Floods in Chiang Mai

TRIGGER WARNING: We’ve all sat around the lunchroom table and listened to friends trying to out-do each other’s stories. In a world of flooding, hurricanes, and disaster, this makes me hesitant to post about last week’s flooding. Our family is dry, healthy and safe. I realize the flooding here in Chiang Mai pales next to the disasters others are facing in other parts of the world, and I don't want to add to the online negativity and fear. Yet, I DO hope to be an advocate for prayer. Our time serving alongside our church yesterday (just a 1/2 mile from our home) highlights just one of the many homes and communities that are being affected. While living next to a natural disaster zone, this is what we're finding:

Natural disaster is unpredictable.

Nate, our pastor and a friend headed into the waters.

Yes, we knew the river was going to overflow its banks, but we live aways from the river. Nobody expected it to flood this far into the city or this quickly. We got a call that the water was above the ankle at a local church and that help was needed to move items. Nate left immediately, but by the time he and his friends got there (through the twisty roads of the city), it was waist deep in some parts of the street. There was no upstairs to relocate items. It was too late to be of help.

The same street a week later.

This life (and its possessions) is fleeting

Yesterday we went back to the church and found virtually everything ruined from mid-curtains downward. Chairs, photos, books, and furniture. Much was an unrecognizable mess of brown slime that we packed into breaking laundry baskets and large cooking pots and carried into the streets. What was left had soaked in the mixture of mire and reeking sewage. Ironically, there was no running water to wash it off with. When we tried to tug at a bookshelf, it collapsed to the floor. A particle board desk crumbled into pieces. 

The streets are filed with piles of people's mud-soaked belongings.

Comparing suffering isn’t apples to apples

There is much pain behind the smiles, but Thai people are resilient. 

Every person experiences suffering differently. What looks excruciating for one person, may not feel as hard for another. And what looks simple for one, could feel like a mountain for another. In the midst of the pain, I saw lots of laughter and cathartic joking yesterday. Community is being strengthened, and people are looking for the silver lining. While this group of believers has lost nearly everything, they have not lost their trust in God or their love for humanity.

We need each other

The week before the floods hit, I was at a potluck with a friend. “Look around you,” she told me. “These are the people who are going to come together and serve each other when troubles come.” Little did we know how prophetic those words would be.

This group smiled their way through Day One of clean up and even insisted on sending us home with homemade pad Thai.

In a world with so much suffering, thank you for caring about what is going on in my little corner. The road of recovery for this community is long, but we have an all-powerful God who walks beside us.