My Thai sign language with the man sitting next to me

Sitting to my right at the funeral was this elderly man who kept looking over at Mindy and me. mindy already warned me that because we were "farangs" everyone would stare at us at the funeral and that it would be good b/c often they are just sitting there waiting, so it gives them something to do.

in the right back corner there was a man who was grimacing and moving his jaw around a lot. mindy leaned over to me and said two words, "tardive dyskinesia." i knew exactly what she meant, so when she asked about him later in the funeral we would refer to him as "tardive." in a way he was our friend. we kept checking on him throughout the funeral b/c honestly he looked like he was barely alive. in the midst of having an extremely frail body habitus, he was smoking. lovely. he was off in his own world the whole time, but we always leaned back to check on him.

back to the man sitting to my right. he was elderly and thai. i realized before long that he didn't hear. he was using some form of "thai sign language" that we think he made up. he was looking out for us and trying to explain things to us about the funeral in his own sign language. mindy said she saw him at one point explaining to us about sang kran and how many people had been drinking. i missed that one, i was looking somewhere else, i guess. at one point when the monks came out, he got really excited and was trying to motion for me to wei the monks. well at that point i leaned over to mindy and said, "i'd really like to try to explain to him who we are." she said go for it. so i moved my chair closer to him and began to do some made up form of zsila thai sign language that i hoped would communicate with him. i pointed to my cross on my necklace first. he saw. then i pointed up to God and pointed back at the cross for him to make the connection. i pointed to myself and then my heart and tried to do the motion you've seen before with the hands crossed, symbolizing love. lastly i pointed back up to heaven or God. all together "I love God."
he nodded his head and smiled really big. he was buddhist, but he still smiled for me and for my love for God. i then pointed to God again and held my fist clinched tight with the other hand over it, like a protective seal. i was trying to show him, God was holding me in his hands tightly. he understood, b/c he nodded several times.

mindy saw what i was doing and said, "zsila, this just might be your strongest witness yet while you are here. you never know." i jokingly replied, "in my made up sign language?" hey, she could be right, you never know. it was so special communicating with him. i really sensed that i was supposed to try.

after the funeral, we walked to the front of the yard to pray with the man whose mother had died. guess who followed? my sign language friend! he came out to the street, too! all during the funeral, i had noticed he was wearing the "spirit" bracelets which are multple peices of strings wrapped around their wrists for the spirits they worship and ward off. i felt compelled to communicate again with him. i pointed to his spirit bracelet and then made the motion of breaking them. i made the motion of "you don't need them or no more." then i pointed up to God as if that was all he needed. he looked at me bewildered and in agreement and nodded his head again. i pointed to my head as if asking him "do you understand all of this?" he pointed back to his head, nodding which i will take stands for "yes."

this is truly a cool story. i will have to explain it to you better when i'm home. it was just an unbelievable opportunity that i took a chance on. talk about doing new things for the Lord. even a new sign language! just so you all know, i don't have a clue how to do sign language back home.