16 Apr Songkran 2015

This week Thailand celebrated Songkran, which is the Thai New Year. It is celebrated by three days of a nation-wide water fight! This is by far one of my favorite holidays and I love being in Thailand during this time! We had the privilege of being invited to eat with some of our Loy friends at their house on Tuesday morning. We had flower noodle soup, sunflower seeds, traditional Loy rice snacks and Coke & Fanta. Little did we know that this meal would become very familiar to us over the next two days!

As we left their house we passed another family who said we needed to come back and eat with them too. They said it was only fair, because we had eaten with these other families… we couldn’t refuse! We promised to come back later that afternoon. We then went to another neighborhood where other families had invited us to come eat because their sons had become monks for a day (this is like a coming of age type thing and everyone was celebrating). We had flower noodle soup, sunflower seeds, traditional Loy rice snacks and Coke & Fanta… not even an hour after we had finished the first round at the previous house!!

 We had a little water fight with the kids then went home to digest for an hour. The guys and I rode through town in the back of Brandon’s truck (check out the video) and got absolutely drenched! It was great!! 

We then went back to our friends house that we had promised earlier that day. We had noodle soup, sunflower seeds, traditional Loy rice snacks and Coke & Fanta… I was about to pop! We couldn’t refuse, so we just kept eating and praying we wouldn’t get sick in front of our friends who were blessing us so tremendously! That was Tuesday… 

Even though we were soaked, we had a great time!

Wednesday we woke up and went to another family’s house who had invited us to come eat! We had noodle soup, sunflower seeds, traditional Loy rice snacks and Coke & Fanta. At this point I don’t think I can ever look at noodle soup again! I knew God was doing a miracle in my stomach to make room for more noodles! We had more water fights here with our friends and iSaow, the father, had a blast chasing the kids.

While we were at iSaow’s house, our good friend iKam came by and said, “When you get done here, come by my house to visit us!” We went to iKam’s house, sat down and they placed sunflower seeds in front of us and traditional Loy rice snacks! I thought, “Oh no!!” You guessed it: We had flower noodle soup, sunflower seeds, traditional Loy rice snacks and Coke & Fanta!! As I finished my 5th meal in a row of soup I was convinced that I would never be able to eat flower noodle soup again!

Noodle Brunch at iSaow’s house!

We then went to the very last house that had invited us to come visit them. We as a team made a pact that we would not sit down and we would not eat anything! We knew if one of us did, then it was all over! Once you meet our Loy friends though, you will know that you can’t really say no to them when they are trying to bless you! I don’t know who gave in first, but one of us was forced inside and sat down. They pulled out pictures to show us their families and out came the Fanta and sunflower seeds!! The mom pulled out her noodles and we all protested and told her how great the Coke, Fanta & Sunflower seeds were! Luckily she had seen us at our other friend’s house and knew we had just eaten 2 meals of soup in the past 3 hours, so we escaped the very last soup!

Eating Soup at iKam’s house

I can’t tell you how incredibly blessed and loved we have felt this holiday. We love our Loy friends SO much and we felt so incredibly loved by them this holiday too!! It was such a blessing to see how welcomed we were into their lives and families. Brandon said that last year one family invited our team to their home for Songkran and this year eight families invited us to come celebrate with them! We are so happy to count them as our close friends and be welcomed into their lives!

If you were to meet them in America you would think that they do not have a lot materialistically – but they are some of the richest people I know! They give extravagantly and have such an amazing sense of community and family! We love these people so much – If we are capable of loving them this much, then I can’t even fathom the Father’s love for them!! Please take a second and pray for the Loy community in Thailand that they would receive Jesus this year!!!