Christmas Day Outreach

In the evening on Christmas Day, we had held an outreach at our church building. It was a lot of fun. One of the highlights of the evening was the way everyone in our church participated. This Christmas was a lot less stressful than some of the previous outreaches because every really stepped up and Tawm and I didn't have to do much planning. The little kids sang a Christmas carol and a couple recited Scripture. The older kids/teenagers did a skit based on the Christmas Carol story and then the adults sang a couple specials. I had the opportunity to share afterwards. As always, one of the highlights of the evening was the huge buffet of amazing foods. We had about 50 people attend but we must have had enough food to feed another 50. Pray for those who came to the outreach that don't know Christ. We had a number of people.

As you can see from the pic, Owen really enjoyed the night too.

Christmas 2009

We were excited about Christmas this year. It was the first year that Owen was really big enough to understand and have some fun on Christmas. It was also the first year that we had a Christmas tree in Thailand for Christmas. Owen really enjoyed his last gift (although he has one more from grandma and grandpa Rosendal that he will open later in the day). He immediately forgot about all the other gifts and wanted to ride his Hara Davision tricycle.

Below is a video of him test driving the bike. He's already head banging!

White Men Can't Jump?

Anyone that knows me, knows that I'm a big basketball fan. Saw this video on someone else's blog and thought it was interesting, thought provoking and made me go hmmm? Why do you think there isn't many white guys in the L?

Fishing Funnies

I can't say I ever watched this show. Not even a big fan of fishing but if the show was as always as funny as these clips, I might tune in!

Conversations with a Child

Owen is almost 2 already, man times flies. He is turning into a little talker. Here's how our conversation went as I was changing his diaper tonight:

Daddy: Owen, lift your bum

Owen: Daddy, lift your bum

Daddy: No, daddy doesn't need to wear a diaper, I'm already potty trained.

Owen: Choo choo train please?

I guess, he's still a little too young to reason with...

A Good Thought to Ponder...

The 9's

I'm going to try to take some of this in, this coming September 9, 2009. That is 9/9/09 if you didn't know. Over 70 speakers from the states, streaming online for free. Will see if the internet will run fast enough to catch some of it. It starts at 9:09:09 on 9/9/09 if you are interested.

Amazing Dunk.

Only a little while to basketball season resumes. Can't wait. In the meantime, saw this dunk on yahoo. Thought it was really cool. I always just wanted to touch the rim. Could never imagine what it would feel like to do this!

Sister or brother?

Over the past couple weeks, Owen has been in copycat mode. He mimics our words (English, Thai, Northern Thai and even Karen - a hilltribe language here) and our actions as well.

Tonight I thought I figured I would tell him to say, sister please. However as soon as I said, Owen say "sister please", he replied "no sister".

After that, I said, Owen say "brother please", and to that Owen replied, "brother please". So if and when the time comes for Owen to have a younger sibling, we already know what Owen wants.

Owen at 20 months

Some of you haven't seen Owen in a while, so here is one pic to help you remember what he looks like.

TMBI Resumes with a Bang!

Last week, Thailand Missionary Baptist Seminary started its 2nd year. We are continuing with the modular system but making a few adjustments. The modules still run for one week per month but we've asked all the first year students to remain in the city so that we can build better relationships with them. We have 6 returning students (although a couple only completed the whole first year). We also have 2 new students. We're excited about that and pray that as word spreads we will continue to grow. First semester classes include Scriptural Church Association, Christian Doctrine, Pastoral Epistles and Bible Study Methods. I'm excited about the two classes I'm teaching. They've been a lot of work for me to prepare but it has been well worth the effort and the students seem to really enjoy them so far.



One other adjustment that we've made is that we are going to do something special on the Friday evening when the students are here. This past Friday we encouraged people to bring there friends to our house for a free dinner, movie and discussion afterwards. We had a great time of fellowship. Watched the movie "Fireproof" and then talked about relationships for a little bit after. A few of the students brought people that we had never met before and everyone said that they can't wait for us to do it again! That's always a great thing to hear.

Cell Phones and Church

One thing that bothers me a lot is when a cell phone goes off in the middle of church services, Sunday school or TMBI classes. Even more annoying is when people start to talk on their phone in the middle of services. It started to become a regular occurance and so we had to put a slide at the beginning of worship services asking people to shut off their phones. It helped somewhat, now people just put their phones on silent mode and when it rings, they walk out the door. Sometimes I think to myself, our church is full of very important people because they can't even turn their phones off for an hour or two.

Thankfully, things like twitter haven't hit mainstream here in Thailand yet and so we don't have to deal with it. I never even thought about it being a problem but I have seen a couple other bloggers in the States (John Piper, Josh Harris) have already been dealing with this issue.

I hope that twitter doesn't become a hit here too soon!

Sunday Tearfest

This past Sunday we celebrated Mother's Day. Mother's day here in Thailand falls on the queen's birthday (August 12). In children's Sunday school, the kids prepared cards and practiced a song. When I finished preaching, the kids came downstairs. All the mothers present sat at the front of the church and watched their children sing. Afterwards, the children gave their mothers jasmine flowers. The kids then joined their mothers and the kids told their moms what they appreciated about them and after that the mothers gave words of encouragement to their children. When it was all said and done, there wasn't many dry eyes in the house. Every year we celebrate mother's at this time and think it is fast becoming one of people's favorite Sundays, especially the moms.

Shoe Letdown

At the beginning of the new year, a new family started attending our church. They have a couple teenage boys who like to play basketball and so I started playing basketball again, even though it had been a few years since I played. Because I hadn't played in a few years, I didn't really have any basketball shoes to use and so one of my goals when I went back to North America was to find a cool pair of shoes to play basketball, a pair that no one else in Thailand had.

When we were in Indiana, Nike just released a new pair of Lebron's and so I purchased them. Last night I played basketball for the first time and was excited to show off my new shoes. The guys from the church thought that they were pretty cool. When I made it to the gym, the first Thai person I met had the exact same shoes as me, just in a different color. So much for my flashy shoes. I guess I have to rely on my skills to set me apart, not just my shoes! ;)

Belated Bday Surprise

This past Saturday was my birthday. On Sunday at church when I got to the pulpit to preach, one of the worship team members started to speak. He announced that it had been my birthday and then the worship team sang a song of blessing for me. People in the congregation gathered around me and after the song was finished, three people prayed for me. When the prayer was finished, one of our youth brought out a birthday cake with 6 candles on it, not because I was six, but because I was 33 and 3+3=6. It was a great surprise and I really appreciated it. The only problem was that when it was over, it was hard to regather my thoughts to preach. Thanks to everyone who made my Sunday morning special!

No Title Needed

As we left Canada, I promised myself that I'd keep people in North America more informed of what is going on with us here in Thailand and use our blog to post some pictures too (although facebook is much more convenient for that).
We've been back in Thailand for about a week now. Long enough to get over jetlag and get reroutined. Today's blogging goals:
1. Say Hey!
2. Get our background reworked since the old one seems to have disappeared.

Stranded Guest

Last week we were happy to have Rodney Burdette come stay with us at our house. He is a missionary in Northeast Thailand and came to Chiang Mai to renew his visa. He travelled all day Thursday to get here. At 9:30 that evening, the government announced that they were closing all government offices on Friday in hopes to quell the protests here in Thailand. That meant that Rodney would have to stay here a few extra days. The only problem was that Monday-Wednesday was Thailand's biggest holiday and most places are closed, especially government offices. That meant that Rodney would have to stay with us until Thursday.

Rodney was able to join for Sunday services, he went with us to a local waterfall for a day of relaxation and throwing water. He was able to experience some Thai food that he has never had and on Wednesday, he came with Tawm, Owen and I as we went to Tawm's relatives in order to hand out gifts for Songkran, Thailand's New Year celebration (pictured).

Rodney was enjoying his trip until the Prime Minister announced that all government offices would be closed for another 2 days. That meant that Rodney would be stranded until this coming Monday. We felt bad for him and his family for extended and unexpected separation although we have enjoyed having him as our guest.

Praise God that the foundation's lawyer called and said that immigration was opening for those people that had appointments only. Rodney was able to go to immigration when hardly anyone was there, something that is very unusual. If everything goes according to plan, Rodney will return to Northeast Thailand tomorrow.

Reading Slump

Over the past few weeks, I have kind of been in a reading slump and as a result, I haven't done much reading. The books that I have been trying to read are a little on the heavy side, so I figured I take a break from trying to finish those books by reading a little more light reading. So I picked up a book on the life of David by Charles Swindoll and have already read more in one day than I did in the last week combined. The book has been refreshing to me. I thought I'd share a short quote from the book.

"A servant has one great goal, and that is to make the person he serves look better, to make that person even more successful. A servant does not want the person he serves to fail. A servant doesn't care who gets the glory, just so the job gets done."

Some good advice to all of us who serve Christ.

Early Easter

This past Sunday we celebrated Easter. April 13-15, is the water festival in Thailand. It is also the biggest holiday in Thailand and most people go home to spend time with relatives. Many of our members will be away on Easter Sunday and so we decided to have Easter services a week early so everyone could have a part.

Easter is one of our church's favorite Sundays as we always have special activities.
This year we went to a waterfall south of town. We had over 70 people in attendance, about 10 first time guests and a large number of second time guests too. I was very pleased. We packed into several vehicles in order to travel to the waterfall. We had worship services there. Afterwards we played games, had a huge picnic and of course played in the water. It was a great time and I'm already looking forward to Easter next year!

Worship services in the park

Water fight time!
 
Worn out after a long day.

Rat Infestation

I'm not sure how many rats you need to have to classify it as an infestation, in my books, one is enough. Coming from Alberta which claims to be rat free, this was my first run in with these critters.

We first noticed the rats when the plants around our house started to die (as you can see in the picture). Next we noticed holes begin to appear around our house and the final straw was when they began running to and fro in our ceiling. We went to go buy some traps but the local store didn't have the good traps that clamp shut when the food is disturbed. All they had was glue. We bought a couple of glue traps, set them near the holes only to discover the that food was taken but no rats were stuck in the glue. A little while later we were able to buy the good traps and we even got some rat poison. Poison was placed in the various holes and that night we heard the trap clamp shut and victory, we had our first victim, a tiny little baby rat. We weren't sure how many rats we had but were pretty sure that these minature rat wasn't the source of all of our problems and not long after we heard some loud scampering in the ceiling and more holes were appearing. The traps were reset and more poison was set out and not long after, snap, another victim, this time a huge rat, maybe the baby rat's momma (pictured). We still don't know how many more rats are left although there is a foul odor coming from the porch outside our house. I have a feeling that poison worked its magic and a rat or rats crawled up and died in the hole. Who knows how long the smell will last, at least they haven't crawled up in our ceiling to die there!

Returning to an Old Role

Four or five years ago, Tawm and I led the worship when we first started Antioch Baptist Church. Tawm sang, I played guitar. But not long after, Tim, (now our church secretary) played. Tim is now expecting her first child and is struggling with some pretty bad morning sickness. As a result, I've had to play guitar for worship a couple times so far and will continue to play for the next little while.
The first time I played, I didn't know until the day before Sunday. Normally, this isn't a big deal but I hadn't played the guitar in a looooooonnnngg time and so by the end of worship, my fingers were killing me and my strumming finger was bleeding. [Just taking one for the team :)]
I enjoy helping with worship, but I like being in the audience better because when I'm playing, I have to think about what I'm playing that I can't sing in Thai and as a result, I don't feel like I really get an opportunity to worship God. It also makes for a long Sunday morning as I teach Sunday School, help with worship and then preach. But I'm glad that I can serve God in this way.
I'm excited that our church is going to have a couple kids younger than Owen in the near future, but am looking forward to when someone can take the role of guitar player away from me.

Madness around the Corner

Sycracuse over Conneticut in 6 overtimes!!! The tournament isn't even here yet but the madness has started! Wish I could be there to partake.

A Post of Excuses

It has been a long time since my past post, probably one of the longest since I started "seriously" blogging. I could come up with a whole bunch of excuses but the main reason for the lack of blogging in the new year has been a lack of desire to blog because I just don't feel like I have anything to say. Facebook has become my new place to post pics and videos and so Owen updates have become less necessary here too.
This post is a post of hope, hoping that these few words will get me back into the blogging spirit or not. Time will tell. Until then... :)

In with the New Year

This past Sunday we had a pretty good sized crowd at church but were missing some of our regulars. Since it was 5 day long weekend, many people took the opportunity to travel or visit relatives. I preached on our heavenly citizenship and challenged the people to focus on heaven and the Creator of heaven rather than the things of this earth.

Although I've been preaching in Thai for a couple years now, I still make some pretty silly mistakes. This past Sunday I was really nervous as I began my sermon. I tried a new way of preparing my sermon and I think that created the nerves. Anyways I began with an illustration about a man riding a horse all day long. In Thai, horse is maa with a high tone. However I said maa with a rising tone and instead of saying he rode a horse all day long, I said he rode a dog all day long. As soon as the word came out of my mouth I knew I had said it wrong and corrected myself. Everyone had a good chuckle.

At the end of the month we will be having a conference here in Chiang Mai. Many different missionaries and pastors from our work will be here. The weekend before the conference, Lynn Rayburn will be teaching our church about Faith Promise. The weekend after the seminar, Larry Fincher will be giving a parenting workshop. Excited about both seminars and that these men have agreed to do them. It is not too often that I get to sit and listen to someone else preach.