We missed the Elephant

Day 3:

We started our day with a time of worship and morning devotion with the team. Today we traveled around the city of Khorat. [4 Hours North of Bangkok]. We visited a silk factory called Matchada Thai Silk, & then a local family owned pottery business. The people work very long days in the heat doing physical labor. At the silk factory they make about 170 Baht per day [This equals around $4 USA... so, the cost of a Starbucks drink]. We were able to purchase some of the silk scarves that were made. The family that owns the pottery business demonstrated how to make a clay statue from start to finish. They are a family of five, and together make around 500 Baht per day [this equals around $15 USA]. They asked us to pray for them and their business and they were invited to a meeting we were already attending later in the day.

We went to a local mall food court for lunch and ate lunch for $1.50 each.

Then we went back to the hotel for debriefing about our business meetings thus far.

We headed 30 minutes away to a church to meet local business owners. On our way to the meeting Jeff casually asked, "Did you see that elephant walking on the side of the road?" We all said "No!" and began looking out the windows... and he said we had missed seeing it. We were all upset and laughing that Jeff mentioned it after the fact so we unable to enjoy seeing a baby elephant walking on the side of the street.

The meeting at the church lasted around 2 hours. There were 37 Thai people present and half of them owned their own business. Some of the business owners included: Convenience Store owner, Cosmetics sales, Toner Cartridge manufacturer, Pottery shop, Dentist, Herbal Supplement Drinks and more... We asked them many questions and learned more about the obstacles of making a living wage. We are still in the information gathering stage and are beginning to see similar themes throughout each meeting.

We headed back to the hotel and enjoyed dinner together.

Tomorrow we were planning to head back to Bangkok, however, media has suggested there might be political demonstrations and 10,000 cars headed to Bangkok... we may go to Pattaya instead. We will see how the news is in the morning.