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!