How Dayn, Who Thought He Was Prepared, Got More Than He Bargained For

So I took a while yesterday morning to make this great water shield for my camera. It actually worked perfectly with only one little scare right at the beginning. This happened in 1/8 of a second, and I didn't have enough time to see it, let alone react to it. Immediately took care of it, and no damage done, thank the Lord.

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Jason Eats Another Strange Food

Jason Eats Another Strange Food from Dayn Arnold on Vimeo.

This time Jason's eating an entire chicken's foot. It's not bad tasting, but the thought of eating the entire foot, bones and all, was a bit much for me. Didn't finish mine.

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Girls

There's something unsettling about children performing. To some degree, in America we encourage children to be performers. Kids these days grow up watching American Idol or America's Got Talent, the get the idea that entertainment is the pinnacle of society. While growing up in that kind of environment isn't exactly the healthiest thing for a child, it seems fairly normal. Maybe I don't understand the culture here well enough, but watching child performers in Chiang Mai feels different. Feels a little sad and wrong.

At the Sunday Night Walking Street market, you can find anything Thai. If you want a t-shirt that says "Chiang Mai" on it, that's the place to go. If you want to buy a giant bug under glass, you're in luck. If you want to eat fried grasshoppers, the market is where you need to be. There is also entertainment to be had as far as the eye can see. Singing and dancing seem to be the performance-styles of choice. From large stage productions with ear-piercing music to the groups of blind men singing and playing instruments, there is a near-overwhelming amount of entertainment to be had. However, amidst the cacophony of sound, the performers that made the biggest impact on me were the two little girls performing in the center of the walkway. I'm certain these girls have been performing at the market for a while, as they seemed very polished from their spotless tribal garb to their mastery of their craft. So poised, so collected, and so much older in demeanor than their years on earth would belie. Jason and I parked ourselves in front of the girl playing some sort of hammer dulcimer, I with my large video camera and enormous tripod, and Jason with his huge camera and giant lens. We created quite a spectacle, causing people who wouldn't otherwise have noticed this girl to stop and listen. With that much attention, she had to try very hard not to smirk, but kept right on playing throughout. I can only assume the woman sitting nearby was her mother, the one dictating when she could take a break. While the show was enjoyable, it made me think about what we were doing, filming and photographing a little girl for show. Granted, we plan to use our footage for noble purposes, but it made me think a lot about the exploitation of little girls like this, pushed to perform in one way or another when they should be just kids.

Behind the girl playing the hammer dulcimer, another girl, possibly a relative of the first girl, was dancing for passers by. She really was quite graceful, showing incredibly poise and maturity. She had a CD player behind her and was dancing to the music dressed to the nines in tribal garb like they wear in nearby Hmong villages. Fringe and tassels flew as she spun and moved to the music. She was very good. A little too good, perhaps. Some of her dance moves bordered on the provocative, perhaps moves she had learned watching western television. And while I have no evidence that she was involved in an abusive family environment, it certainly made me think about the implications in my own culture of dancing for money. I mentioned to Jason that filming this little girl was a little creepy, a bit unsettling. As we drew crowds, it helped these girls make more money than they would have, and we both donated generously to each of the girls as we had parked ourselves in front of each of them for much longer than we felt we could have for free. We talked about the fact that we have the opportunity to help others in the world fall in love with the Thai people, and to bring Jesus to a lost and hurting nation. But that kind of help is potentially far off, not nearly as immediate as throwing Thai Baht into her bowl. We want to support people, not necessarily their activities. It was a difficult moment knowing we were getting powerful footage, but that we were in essence supporting something we didn't entirely agree with. All in all it was a sobering moment, the kind of moment I suspect Jason and I will have many of in the coming years. We want to help others help these girls on a longer-term basis than we can in the moment, and we have to believe God will be faithful in people's hearts to move.

(All of these pictures are from the video footage I took that night. It's powerful stuff when there's motion, but internet being what it is here, this'll have to do.)

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The Monklets

Afternoon in Cha-am is a sticky affair. I know there are a million other places in the world that are hotter and/or more humid, but right now it feels very warm here. Very warm. Maybe when I'm old I'll obsess over weather, but for now I'll move on. There are far more interesting things to think about than the warm weather.

A couple days ago, a few of us here in Cha-am headed out on scooters in search of story. We took a short ride back to the monastery we had visited a couple days previously, and the area was nearly empty, with the distant sounds of little monklets in school emanating from a nearby building. We began wandering the grounds, slowly and respectfully moving around buildings and statues rich with carvings and color. I wandered out of the filtered light of tree-cover to shoot a twenty-foot-tall statue of Buddah covering his eyes and ears, and quickly began sweating out every ounce of water I had ingested in the previous twelve hours. From a distance I heard the powerful strains of Eastern music played by a Thai brass band. I sought out the source of the music, finding the drummers and brass players under a covered area, bare-footed sitting next to a table heavy with typically gaudy Buddhist symbols and icons. These men were practicing for a later performance, but seemed to be playing as if there were no tomorrow, with all the gusto and and brassy harshness you would expect from a group five times its size. It was powerful.

We had spent the better part of an hour shooting and musing around the grounds of the monastery, and were slowly heading back to our scooters when our monk friend from our previous visit to the grounds approached us, a giant yellow umbrella protecting him from the harsh Thai sun. He was all smiles at the sight of Jason, and the two of them instantly began sharing Jason's camera, taking turns being photograph-er and photograph-ed. As Jason was engaged with our monk friend, some of the little monk kids began spilling out of their nearby building, on break for lunch. I started shooting the kids a little from a distance, unsure whether it was completely acceptable for me to shoot either monks or children, and especially unsure when they were sort of both. The kids didn't seem to mind, and I approached a couple of them, turning my camera's screen toward them so they could see what and who I was shooting. One of the nearby adults began gesturing to me, and I quickly realized he was encouraging me to interact with the kids. I jumped at the opportunity, and approached a dozen or so of the young monks, most around the age of ten. They were such boys! I guess I had never thought much about the humanity of monk-hood, about the fact that these holy men are really just men. These boys were shoving each other, smiling and laughing, teasing and joking with each other and the camera. I got a real glimpse past the orange robes and shaved heads, into the individual personalities and characters of the kids. I thought about the monk Jason had befriended, how he was very much fascinated by photography, and began piecing together a fictional story for how his life may have resulted in him being a monk. Maybe he had always been interested in photography. Maybe he had always enjoyed the capturing of images, telling stories. Maybe his family, in an effort to receive blessing, had given him over to becoming a holy man as a young boy, like the boys surrounding me. Maybe all he wanted was to be a photographer, but had no choice as a man of the cloth. A lot of maybes, but greater than that, in my heart I began to understand the humanity of the Thai people.

Cultural separation can create divides in my ability to see people as people, but I've come one step closer to understanding and loving my Thai brothers and sisters. And all through a group of orange-clad head-shaved children.

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A Few Days in Cha-am

Sometimes I have to pinch myself about where I am right this minute. I'm sitting in an internet cafe in a coastal Thai town called Cha-am. Almost everything is different that it would be back home. Even logging into Blogger, I have to remember where the log-in link is on the page because the normal Blogger text has been replaced with Thai script. It's probably ninety to ninety-five degrees and quite humid outside with just enough breeze to make sitting in the shade tolerable. I smell local street food mixing with the salty sea air and fumes from the cars, trucks, busses, and scooters lazily motoring by. Nobody is in a hurry. The light turns slowly golden-yellow, making even the nastiest of sights

beautiful. It's pretty great.

The last few days have been some of the most satisfying I've ever had with regard to shooting video. Last Sunday, future teammate Jason, a new acquaintance Joel, and I went out on a photo field trip, slowly walking down the beach, shooting anything that caught our eyes. After a while we came upon a small fishing community. The men were cleaning out their nets, pulling out the tiny remnants of crustaceans and fish they had caught throughout the day. Jason took the initiative and clambered out onto the bamboo structure and though he didn't know the language, he was able to get permission to shoot candid photos of the men and women working. I piggybacked on his initiative and got some incredible footage of the weathered hands and faces of the men sitting around cleaning their nets. So real. So unpretentious. As we moved on, we heard rhythms in the distance. We discovered the music was coming from a Buddhist monastery full of children studying to by monks. There was a group performing for them. They had a dragon like you would see at a Chinese New Year celebration, and they made a human tower in the span of a minute. As we were covertly shooting, one of the monks, perhaps in his late twenties, early thirties, approached us. I thought for sure he was going to ask us to leave, or that we had committed some sort of faux pas, but it turned out he was really interested in Jason's camera equipment. Jason let the monk use his camera, and our new friend proceeded to give Jason incredible flexibility to pose or shoot photos this monk. It was amazing how quickly something like photography was able to strike up a conversation, begin a relationship in a way I had never imagined. It was amazing.

The next day, in the evening, Jason, Joel and I went with our new friends Andrew and Jim on a dusky scooter drive along the coastal road our hotel is on. We dismounted our scooters, and

went on foot down the beach a ways to one of the tallest hotels in town, around 37 stories to the top of the roof. After walking right by the sleeping security guard, we made our way to the top of the building to catch the tail end of dusk, wind whipping us like crazy. From the top you

can see the whole town, for miles in every direction. You couldn't help but pray for the people

living there. Powerful stuff to see man's creation and God's creation overshadowing it in

the sea and mountains and night sky. On the way back, I climbed on the back of Jason's scooter and shot video as we zoomed down Cha-am's major streets. I took some of the most satisfyingly cool video I've ever taken, gripping Jason with my knees so I could have both hands free to shoot. Brilliant.

Today Jason, Joel and I went on a lit

tle trip on a couple scooters to see what can be seen. We ended up back at the same monastery as the other day, but had a much greater degree of comfortability going in. Our monk friend from the other day met up with us again, and I was practically invited to take video of the young monks in training. At least some of the kids were around ten years old, and were definitely boys, shoving and messing with each other. Never before have I assigned such a high degree of reality, of humanity to the Buddhist holy men. They've always seemed so austere, so distant, but these boys were boys. My heart began swelling with joy for these young monks, and yet gripped with sorrow at the way their time and lives are so far from knowing Christ. But if a simple visit with a camera can begin fostering a true relationship, there is hope abundant!

I have begun to learn to love the Thai people. They are beautiful and warm (at least outside of the big cities) and full of possibility. I can hardly wait to share more with you all, and want so badly for you all to love them as I am learning to do.

(All the photos here are screenshots from the video I took.)

Back in Thailand with Time to Kill

My computer’s clock tells me it’s 4:10pm, but my body can tell it’s lying. Jumping fourteen hours into the future is not easily accomplished without some sort of physical punishment. I’m slowly beginning to realize that I don’t love travel, like I’ve previously claimed. I love being new places, but generally don’t enjoy the journey if it’s primarily flying airlines that somehow seem to miraculously cram more people into a plane at the expense of the tall man’s leg-room. I swear, those planes are getting more and more like those circus cars that somehow house a hundred clowns in a space that should fit four. Though I oft lament my consistent inability to sleep in sardine-cramped quarters, it’s certainly worth the discomfort to get where I’m going. Like so many things in life, the more you suffer through it, the greater the reward. Also, I’m feeling very dramatic this morning, so I hope you’re feeling comfortable with hyperbole.

I have five hours to kill while I wait for a few more Pioneers people to arrive at the airport so we can vanpool to the coast. I’m tired out from sleeping about four hours in the last 36, which seems to be step one in my usual adjustment to a drastically-new timezone. Step one: sleep less than two hours during sixteen to seventeen hours of flying. Step one can also include any sleep I may get in the airport waiting for my next connection, hence my total of four hours of sleep. Step two: crash. When I get where I’m going, I lay down for an indeterminate number of hours for some of the hardest sleep I get in any given year. When I visited my sister Daylan in Kenya, we drove home from the airport, I laid down in her bed and was immediately out into a rock-like dreamless sleep for the next eight hours. Today I don’t want to sleep THAT much because I’ll continue sleeping from mid-day to pre-dusk morning for the duration of my trip, and that would be a big waste of time, now wouldn’t it? I’m pretty good at adjusting when I fly West. Coming back home seems to take longer to adjust.

I’m really not sure why I’m telling you guys this, aside from the fact that I have time to kill and haven’t written something truly wordy in months, if not more than a year. I suppose writing this is better than continuing to wander the part of the airport outside the gates where there really is nothing to do. In case you didn’t already know, I’m a bit of an idiot. I come all the way to Thailand, and decided to camp out in a Starbucks, which is a bit more of a lateral step than a step up from aimless wandering. Writing really is one of my true releases, where I can get my thoughts, as scattered as they may be, out onto the page. I don’t much care whether anyone reads it. Kind of a public diary, I suppose. A place where the multitude of fragments of ideas in my mind find a place to get together and figure out how they all fit together. Or don’t fit together. Like how strange it seems that I’m listening to Allison Krauss and Union Station play for all to hear in Thailand of all places.

I tend to get down on American culture for the way it idolizes beauty and consumerism. The more places I visit, the more I realize America is far from alone in that idolization. I’m struck again at the enormous ads in the Tokyo and Bangkok airports, touting beauty products that cost and make a fortune worldwide by plastering larger than life women and men who have been airbrushed into oblivion (anyone remember that Arrested Development where Gob had to check albino on his mother’s fake drivers license because he “airbrushed her into oblivion?”) to make all of us want what they have. I know this is hardly a new area of discussion, but I was struck by it early this morning. There’s something about those European ads that instantly make me feel inferior. Pretty amazing that print media can draw out such a strong reaction.

It’s hard not to judge people in the Bangkok airport. Especially since I know a little about the shady things that can go on between Westerners and Thai women. Every time I see a white guy walking hand in hand with a young human stick-figure of a Thai woman, I instantly jump to a conclusion. I think that sort of judgmental attitude is a result of working on a short documentary with my good buddy Fritz. He shot a bunch of footage in Cambodia, and we put together a doc about a teenaged girl who was tricked into sex-slavery. The story has a happy ending as she is ultimately rescued from that world and given a new chance at life through a handful of amazing Godly people. Editing and composing the music for that project was an amazing and eye-opening experience. Non-profit Transitions Global uses it in their materials. I can show you the film sometime if you’re interested.

I had a realization at about 2:00 this morning. The video gear I brought with me on this trip is worth a lot of money. A lot. I think the quality you get from good gear is easily worth its cost, but sometimes it makes you wonder. I expect in the next couple days to be shouldering my spendy cam out in public and have someone ask for money. I’ll probably say I don’t have any money or just ignore them. And even if I don’t have the money and I’m not lying, I’m still carrying around a piece of equipment that could be worth more than a years salary for any number of locals here. It’s a bizarre and uncomfortable dichotomy that so often the people telling the stories could be eliminating the very stories they’re telling just by investing in those people. I suppose that would probably be a short-lived solution to a much greater problem, one that could certainly benefit from a bit of exposure. But still, it makes you think.

This is my first trip in the last year and a half that I’ve taken without Mandi by my side. The one benefit I get from this (lack of) arrangement is that I have more time to take my time with footage because I don’t have to think about how I’m wasting her time by stopping every ten seconds to shoot. Ultimately, however, I already miss her a lot. I don’t have anybody to be grumpy (or occasionally deliriously giddy) around from lack of sleep. I don’t have a hand to hold out in public. I don’t have that voice of reason with me at all times, the one that snaps me out of a funk or makes me laugh really hard. In part, I have too much time to cogitate on such things while I wait for the other members of my vanpool, and when things pick up a bit the pangs of longing will subside to a dull ache. But right now, while I have time to just BE for the first time in a long long while, my only wish is that she were here with me. Next time she will be. That will be a good day.

So thanks for sharing in my ramblings. I’ve not had verbal (not verbal, though, as it’s written) diarrhea in a good long while. Perhaps free time is Dayn’s perfect verbal stool softener. Gross. I’m so sorry for that last statement, though apparently not sorry enough to delete it. Next time I probably won’t have so much to say, though who really knows?

Daynold out.

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New Letter Coming Soon!!!

Hey everybody! I have a new letter coming out soon! If you haven't gotten one of my letters before, you might not get this new one. Email me your physical address ASAP to get your letter! daynarnold[at]gmail[dot]com

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Additional Blessings...

If you're looking for truly momentous news, see the next post. If you're looking for just plain awesome news, keep on reading.

I've posted before that I have some back problems, occasionally debilitating back problems. A couple years ago when I had insurance (man I miss those days) I started working with an osteopath, and I was told I have a short leg and that difference in length has been messing with my back for years. So I started wearing a lift in my right shoe to compensate for that short leg. The hope was that the lift would eliminate the periodic episodes I would have wherein I couldn't walk as my back freaked out.

Well, I had my two most serious episodes (to the left is a pic of me standing up as straight as I can in my last episode. Please forgive the horrible MySpace-esque pic in the mirror. It was the only way I could get the picture where I was.) within the last year, and I decided the lift wasn't doing me any good so I stopped wearing it.

Now I've been working with my buddy Dr. Tim to correct the problem for good, and even though he was giving me a phenomenal deal on the adjustments, I don't have any wiggle room in my budget for this kind of treatment. A couple weeks ago Tim presented me with an 8 month corrective care plan which should bring my spine back to where it is supposed to be for a normal 29-year-old. The plan involves three times a week of therapy and adjustments, x-rays, special weights, and pretty much everything else I will need for 8 months of care. I could split the cost into monthly payments (which was still incredibly affordable, but would mean I would need to have a decent amount of extra work monthly, especially as Mandi and I are going to be saving up for our wedding), or pay the whole thing at once (with substantial savings, but still a decent chunk of change.) I knew I couldn't afford the all-at-once plan, so I had pretty much decided to pay monthly for the care and figure it out as I went.

My dad likes to be in the loop on these sorts of things, so I called him to let him know what was going on. We both agreed that I can't afford not to do this, especially if I'm going to head into the field and can't afford to be grounded for weeks at a time by a bum back. So he decided then and there to pay for the whole thing at once without a thought of repayment aside from continuing to follow where the Lord is leading me. Wow. I feel incredibly blessed and am astounded that Dad would do that for me. Please pray that he and Mom will be blessed richly for such an act of selflessness.

I just got back from another adjustment and feel blessed all around because of it. God is just so good, is he not?!

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The Biggest News [UPDATED VIDEO LINKS]

Hello, my quasi-abandoned readers. As is my custom, accept my apologies for neglecting my post. Things have been a little crazy around here.

So, it's been coming for a long while now, with hints and whispers of its arrival, but now it's official: Mandi and I are engaged. To be married. To each other. It seems like so many things have been hinging on our getting engaged, it's a bit of a relief to have crossed over into this whole new world, a dazzling place I never knew. But now from way up here, it's crystal clear, that now I'm in a whole new world with her.

So now begins the fun of putting together a whole wedding event with very little budget. Huzzah! Actually, I am quite confident it will be the event of the summer. Or at least the day.

Now we get to start talking in concrete terms about our future together overseas, which is nice. It's been a lot of tiptoeing around the idea of going out into the world together, but not being engaged invited a lot of questions we weren't prepared to answer with confidence. We need to get Mandi to Orlando for Pioneers' Candidate Orientation Program (COP) at some point so she can learn the ins and outs of Pioneers, and we can finally work together to raise support. When she is able to do that, it would be great for me to go along and work with the communications people there for a week. Right now the plan is to be ready to head overseas in early fall of 2011, which seems like an eternity from now, but it will be wiser to be married here for a year before changing everything else in our lives.

Right now we're going to need a lot of prayer as we try to juggle work, church, pre-marital counseling (we haven't started that yet), working through a Perspectives course (we had a huge blessing the other day when we found out with some extra work we could both go despite having no extra income! Thanks Kevin and CJ and The Well!!!), moving forward with Pioneers, and all sorts of other things. Wow. Thanks for your prayers.

Just for me, I just had an interview with Portland Public Schools (again) to join the Ed Assistant sub pool, something I'm not super excited about, but I need the money. I may also have opportunity to do more videography in the near future, which would be even better. Please pray for opportunity to do more videography. Thanks.

If you're wondering about the engagement story, please see the video below. Celebrate this momentous news with us! Thanks.

(If you have trouble watching the video below, click here for a YouTube HD version. If you still have trouble watching the video, click here for a YouTube SD version. If you still have trouble watching the video, do your very best to imagine what the story could be like and let us know what you come up with.)

Dayn and Mandi's Engagement Story from Dayn Arnold on Vimeo.

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Making up for lost time...

Hey everybody.

I have a friend who described the environmental qualities necessary for blog-writing thusly: "I must have vast wastelands of time." I couldn't agree more. I haven't updated this blog in more than a month in great part due to my lack of real free time. Sure I have plenty of time when I'm not obligated to work on anything in particular, but I often end up feeling guilty for not working on something more pressing, so I completely waste my time with something mindless like watching TV or something. These are the times I miss having a normal nine to five where I have a concrete time I'm off and can do whatever the heck I want after getting off. Ah, sometimes I miss mindless work.

So let me give a quick recap of the month.

On November 20, Mandi and celebrated dating for a year, woot! It's been a good year for both of us, and breaks records on both sides for duration of relationship. And will continue to do so (still unofficially). *wink*

November 24, I went with a group to go see one of my favorite musical groups, The Swell Season. The two singers in the band were the main characters in the film Once, one of my very favorite movies of all time. (I recommend it with reservation, as it has a LOT of foul language. They're Irish, it's going to happen.) The venue is general admission, so we got there an hour and a half before the doors opened so we could get a good spot in the standing-only ballroom. We waited for HOURS for the show to start, and my body was tired from standing still for so long, but we were right up in front! I got to see one of my songwriting heroes as close to the stage as is possible. Click here for some of my youtube clips of the show.

I went to Bend for Thanksgiving with the folks, brother Drew and his wife Ashleigh, and sister Daylan. Had a great and relaxing time away from everything.

December 5 Mandi threw me a surprise birthday party at one of my favorite places in Portland, Backstage Pub. It's a poolhall built into what used to be the backstage part of an old theater. Huge 80 foot ceilings, with a couple more private rooms. I wasn't suspicious of any surprise party at all, and Mandi suggested heading down to Backstage to kill a little time before we headed to birthday dinner. I was completely clueless. She mentions to me, "We should check out what's going on in the upstairs rooms," and I see the "reserved" sign and tell her we shouldn't go up, so as not to bother the people up there. She insisted we check it out anyway, so against my better judgement I went up there with her only to discover it was reserved for me with 15 or so good friends there. It was pretty fantastic.

December 13 Mandi and I were driving somewhere when I felt something funny in my back, usually a precursor to the back going completely out. So I was careful not to do anything to aggravate it any further, doing what I usually do to avoid a really bad episode. Even though I think I made all the right decisions, treating everything with care, it seized up, and I was stuck walking bent 30 degrees to the left. I made an appointment to see my old osteopath even though I don't have any insurance. I figured with an adjustment or two I could at least get back on my feet. Well, a friend of mine suggested a different, more affordable option, one that may give me a discount as I'm in ministry. So I went the next day only to find out I don't qualify for their discount, despite being a poor uninsured person in ministry. So, in great frustration (no fault at all of the friend who recommended that particular clinic, by the way) I decided if I was going to pay full-price for an adjustment, I may as well go to my regular doctor. I called his office to find out the next available appointment was for December 27, which wasn't going to fly. So Mandi and I started calling several other chiropractic connections to no avail, and I was getting SO flustered because I didn't know when I would be able to walk normally again. We left messages at several offices as it was approaching closing time for most clinics. I laid down at Mandi's house in a state of helplessness when I hear Mandi talking on the phone. We have a couple new friends, Tim and Lauren, awesome people, and Tim happens to be a chiropractor. Lauren called Mandi and said Tim could hurry over to the office that same night, or open up the office especially for me in the morning and get things set straight. Wow! So we met them the next morning and Tim did some tests and cracked me back into place. Then he came over to my house that same night and did it again. Who makes house calls!? I've gone in to his clinic four times in the last week, and am walking upright and even sitting with little or no pain. I don't have insurance, but he's made it incredibly affordable for me to visit this many times. Starting this Wednesday we're going to start figuring out exactly what's causing the recurring problem and see if we can't eliminate it with some intentional treatment. Please pray we're able to figure out why this keeps happening. And pray a big old blessing over Tim and Lauren while you're at it.

We had our church's Advent service last night, the 20th, and it was by far the very best Christmas service I've ever attended. I got to help plan it, but it certainly wasn't what made it good. There was just so much genuineness! I love my church full of real people! Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Plus I finally got to play Sufjan Steven's "Holy, Holy, Holy" with Beth Johnson, my worship music right-hand woman and fellow future-missionary. We were supposed to play it last year, but a snowstorm forced the cancellation of the service. Anyway, the evening was a beautiful redirection of the season.

Well folks, that's the news from Lake Woebegon where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

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