Flying by the seat of your pants...

The past few days have been filled with a few firsts in my life. On Sunday, I had the opportunity to baptize for the first time. On Monday, I performed part of a wedding for a former student at CRBS, something I had never done before. Someone told me that I might have to preach, so I was prepared to do that. When I got to the village, I found out that they wanted me to do the wedding ceremony, not preach. I wasn't prepared for that at all, but like anyone would do in my situation, I did it anyways.

The whole ceremony was quite funny. I knew the bride, but had never met the groom. I asked a number of people what the groom's name was and no one knew. So I performed the ceremony not knowing the groom's name!! I did the vows in English because I didn't want to mess up this special day. Tawm translated the vows into Thai and then we discovered that the groom didn't understand Thai. So Tim, our secretary, had to translate into Karen. Everything went smoothly and we all returned to our seat. After one of the villagers finished his part of the ceremony, he asked us to sing a song with the guitar. No one had talked to us before, the guy didn't even know if I played the guitar, he just assumed I did. Again, I accepted, but I had no idea what to sing. I don't listen to love songs very much and I definitely don't know any on the guitar. Tawm drew a blank too. We stood in front of everyone trying to figure out what song to sing. Finally, I decided to sing a worship song in English, that way the people would have no idea what I was singing about and they would think it was a English love song. As I sang, I couldn't believe this was happening, I forgot some of the words and just made them up but the audience had no idea. When it was all finished, the audience gave a loud applause. I thought to myself, if they only knew.

A word of advice... If you are planning on being a foreign missionary, be prepared for these kinds of things to happen. Be prepared to fly by the seat of your pants. The Bible says to be ready in season and out of season. In Thailand that can mean all sorts of things.