Is that the same bamboo cross you had at the Student Christian Centre when I visited you there?"

Acharn Wasan the Director of the Christian Care Foundation which is an ICB Outreach partner asked that question when he brought a group of children from the Home for Disabled Children in Pakkret to share worship with ICB on February 8th. "Always take it with you wherever you go," he urged us.

The bamboo cross has been part of ICB worship since May 1995. Earlier that year during a series of second hour meetings, the members of the congregation decided to move ICB worship from the sanctuary of Wattana Church on Sukhumvit Soi 19 to the Student Christian Centre. A committee was established to look at the new worship space, an auditorium located at the front of the SCC compound, to suggest changes and additions to the space to make it a comfortable and fitting space for ICB worship.

Many additions were made. A large banner was created to commemorate the date of the move and it hung from the balcony all the time we worshipped there. Chair covers were ordered from the handicraft group associated with our sister congregation in Sivilai, Nong Khai, the congregation where Jane and Mike Fucella served at the time. A pulpit and other furnishings were ordered and built by carpenters working for Glennis Setabundhu in her Kanchanaburi home.

There was no cross in the auditorium. We started to think what kind of cross would provide a focus for our worship and a link with the place we live.

Bamboo seemed the logical choice. No doubt Christ was crucified on a cross from a local tree - our bamboo is a local tree. But unlike other trees, it has space inside it. What if, we wondered, we split it- allow the openness to show? That, we realized, could say something about us as a congregation. We strive to be open, to accept people from different nations, different religious backgrounds, different lifestyles.

Glennis's carpenters were called upon to fashion the cross for us.

Our unique cross stands at the centre of our worship, draped with cloths in the colours of the seasons of the church. It speaks of who we are as Resurrection people, as residents of Thailand and as a welcoming congregation.