Ok, so the BFF-Madre told me that my lovely father already knows about all my tattoos, so I’m just gonna throw this blog post out there in hopes that a) she’s not joking, b) he’s forgiven me, and c) Jesus smiles at me on days like today.

P.S. Shout out to David & Mollie Wiley…yall are gonna love this one! ;)

So, I just got home from my usual massage place. I just love those ladies there. They call me “Teacher” because they know that I work at BCC…I mean, most of us farang teachers pretty much keep the place in business with how many times we go each week. Well, maybe I’m the only one who can’t seem to find massage moderation… Ok anyway, that’s clearly besides the point here. So I’m sitting there in the chair, getting the most unreal head/back/shoulders/neck massage for an hour, and then stepping up my game a bit and hitting up another hour of foot/leg. Well, toward the end, I start hearing this unbelievably awful frog voice (p.s. I even had my iPod blaring, and I could still hear this voice…it was so weird, it sounded demonic or something…). So when my massage was over, I turned to look beside me and there’s this dude, who kind of looks like a woman, just jabbering away about who knows what. Somehow, s/he got to talking to me and we started having a conversation in broken Thai/English. Those are actually my faves even though I have to guess what we’re talking about half the time. So, if I understood correctly, this dude’s name was Saitao, and he was a tattoo artist and a doctor. Yeah, cool huh? He was telling me about doing tattoos and stuff for “superstars” from Japan, Hong Kong, etc…so automatically I showed him my Thai tattoo on my foot as well as my Hebrew one next to it. I couldn’t resist….so I just had to show off my “Psalm 37:4″ verse on my ribs next. He was pretty impressed, and all the massage ladies kept asking to see it. One of the ladies stopped in the middle of giving a foot massage and walked up to me, asked me to lift up my shirt again, and she began to read it. It was such a great feeling, hearing a Thai woman, who is most likely Buddhist, read a verse from the Bible off my body. Just close your eyes and imagine her reading, “De..de…delight your-self in the L-L-Looord, and he will giiiiive you the de (Me: desires) de-de-sires of your heaaaart.”  It was so cool. And of course the entire crowd started asking me what it meant, so I slowly tried to explain (with hand motions) that it was my favorite Bible verse because I was a Christian. The only words they understood were “Bible” and “Christian” but let’s be serious…those 2 words were really the only ones that mattered. So yeah, I know I didn’t really get to just lay out the plan of salvation or anything, but don’t tell me tattoos can’t be a form of ministry. There’s your proof people. Nothing I do for God is in vain, and if anything, I know that the next time I walk in that place, those ladies will know what I am…a Christian. :)

So anyway, I kept talking to the frog man for a while–well, attempting to talk to him. He whipped out his digital camera and started scrolling through pictures of his kids and wife and friends, and it was really cool getting to know him. He just kept rambling on in mostly Thai with a few English phrases here and there, and I just kept interjecting “Mmmhmm”s and “Ooohhh”s as I pretended to understand every word. The only thing I gained from it was that his mother is Vietnamese and his father is American…and with shooting-gun hand motions, I’m pretty sure he conveyed that he was conceived during the Vietnam War and never met his father. (I feel like that might have happened a lot during that time…) He probably showed me hundreds of pictures, and then he got to some taken from April and May when the Red Shirts were in Bangkok. Like I said before, this dude was a doctor, so he had some SICK pictures from all that mess…like, I’m talkin’ there were dead folk in these pictures and blood galore. It was unreal! I started telling him that I had gone down to the Sala Daeng area during that time, too, so I got out my laptop and showed him some of my non-graphic photos. After that, he just took out his SD card and handed it to me to copy his pictures onto my computer…but only after promising that I wouldn’t upload them to the Internet. He said he could get thrown in jail if the “public” saw them…and I guess I could understand why. Thai people are all about their reputation and “saving face” in the public eye. So if I started posting pictures of dead people as a result of the Red Shirts, that would not be good. Plus, I try to keep this blog PG-13 on most days, so if you wanna check out these pictures…feel free to shoot me an email (haha…I so just said “SHOOT” me an email; totally accidental!) or just hit me up when I’m in the States or something. I wish I could post them because it’s like the real deal, down and dirty, kinda stuff…I love it because it’s like raw photo-journalism at it’s best. Ok so anyway…after an hour of talking with Saitao, I had to peace out. It takes a lot of brain power to converse in broken Thai/English, but I really enjoyed it. He gave me his card so I could email him, but I have no clue how he could read an English email from me…haha.

So, there you have it people. Massages, tattoos, and cool convos. After a pretty crappy week, I must say that I enjoyed tonight tremendously. And, I’m sorry Daddy for being all tatted up. I know you’re kinda “Ehh” about it most of the time, but I hope there’s a little bit of “proud” in there for me using them the right way to share my faith. :)

I’m just sayin’…MY JESUS is tatted up…

On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

-Revelation 19:16

I’m out. //Cwalk.