Sunday night we travelled to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand where we would be stationed for the rest of our trip. This is a beautiful part of Thailand because it is in the mountains. However, that also means that people are much more spread out than in the towns and cities in the rest of the country. It is estimated that there are about 55 “hill tribes” in northern Thailand and surrounding areas and most of them speak their own language.
Beasley's Blog Posts
On Saturday, our team was in southern Thailand around a town called Songkhla. We met with a pair of missionary families there and spent the morning doing door to door evangelism in a nearby village. We drove to the village and then split up into three teams. As we got out of the cars, we could hear the chanting of a Buddhist monk from a nearby temple in the background, which seemed to add an urgency to our mission.
On Friday, our missionary host took us to a Buddhist temple near Songkhla, Thailand. In my mind, I visualized this as simply a building dedicated to Buddha. What I saw was extremely eye-opening. The “temple” was more of a very large park with various areas with different idols. It seemed more like an amusement park than a place of worship, although unfortunately there were forms of worship happening there.
The city of Bangkok in the country of Thailand has a reputation in America and probably other places as a place of rampant prostitution. Although prostitution is illegal here, authorities mostly turn the other way. One of the red light districts in Bangkok is called Nana. The center of that district is Nana Place – the entrance to which is pictured below.
As I was preparing for the trip to Thailand, I wondered if I was really the person that God wanted to send on this trip. That might still be up for debate, but I prayed that God might allow me to use my musical gifts to glorify Him somehow as we travelled the country. When I went to Jamaica on mission twice a few years ago, I always knew I was going to teach and play music and I had my bass guitar with me. Here most people would not speak my language and I would not be bringing an instrument.