What Am I Doing In A Banana Grove?

Every once in a while, I get hit with the suerrealness of life right now. We were in one of the slum areas today, talking with a guy who has started a ministry to the muslims there, branching out of the one of the bigger churches here. Basically what they are doing is setting up Urban Agriculture businesses in poorer areas to establish relationships with the Muslims that live in them. It's an awesome project, and this particular spot was raising fish, both to eat and sell. The part with the big fish was under a big banana grove, so we had to walk on a really skinny board to get through the mud. As we were listening to the guy tell Alan about the project, all I could think to myself was " What am I doing in a Banana Grove?" It's like something straight out a STL video, or a movie or something. It's definitely not a bad thing; I'm having the time of my life here. But... I don't know how to explain it. This kind of thing doesn't happen to me. My life is way to boring to be in Thailand, having all of these adventures. Nevertheless; I'm here. I'm so grateful that God gave me this opportunity to come and learn from one of the leading Missiologists in the world, and to stay in this awesome new building, and to experience all this crazy awesome stuff. It's just cool, and weird sometimes!

Anyway. Today we had our Thai lesson with Pii Wan.  As soon as we got back from grabbing lunch, it started raining super hard, and thunder and lightning, and all that fun stuff. So we hung out at the church for about 2 hours, hoping the rain would die down a little bit before we had to go out in it. Eventually two thirty rolled around and we simply couldn't wait any longer, so we headed out with our umbrellas up. It died down quite a bit, and then eventually stopped after we started walking. As we headed down Ekkamai 30, Alan randomly stopped and started rolling up the bottom of his pants. We were a little bit confused until we turned the corner: there was about a foot, foot and a half of water covering the whole street. That's how hard it was raining. So we rolled up our pants too, and waded over to the little cell phone shop to pick up SIM cards for the new students that just got here, then we waded over to the other side of the Soi, to grab a taxi. Of course, it's like walking in the water at the beach; no matter how high you roll your pant legs up.... you still get soaked. But you feel like you're doing something to help yourself out.  We went over to the Big church, and proceeded on to the banana grove. When we were done, there was so much traffic from flooding that we ditched our taxi on the bridge, and ended up walking for about an hour to get to the church for prayer. They were doing a big Prayer and Fasting week, and this was the conclusion of it; so that was a lot of fun, and a fantastic day to end the day. So we got home a little after 10:30, and now I am officially exhausted.
Goodnight!