Praying for Rain

There was a bunch of people at the outside meeting “room” when I got to work today. I didn’t know what they were doing, so I just locked up my bike and went in to change into my skirt. About an hour later, one of my coworkers asked me if I wanted to go outside to watch…and I being completely bored as usual said of course.

As we were walking over to the group, she explained to me that they were praying for rain. Apparently they haven’t been getting enough rain(even though it has rained more here in the past two weeks than it does all year in Montana) so they decided to hold a prayer session & brought some monks by to help pray for rain.

It was really interesting as they had the usual assortment of gifts to the monks, but they had also made a fish out of mud and a crab out of a coconut shell which was interesting. They had also filled the monks' bowls with rice as usual (this is how the monk gets their food every day). We sat and prayed and the people were very encouraged to see clouds appear in the sky (although it seems to be a constant state during the rainy season).

At the end of the “ceremony” a monk walked around the crowd dousing people with water. He uses a bamboo stick to “sprinkle” water on people as a blessing…but it is more like a squirt gun & everyone laughed when he got the “farang” (me).