Day to day

Some of you have asked what our daily and weekly routine looks like.  So, I thought I’d share a typical week with you.

Sundays we usually attend church at Oikos Church of the Nazarene.  The services are entirely in Thai.  It takes us about 35-40 minutes to drive to church.  The rest of Sunday is our rest time.  This past Sunday, though, we sang and spoke at Bangkok First Church of the Nazarene.

A typical weekday looks like this:

5:30-5:45 a.m. — Wake up (this is just for Jeni.  The guys get up literally 35 minutes before we need to leave the house and I just can’t do that)

6:15 a.m. — a quick breakfast and then we are out the door by 6:35 a.m.  Why?  Caleb has to be at school by 7:15 and even though we live relatively close to the school, we have to battle morning traffic.  If we leave at 6:35, we usually have him at the school by 7:00 or 7:05, but if we leave just five minutes later, he’ll be late for school.  It’s crazy!

After that we head to the Mega Mall where we will park our car for the day and catch a bus.   Last year, Kevin and I both got on a bus at this time and rode it (for 20-30 minutes) to the BTS station.  We would ride the BTS (or sky train) for about 25 minutes.  Kevin would get off and walk a block and a half to his language school and I would switch to the MRT (or subway) and ride another 15 minutes to my language school.  If you are adding it up, that’s quite a bit of travel time! It takes Kevin about 50-60 minutes to get to school.  It took me a minimun of an hour and fifteen minutes (that’s each way).  I only did this Monday, Wednesday and Friday because on Tuesdays and Thursdays I tutor my friend and landlady in English (but more on that later).  So this year, I am going to drop Kevin off and then head in and take classes in the afternoon.  Travelling at non-peak times cuts about 30 minutes off my travel time.  I also am going to go back to the school that Kevin attends, so it will be a little closer.

Why not just go at the same time he does?  Well, we try to use the travel time, particularly on the bus to do Bible reading.  This works great for Kevin. Noise and bustle around him somehow help him focus.  Anyone who knows the two of us knows that we are obviously not cut from the same cloth (just really great coordinating fabrics), in fact in someways, this being one of them, we are opposites.  I just get too distracted to make that work for me.  I’m also a morning person and it just makes me grumpy to give the best of my day to travel.  So, I’m staying home and trying afternoons.

Anyway… at 7:15 or so, I (Kevin) get on the non-air conditioned, bus with wooden floors, that only costs 6.5 THB (20 cents) because the free air-conditioned bus that Jeni rides doesn’t run until 9 am! It takes me about and hour to make the trip from bus to BTS to downtown.  Most days I’ll grab some mu-ping and sticky rice on the street, because what better breakfast is there?!  I head back to the Mega after class.  When Jeni goes to school in the afternoon she drops the car at the Mega and gets on the bus.  We usually cross paths somewhere along the BTS line as I head home and she to school.  Not that we get to actually see each other, but it is fun to track her phone and “blow” her text kisses as we pass each other!  I pick up the car at the Mega and get home around 1 p.m.  Then it’s  work on my computer, phone calls, running errands or meeting with people until 2:30 p.m. when I picks Caleb up from school.  After a game or two of Yahtzee and a snack, Caleb heads upstairs to do his homework and I get some more work done.  Work consists of accounting stuff as the assistant/back up treasurer for the field, helping with field communication, making plans and arrangements for incoming Work & Witness teams, and helping with a variety of projects.  In the past couple of weeks it has been helping with travel arrangements for incoming volunteer teachers, meeting with a team to help store and transport some Jesus film equipment in to some creative access areas, overseeing a remodel project for Southeast Asia Nazarene Bible College and the Southeast Asia Field Offices, preparing to teach a Church History class for SEANBC, and last but not least, doing my Thai homework.  My coolest moment came when Jeni asked me if some of the stuff I was helping with and planning for was actually legal… which it is not in the areas I am headed to… and for a moment (a very short moment) I felt like a spy or something!  But then reality set in and I realized that the whole issue of legality never really occurred to me because being “undercover” isn’t really as cool as it looks in the movies… it’s just like regular life, except you can’t post it on Facebook!

(back the morning and back to Jeni) After dropping Kevin off for language school in the morning,  I come back home.  I spend time with Jesus and then begin working.  I write lesson plans for the various places where I/we are teaching English, on different days I actually tutor or teach English class during this time as well.  I also answer emails, write blog entries, clean the house, prep for dinner, review my Thai lessons and finish my homework at this time.  I leave the house for language school at about 11:40 and get home just before 5 p.m.

In the evenings…

Wednesday and Saturday evenings we teach English at a business and a church respectively.  Thursday evenings I attend a Bible study that is mostly in Thai (the only English is for my benefit).

On the other evenings we do family stuff.  We try to get out and about and use our Thai.  We often eat at restaurants on our street (eating at these places is really cheap) and gives us a chance to practice our Thai language skills and get to know people.  Kevin loves to try new places and new dishes.  Caleb and I usually order what we know we will like. (Kevin adds, “In other words, the same thing every time. But to Jeni’s credit she does think about it for a few minutes before ordering the same thing, while Caleb just orders Chicken Fried Rice without even a thought to what other delicious dishes they might have.”)

We also try to meet for team prayer at least every other week, usually in the mornings.  During these times we meet with others on our team who live in Bangkok.

While all of this will change when Work & Witness teams start coming in May, that is a regular week for now.

If you think this was hard to follow… we agree with you and welcome to our life!  Somedays it seems like we are doing a lot and sometimes it seems like we are doing very little.  It can be hard, while we are still learning the language and the way things work here, to feel like we know what our purpose is in being here.  We are just trusting that God will continue to reveal ways in which we can share His love and salvation and use us to further His kingdom.

If you have any questions about what we do here, or how God is working in the churches of SE Asia, please don’t hesitate to ask!  We’d love to answer your questions!

(Kevin wants to use his new Thai keyboard overlay to type goodbye now… even though it takes three times as long to find the letters and type it out as it does just to type it into Google translate and paste it into this blog!)

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