A few motorcycle taxis and lots of steps later, Steve and I found ourselves on the outskirts of a village, looking eastward at a vast stretch of rice fields. The fields were laid out in long rectangular grids with heaped and hardened mud providing the outline and foot-deep, silty soil filling the middle. I know very little about harvesting rice, but the plants seemed young. They were barely long enough to sprout through the shallow layer of water on the floor of the field.
As we tight-roped our way over the mud embankments, we surveyed the scene around us. About 200 yards away, a lone tree stood next to the main road, two motorbikes propped beneath it. Even farther away, a little less than a mile, lay another the village which would be our last drop zone for the day.
Past the tree, back onto the main road, and into the village we trudged, our minds alert and our spirits sensitive even though our physical strength was slowly depleting. Our drops went smoothly there. Steve and I started having some fun, frisbeeing VCD's into people's backyards, up onto second-story porches and hiding them in vehicles and woodpiles.
Before leaving Thailand, we had prayed that we would be accompanied by angels on the trail. We implored God to dispatch his most elite, Michael and Gabriel, to guide our tosses and to protect us from any evil that may have been lurking in the villages.
Once, Steve made an impossible toss, landing a VCD in a location with a slim margin for error. A miss could have put a VCD in the middle of the street and our mission in danger. We thanked God for the accuracy and joke with each other about how Steve had thrown an "alley-oop" to Gabriel.
Another time, walking one of the gravel pathways within the village, we encountered a man with a bicycle. He was stopped in the middle of the road and had been watching us since we turned the corner.
I nudged Steve, "Distract him somehow, and I'm going to slip one in his bike basket."
Steve obliged, acting like he was going to take a picture of the guy. While he posed I slyly slipped a VCD from my pocket into his basket, stuffing it softly underneath some of his belongings.
"That guy'll have some entertainment when he goes home tonight," I said as we walked away. We slapped each other high fives, providing another person the chance at redemption--and having a lot of fun doing it.
1 comment:
A useful guide
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