick comments about the U.S.'s running presidential race and the King of Thailand, and I was back to the sidewalks.

Now the two kids have been gone for the last ten minutes and I've finished the complimentary hot chocolate the Thai girl brought to my computer. I expect she has sat trying to muster up the English and courage to suggest I might get out here, and I'm going to try to leave before she goes through with it.

All best,
js