Sunday, December 1, 2013

Protests in Bangkok

I am not certain what the media in the United States is covering, but based on the things I'm seeing online, you may have heard something about political protests happening in Bangkok recently. For the most part, the protests have been peaceful. However, this weekend things seem to have turned around a little bit. At least two people have been killed and more than fifty injured so far this weekend, and I've heard that the protests may continue to escalate today (Sunday) - so we'll see where things lead.

I wanted to let you know that we live outside of Bangkok and are not anywhere close to where these protests are happening. Most of them have happened downtown near government buildings; there's some protests happening at a couple of government buildings on a major road about 20 minutes away from where we live, but those are the only ones that I know of that are not downtown. We are safe, and are going to try to stay out of the downtown area until things settle down.

On that note, though, I have a rather specific prayer request. Both Michael and I got new passports in October. We have to transfer the visa stamps and things from the old passports to the new ones, but when we went to have that done, the immigration officer wouldn't do it because we were missing one piece of paperwork - a letter from the embassy. We are hoping that the embassy will just be able to fax or send us a scanned copy of this letter. If not, though, we will have to go downtown to the embassy in order to get it, which is quite close to where some of these protests are happening. Please pray that we can get this squared away easily and quickly - the letter itself isn't hard to get, it's just a hassle with the distance we are from the embassy, combined with having to take time off from work and the added stress of these potentially violent demonstrations happening. We will be leaving the country for Christmas break - just three weeks away. So we've got a little time, but not much. Pray that the demonstrations will end quickly (and peacefully), and that we will be able to get the papers we need in order to finish updating our passports and so we can leave the country at Christmas!

If you want to learn more about the protests happening in Bangkok, you can visit BBC's website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ - they seem to be keeping close tabs on all that's happening. If you want a different perspective, you can also visit the Bangkok Post's website: http://www.bangkokpost.com/ .

Prayers are appreciated. Thanks!

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