Loy Krathong Festival

Just a few days ago, Pamela and I were invited by our villagers to go and see a festival nearby. The name of the festival is "Loy Krathong." The people prepare a "Krathong," which is a little decorated float-like object often made from banana leaves, paper, candles, etc. They then float (loy) it out on the water. By doing this, they are worshipping and/or paying honor to the god of the water. By doing so, they believe that they will receive good fortune. At the event we went to, they had kids and adults from a number of villages dance. Baan Buay, the village that we live in, sent a couple of different groups to perform. They did a great job and had a lot of fun.

Before they began to float the "Krathong's," the vice governor (pictured to the left) of the province of Sisaket had just finished giving a speech. He came down from the stage and then started his journey to the water, followed by everyone else. As he was on his way, he looked at me...I knew something was up, with us being the only white people for miles. He then came to me, with everyone looking, spoke to us for a while in English and in Thai, and then made us his guest to go offer a huge "krathong" to the god of the water. We were "strongly" urged, by everyone, to follow him, so we followed along. On the way I was able to explain to him that we were Christians, and that we would not be participating. This was somewhat embarrassing for us, b/c in Thailand its not very polite to refuse to do something when someone of high prestige offers, but this gave us an opportunity to politely stand for what we believe in...thus, we just took pictures. Here are some of the pictures and a video that we took at the festival.

The kids in this picture and in the video down below are some of the very young people that we seek to minister to. The majority of them are our neighbors on the street in which we live. I guess this dancing is something like their form of cheerleading or something. Notice the tall person on the right in the black/green and the person in the back middle in the orange are not really women, but men. Homosexuality and dressing up like women is a big issue in Thai society. The person on the right is very open about it, but until now, we have never seen the boy in the orange dressed up like a girl. In fact, the boy in the orange attends our weekly English lesson, and in fact, is probably our best student. He, along with many of these kids, have heard the Gospel, and we pray that God will work and transform each of their lives.

These are some adults doing more of the traditional Isaan Dancing