Disrupting a Spirit Ceremony

Praise God for the different volunteer teams that come to help in south Thailand each summer. One volunteer group from North Carolina was taken to pass out tracts and witness in the country side (Picture on right). Other groups are taken into schools to do English programs.

We went into a school of 300 students to do one such English program with some American volunteers from Texas. In the session for singing songs, a student became disruptive, saying the volunteers could not use their drum. Trying to find out why, we questioned the students. They said our program was in conflict with a special ceremony to the spirit gods going on at the same time near the front of the school. To get more details, we went and asked a couple of teachers.
They explained that while the volunteers were doing the 2 hour program, the principal and 4 of the teachers were doing a ceremony around the spirit of the land’s shrine. The teachers wanted the students to have good behavior. So they held a ceremony asking the spirit of the land to make the students good. In Chinese religious ceremonies, drums are used to call the gods down form heaven to listen to you. This student had apparently gotten the different religious traditions mixed up and was afraid that we would call the spirit of the land away from the ceremonies that the teachers were doing to listen to what the volunteers were doing.