Hi! Glad you found us.
Thailand is Calling is a website about the work we, the Bryans, are doing as we seek to spread the gospel of Christ to the world around us. Currently, we are living in Bangkok, Thailand and working with the Somprasong 4 Church of Christ.
Our wonderful church family, the Highland Heights Church of Christ, in Smyrna, TN sent us to Bangkok and oversees the work we do in Thailand.
Eleanor Jean Bryan was delivered at Bumrungrad International in Bangkok at 12:22 am (UTC+7) on July 2nd, 2008 via c-section. She’s a beautiful, healthy baby girl, measuring 3610 grams and 52 cm, which converts to 7 lbs. 15 oz. and 20.5 inches. Both mommy and baby are doing fine and are currently catching up on some much needed sleep.
Thank you for all the prayers on our behalf. They did not go unanswered.
I’ve posted some photos online for you to view.
10. Up until 1917 a white elephant appeared on the national flag of Thailand.
11. The founding year of the nation of Siam (now Thailand) was 1238.
12. A law was passed in 1921 decreeing that all white elephants automatically belong to the King, making it illegal for them to be bought, sold or used commercially.
On Sunday morning, June 16th, our good friend and long time English student, Lynne, was baptized into Christ. She’s been a regular around Somprasong 4 for a few years now, and we can’t be happier with her decision to give her life in service to God.
This website has been quiet lately for a coupe of reasons. We’re still recovering a little from a computer crash recently. I’ve been busy teaching English. Dalissa’s been busy being pregnant; as of today we’re D-Day plus two.
Speaking of English students — We started up the Engilsh program again at the end of last month. Right now I’ve got about 25 students who still come every week. A small group of Aggies are here teaching English as well. They’ll be here through end of July/beginning of August.
On Sunday afternoons, we invite all of our students to the church building for some activities with Christians. One Sunday the Aggies were out of town, and we were in charge of the activities. We decided to play a Family Feud style gameshow with our students. During the week, we handed out a survey to all of the students. Some of the answers were pretty funny.
What is your favorite color?
Name an animal you find in the zoo.
What is your favorite “Western food”?
Who is your favorite movie star?
What time do you go to bed at night?
What is the best animal to have as a pet?
Name a flavor of ice cream.
Even thought the last couple of days have been dry, for a little over a month it has rained in Bangkok pretty much every day. This is the aftermath of one pretty good rainstorm.
We had close to eighty students come and sign up for the English program at the Somprasong 4 Church of Christ. From experience, I know that a good number more will join us as well. Our Aggie friends from Texas A&M arrived last week. We’ll really enjoy having them here to help us teach and get to know our students over the next 3 months. Amos Gutierrez, now on his fourth summer in Thailand, is the team leader, and has a website chronicling their time in Bangkok.
The Cha-am Beach Bible Camp ended a little over a month ago and I have yet to post anything about it. I was waiting on finishing a video, but I didn’t think it was interesting enough, and I thought that it was going to be entirely too long. I may still complete it, on Dalissa’s insistence. Look out for it in our new Videos section after a while. Maybe.
I also wrote about the camp in our latest newsletter. Here is the excerpt:
Each year the church at Somprasong 4 organizes a Bible camp at Cha-am Beach, in the Petchaburi Providence of Thailand. Years ago, at its outset, camp was intended only for teens and young adults. As those teens grew up into adulthood, they continued to come to camp each year. Now, this year, close to 500 people attended camp from all over Thailand.
This is the second year we’ve been able to attend. We got to reconnect with a few friends, and I got the opportunity talk to a few different church leaders from other parts of Thailand, as well. The camp was 4 days long, and had 12 different guest speakers - all preachers from different parts of the country.
I was given the opportunity to teach the young men’s class on the life of Timothy. For a split second, I considered trying my hand at teaching in Thai, but as I began to prepare my lesson, I was quickly put back into my place by my language shortcomings. Maybe soon. Luckily Bhee, an elder’s son at Somprasong. helped with translation, and we had a great class on Timothy.
Below is a slideshow of about 240 photos chosen out of 1,200 taken at camp. You can see the set at the Flickr photo page.
7. The name Thailand means Land of the Free. The Thai people actually call their country Meung Thai (เมืองไทย), which translates “city of Thais”.
8. King Ramkhamhaeng, who ruled at the end of the thirteenth century, created the first Thai alphabet.
9. There are approximately 3.6 million rice farming families in Thailand totaling around 20 million people.
