Amazing markets

Well we are a week and a half into our studies here and we are up to our ears in homework, but it is keeping us out of trouble. This past weekend we were in Greenville, Texas which is about an hour east of Dallas. We visited the church that helped to furnish our apartment here in Texas. We had an opportunity to go to an Asian market in Dallas, and it really felt like we were back in Thailand, although no one spoke Thai, we were surrounded by Asian people. Tawm was having a great time buying oyster sauce, fish sauce and shrimp paste along with her favorite kind of noodles. We stocked up for the next few months hopefully. On Sunday evening, I preached in the evening service in Greenville and after the service, Tawm prepared a huge Thai meal for some of the people at the church. We had a great time, and now we have to catch up on our homework.

Adjusting to Life in America

Now that we have moved back to America, this is one of the first times that I can remember living by myself (and Tawm too). Other times I have always had a number of roommates of lived in a community setting. When we came here, our electricity was on and our water was running, but we had no hot water. I talked to the matenance man here at the school and he came to take a look. He looked and couldn't find a problem, so he called a professional. The professional came and looked and he said that our gas wasn't turned on. I figured that that meant the school had done something to turn it off, however this was Friday afternoon, so we had to wait the weekend to talk to someone at the school. Today, being Monday, we discovered that we needed to phone the gas company to turn on our gas. The gas company told us they would be here on Wednesday. We arrived in Texas last Wednesday and ever since we have been showering in cold water. It is good that I have lived in Thailand for a while as I have had to take many cold showers there. People at the school have felt bad for us but really it brings our minds back to Thailand and life there. We are looking forward to hot water, but for these few days, because of the heat and cold water, it feels like we have never left Thailand (except for all the bread we eat).

Arrived Safely

Hello from sunny Henderson Texas. We arrived in America on Saturday in Indianapolis and we went to Anderson Indiana to visit people from our supporting church there. They bought us a vehicle to use while we are here in the states. We left to come to Henderson on Tuesday and arrived Wednesday. We have a nice aparment here and it is nice because a church in Greenville Texas has furnished it for us. We were told that the rooms are totally empty normally but when we arrived, we had a bed, 2 desks, 2 sofas, a dining room set, a tv, a stereo, towels, dishes and even food in the fridge. So we have been so blessed by everyone here. Thanks to both the churches in Anderson and Greenville for your support!!!

Coming to America tomorrow

It is hard to believe but tomorrow we leave for America. Pray for the work here as we leave. We will certainly miss our time here.

If you haven't signed our guest map while checking our site, please check where you are from!

Teaching in Mae Hoy

The final stop of our trip with the team was to a hilltribe village called Mae Hoy. Nicky Barnett works with a Bible School there and so we had a contact to get into the government school there. The school was a poor school with just over 100 kids. The students were between grades 1-6. We ran a camp much like the one in Chiang Dao, although we had to make the language easier as the students here knew less English and the young ones didn't know Thai very well as they spoke their local dialect. In the evenings, we were invited to the local Baptist church and the team sang, did a skit and someone gave a message and one night they had open question night asking questions about the Bible. It was great and we have been invited back to teach English more. Again, each student heard a gospel presentation.

Mae Jo University

Sorry for the delay in telling about the events of what happened next with the team. After the team finished in Chiang Dao, we went back to Chiang Mai and for 2 days we went to the university campus near our church. we want to do outreach to this campus in the future and we had the team help us test the waters there at the university. At lunchtime we would walk around the cafeteria and hand out fliers inviting people to come and study English with foreigners in the evenings for free. We rented a room on campus and each night we had about 15 students come. We played games, had talking groups where we had questions to initiate conversations, then we had some teaching of English for everyone and finally the team shared a testimony, did a drama and the second night we gave a gospel presentation. It was great to see their openness and we were impressed with the students there and hopeful for ministry in the future. The next day we handed out tracts to people in the neighborhoods around our church as we haven't done anything like that since moving to our new location. On Sunday the team came to our church, David Smith preached and then we relaxed for the rest of the day.

Tawm's visa 2

Just to let everyone know, Tawm received her Canadian visa so we plan to go to Canada during Christmas break.