An April Update

It's been a long time since I've filled you all in on life here in Thailand, so I will try to summarize well. The kids' camp that I mentioned at the end of my last post went very well! We had about 50 children in attendance, along with many adults and pastors from the area. It was a good time of fun and games, songs and worship, and good Bible teaching times! I even got to do a little bit of speaking about the Bible, which was good and intimidating at the same time. It is amazing to see how God can give just the right words to say at just the right time. He is a wonderful provider.
After the kids' camp, we all went to (and helped with) a three-day seminar called the Kingdom Family Retreat. The two main speakers who came for this were from the United States, so it was nice to hear all the preaching in English! They spoke a lot about the power of God and how the Holy Spirit works in us and through us. It is quite amazing to hear their stories about how God is truly a living God and works miracles---especially when the men speaking about these stories heal sick people right in front of you! Oftentimes I think the American church discusses miracles and prophecies as if they are things of the past--as if God doesn't give visions or heal people anymore. But it really does happen. We just have to be willing to be a part of what God is doing and let Him use us and speak to us.
Phimpha may be the greatest example I have ever seen of someone willing to follow God like that, and who hears God clearly. Last week, she and I went to Cambodia because God told her to go. When we left, all Phimpha knew was that we were supposed to go to Siam Reap, one of the larger cities about two hours from the border with Thailand. We weren't really sure what we were going to do there or exactly how long we would stay. A Cambodian lady who used to help out at the Timothy House came with us, which was great since neither Phimpha or I speak Cambodian! We arrived in Siam Reap in the evening on Thursday, still not knowing what we were supposed to do. So Phimpha and Sow (her Cambodian friend) went to bed in our hotel room while I had a fun time checking out the night market. The next morning over breakfast, Phimpha told me that God had given her two visions. They were both of the same tiny little village nearby. One showed an old wooden house, while the other was a picture of a bunch of little tin huts. Phimpha has never been to Siam Reap before, and she had no idea where this little village could be. However, when Sow heard about the village she immediately recognized what Phimpha was describing; the wooden house was where her Grandmother lived when Sow was a young girl! She did not recognize Phimpha's description of the tin houses, but knew that the village was where her Grandmother used to live, and where her brother still lived now. We spent the morning driving around the city and taking a short boat tour to see a floating village while Sow tried to contact her brother. Finally she got through and we were able to find our way to the little village that Phimpha had seen in her village. When we arrived, Phimpha said it was exactly how she had seen in the picture with the tin houses! God had given her two pictures of this village. He had given her the picture with the wooden house so that Sow would recognize it and be able to get us to the right place. Then He gave her the picture of how the village looks today! He is certainly amazing.
In other news, I only have a week left here in Thailand. I'm treasuring the last days I have to spend with these precious kids and I know I'll miss them when I go. I'm also getting very very excited to arrive home though! Please pray for a good last week, safe travels, and a smooth transition for me back home. Also continue to pray for the Timothy House! It seems like things just keep getting busier and busier, and I don't think that will stop! Pray for helpers for them, especially after I leave, and that God will continue to provide everything that they need.

The Power of Stickers

Sometimes the small things make the biggest difference.
There is a girl here that I've known since the last time I visited Thailand. Her name is Shampoo, and she is about three years old. She lives in the village nearby with her mother and father, she comes to church at the Timothy House, we visit their house for worship every week, and until last week she was quite scared of me. I don't really consider myself an intimidating person, but Shampoo would always hide her face when I would smile at her or wave hello. (In my defense, she does that to most people, especially foreigners.)
Last week, I returned from a trip to the post office and I had some stickers with me that I had used to decorate an envelope on the way. As I was putting away some things in the kitchen, Green and Lot noticed the stickers, so I gave one to each of them. To be honest, I was in a bit of a selfish mood and didn't have a lot of stickers left, so I parted with them sort of begrudgingly. But on a whim I decided to try to give a sticker to Shampoo as well. She had already seen Lot and Green receive their beautiful pink and blue flower stickers, so when I knelt down next to her with the stickers in my hand she didn't run away and hide.
"Ow alie?" I asked, which means something along the lines of "What do you want?"
Shampoo picked out her pink flower, I stuck it to her shirt, and she happily showed her Mom how beautiful she was. I figured that was the end of it, and finished putting away the mail.
The next time I saw Shampoo, her family ate dinner with us at the Timothy House. I was sitting in the kitchen after we were finished eating watching some of the boys finish their soccer game. Shampoo came over to me and leaned on my lap, and I randomly tickled her face with one of my braids. She then spent the next 15 minutes playing with my hair, giggling and smiling at me. I wouldn't say that we have become best friends, but now I get smiles and laughter instead of fear. This is a good reminder to me that simple acts of kindness can change a relationship. It can be the first step to building trust and showing God's love.

In other news, we are just wrapping up a 10-day training/retreat here at the Timothy House, and we have a kids' camp coming up from the 27th-29th. Please pray that God will touch the hearts of everyone who has attended the training, and those who come to the kids' camp. Pray that we will be able to show out God's love to everyone and that He will provide everything we need for this camp!

Unexpected Travels, Part Two

I don't know exactly where the saying "expect the unexpected" comes from, but it is good advice for anyone who wants to visit or live in Thailand. I think that unless you wake up each day expecting to do something that you aren't planning to do, then you will be quite surprised with what you end up doing. Some days, we have things that we need to get done on that day, like pick up someone at the airport. That has a set date and time when it needs to happen. Other days, we have absolutely no plans and we just do whatever comes our way. Other days, we have plans for the day and I'd say we generally have about a 50% chance of sticking to those plans. In America, I consider myself a fairly flexible person. If I don't have plans I generally enjoy spur-of-the-moment activities, and even when I do have plans I can be convinced to set them aside sometimes and do other things. Here in Thailand, however, being flexible means something entirely different. It has meant driving out in the early morning with Rodney to drop off kids at school before I even showered and got dressed and ending up in a parade down the main street of a small town. It has meant sleeping at one of Phimpha's friend's houses (actually, a few different places,) without a change of clothes or anything more helpful than a cell phone and a flash drive because I was assured that we would make it home that night. As I wrote in my last post, it has meant crossing into a different country in order to legally stay in Thailand. (I'm sure there are more examples, but you get the idea.)

Last week, I thankfully got a little bit of a warning before my unexpected travels took place. Monday had been a pretty quiet day so far. The twins were the only kids home, and I had gotten to spend some time with the two Australian volunteers who arrived for a two-week stay. Phimpha had some visitors over for lunch, and they planned to come back when the kids were home from school to have a time of worship with everyone. Sometime in the afternoon, Phimpha mentioned to me that she and Rodney would be leaving the next day to drive about ten hours up north to attend a body ceremony, which is similar to a funeral. They are good friends with two sisters who live in Pattaya and one of their brothers had just passed away from cancer. The body ceremony was taking place in their hometown, and Rodney and Phimpha wanted to go to support them. Phimpha said that since we had two extra volunteers at that point I was welcome to come with if I wanted, or stay and help out with the kids. By the time evening rolled around, I had decided to stay at the Timothy House to help take care of the kids. Rodney and Phimpha planned to be away just about all week, and I figured Aden and Sharon (the two Australians) could use an extra hand. I guess I should have expected that the opposite would happen once I decided to stay! At about 9:00pm when I told Phimpha that I planned to stay at the Timothy House, she said that the two sisters would really appreciate it if I also went up to the body ceremony. She also said that we might be leaving that night instead of waiting for the next day. So I decided to go, and went to pack a bag just in case we drove up through the night. It was good that I did, because we left the house by 10:00!

We arrived in Uttaratit (one of Thailand's northern provinces) at about 8:00 am on Tuesday, and spent a good deal of time over the next couple days in the temple. The man who died was Buddhist, so the body ceremony had a lot of traditions that I had never seen before. There were several monks involved that did a lot of chanting, and the people there gave them lots of gifts and bowed towards them and towards the statues of Buddha placed around the temple. I don't know a whole lot about Buddhist beliefs, but as far as I have gathered, they think that when a person dies, s/he comes back in another form. If you're really good, you can hope to come back as someone more powerful or wealthy or with higher social standing. If you have been bad during your life, you will come back as someone with lower social standing, or maybe as some sort of an animal or a tree or something like that. Only extremely religious and good people could hope to reach nothingness, and only people even better than that could possibly reach Heaven. When they burn the body at the temple at the end of the last day of the body ceremony, onlookers watch to see if the smoke goes up or down. If the smoke rises, the deceased lived a good life. If the smoke falls, they did not.

So that part of the trip was definitely an interesting cultural experience for me, but it was also very good to go to be with our friends from Pattaya. I can't talk with them much, but whenever we stay at the church in Pattaya they take very good care of us. On the way home, we spent the night in Pattaya (Thursday night), and ended our journey with a surprise addition to our family: a one year and three month old boy named Moe! He is very cute. He will be staying with us for three months while his mother takes care of a court case and has no one to watch over him. Definitely a good way to end a trip that started out as a journey to a funeral!

So if you get the chance, please pray for Moe and his family! Pray that they all adjust to him being here and that the courts find justice and their hearts are healed and brought closer to Christ.
Please also pray for the country of Thailand. The political unrest has gotten worse and more violent.
And pray for the Timothy House, that God will provide everything that we need for continuing to do His work here.

Unplanned Travels

Last Thursday, I unexpectedly found myself all alone in the country of Cambodia. I do not say "unexpectedly" because I accidentally crossed the border, but because when I woke up that morning, and up until I was already two hours away from home, I had no intention of going to Cambodia on that particular day. Here's how it happened:
The day started out like many others: hot and sunny. I got the chance to skype with my family, and then Rodney and I started out to the immigration office in the capital city of our province. Most long-term visas in Thailand require the visa holder to check in at immigration every 90 days, and Thursday was 90 days into my stay. Rodney was due for a check in the following week, so he was hoping to be able to check in early to save a trip. After two hours, we arrived at the Chachengsao immigration office and filled out our check in forms. Rodney went first, and was able to get his visa stamped. But then when I handed over my passport and paperwork, the immigration officer wouldn't stamp my passport. Through much gesturing, a couple English words, and a bit of Thai, we understood that we had to go to see another officer in the same building. So we waited in line to show this other man my passport. Thankfully, he knew more English than the first officer. He explained that the visa I have is not actually a one year visa like I believed it was. Instead, it is a visa that is good for 90 days after I enter the country, but it can be used an unlimited number of times for a year after I received it. This means that instead of merely checking in at immigration every 90 days, I must actually leave the country and come back in every 90 days. So if I didn't leave the country before the end of the day, I would be in Thailand illegally.
The Timothy House where I live is only about an hour from the border of Cambodia, but at this point we had driven about two hours in the opposite direction. Thankfully, we had left fairly early in the morning and did not have any plans for the rest of the day. So we turned the car around and headed for the border. Before crossing into Cambodia, I first needed to get a Cambodian visa. This is a pretty simple process--it costs $20, and all I had to do was fill out a short application and give it to the immigration officer at the Cambodian consulate on the Thai side of the border. Since Rodney's visa does not allow for multiple entries into the country, I was on my own from there.
Because of a large border market in the town where I was crossing into Cambodia, there are many, many tourists. (Or perhaps the border market was started because of the high volume of tourists, it is hard to say for sure!) This certainly made my experience easier, but it was also a much longer process. I spent the rest of my afternoon standing in lines. I discovered that there are many helpful Cambodians and Thais at the border---and most of them are looking to get your money. Before I even reached the first line to cross into Cambodia, I had someone offer to get me a Cambodian visa for 1,200 Baht. (200 more than its actual price.) So I practiced the fine art of politely refusing to get ripped off. Although it is illegal, it is a common practice for someone to take your passport, bring it across the border and get all the necessary stamps for you. They can skip the lines and get it done quickly, but they charge you for it.
After several hours of driving, and many hours of standing in lines and walking to other lines, I am now legally permitted to stay in Thailand for another 90 days. I also have a shiny green Cambodian visa and four new stamps in my passport! I didn't get to see much of Cambodia, but maybe I will get to visit again to see more than simply the street next to the Thai border.

ช้าง (elephant)

Greetings from elephant country! That certainly describes our area of Thailand the past couple weeks! As it gets farther into the dry season, elephants have more and more trouble finding enough to eat in the forest and therefore come out looking for food elsewhere. Since we live right on the outskirts of a huge forest reserve, this makes elephant sightings an almost daily occurrence. The road we live on takes us right through the middle of the forest, so it is quite rare to ride through in the evening without seeing at least one or two elephants on the road. The also often come to our yard to eat the grass, or the sugar cane that we sometimes leave for them at the end of the driveway! (Last week we had a herd of approximately seventeen elephants visit at about 2am!!) They are usually quite polite and don't cause problems, but since they are so large it is smart to give them a wide berth! This can make driving quite interesting at times, especially when you have an elephant in your lane and another vehicle coming the other way! I have been working on catching them on video as we drive past on the road, so one of these days I'll see if I can figure out how to upload a video to this blog.
While we aren't busy watching elephants, there's plenty of (more productive) things to do around the Timothy House. The kids are back to school, and so are we. Been doing a fair amount of teaching, but also taking time off to visit churches in the area. Since Phimpha heads up two ladies' ministries, she is trying to visit many of the churches that are in those groups. This means lots of driving and visiting and meeting new people. I enjoy road trips, which is good, because I have certainly spent a good deal of time in the truck the past few weeks!
Some highlights from these last several weeks: elephant sightings, telling stories around the fire in the evening, singing the four-year-olds to sleep, spending time with the kids, getting lots of hugs from my students, getting the chance to skype home, good conversations with the adults at the Timothy House, and some good time with God. I also got the chance to preach at our church here at the Timothy House last week! That was sort of terrifying but pretty neat as well!
For those of you who are praying for us over here, please pray for safety on all the trips we take! And continued prayer for provision and direction and strength to follow God's leading. Thank you so much! :)

ps--I am hoping to post pictures up on this blog shortly, but if any of you who are not on facebook would like a link to my facebook photo album, please send me an email and I will get it to you!

Happy 2014

Hello all,
Now that the Christmas season is over, I have a bit more time to breathe and therefore a bit more time to write an update for all of you! Life for the past month or so has been even busier than normal, which I'm sure most of you can identify with!
As I mentioned before, I have been doing a lot of English teaching, and that continued right up until Christmas day! Since then though, schools have been on a break for the new year. Since this is a Buddhist country, most people don't celebrate Christmas, but that didn't stop us! Teaching in the schools gave us a neat opportunity to teach students what Christmas is about--God's love for us! The Friday before Christmas, we spent the day teaching classes how to sing the first verse to "Joy to the World." Some of them were pretty good! And the first through third graders at one school colored some pretty nice pictures of Mary and baby Jesus.
Outside of the schools, there were many celebrations to be had! I think I ended up attending five Christmas parties in all. The Timothy House put on two parties--one at our house and the other at the house of a friend in our village. We also went to the parties at two other churches and one at the house of a lady who lives in a village that has never had a Christmas party. Thai Christmas parties are a lot of fun! They all involved a fair amount of food, some singing, games and prizes for the kids, and a short message about God. About 50 people came to the party at the Timothy House, which was pretty crazy! Lots of students from nearby schools, and a few other friends and neighbors. It was a lot of fun to watch the huge group of kids playing musical chairs together--I learned a new strategy: if you are one of the last three and there's only one chair left, you should grab on to the chair and run away with it so you can sit down first!
I was excited to also get to go Christmas caroling with a few people on Christmas night. we only went to a few houses, but it was still a neat experience!
During the kids' break from school, we also got to go to the beach for a couple nights as a whole family! This meant packing up about 30 people into several pickups and a car and driving three hours to the gulf of Thailand. Phimpha knows someone high up at a naval base near Pattaya, so we were able to rent a couple houses right on the water. That was a ton of fun. The water there is a lot warmer and saltier than back in NH, and there weren't real waves for body surfing, but we were able to play a lot of keep away with a volley ball and do a lot of swimming, and some frisbee tossing on the beach! It was a fantastic time to get to just relax with the kids and with Rodney and Phimpha and the other adults who help out and were able to come along.
I will admit it: it can get hard being away from home during Christmas time. But God is good--He sent along some new friends to get to know and talk to. I got to meet a few people my age from Cambodia and from America who have been serving God both in Thailand and in Cambodia. It's been great to get to know them a little bit, hear their stories, and learn more about what is going on in other parts of Thailand and in nearby Cambodia. I am hoping to get the chance to go visit Cambodia at some point when I'm here! :)
That is the basic overview of what is going on here in Thailand these days...we will see what the next weeks bring! I never know what the next day or the next hour will hold! (Though, realistically speaking, I didn't back home either, I just had more plans and expected that they would happen. Here we just don't have the plans!)
If you get the chance, please remember us in prayer! We could always use prayers for provision, for safety, for love for those around us, and for wisdom in dealing with new situations and the various people we meet, and for the strength to keep up with everything that needs to be done.