It's time for a review of the year based on some favorite photos from the year—one for each month with people and one without. This year was especially challenging because we have traveled to so many places in preparation for leaving Thailand and visiting supporters and churches across North America afterwards. So—here goes...
January - Blue Lagoon
 |
| Blue Lagoon |
As is often the case, my preferred birthday present is not a physical gift, but to travel someplace. This year, we traveled not far from where we went the previous year, but we went to some different parks and sites that we had not been to before. We stayed in the district of Nam Nao ("Cold Water") in Petchabun Province, but it was near where the provinces of Khon Kaen, Petchabun, Loei and Chaiyaphum come together, and we visited spots in all but Loei Province. On our first full day we went to a place called
Blue Lagoon in Khon Kaen.
Blue Lagoon is in an old water-filled Limestone quarry, and they are still actively mining nearby there. The minerals in the water give it a nice aquamarine color. You can't get down to the water because the pit is quite deep. But some people took advantage of the lagoon and put up a small restaurant with a view of the site. It is difficult to get to. There is a dirt road with no markings as to how to get there. We ended up not finding the main road in, but found an unpaved back road (
road might be a generous term here) that went to a locked gate on the other side of the property. We obviously weren't the first ones to try this route, because there was a well beaten footpath around the gate. (The track was a bit sketchy for our Mitsubishi Mirage, but I am used to driving it on paths that one might think it is not suited for.) There were several people at the restaurant, and one young women volunteered to take our photo. We had to be careful, because the rock we were on was on the edge of the pit, and it was a several-hundred foot drop to the water below.
January - Sunset Over Nam Nao Mountains
 |
| Sunset over Nam Nao Mountains |
While we were on our trip cited above, we stayed in a very nice cabin at a resort called Prue Sa Raj. (A resort in Thailand usually refers to lodging places that have cabins as opposed to one large building. Most of the time they have nightly rates and also "temporary" rates for those who are just hooking up for sex. Often they have curtains over the carports so partners of the guests won't know they are there. This resort, however, was more geared for tourists.) The resort was nicley laid out on a steep hill. At the bottom of the hill was a gigantic swing that could seat several people. It was here one could watch the sunset over the mountains of
Nam Nao National Park. There was a lone tree in the foreground, which served as a nice frame for the setting sun.
February - Trip to the Zoo
 |
| Lunch at Khon Kaen Zoo |
In February, we took some of the young people from our group on a trip to the
Khon Kaen Zoo, we hired a van for the 2-1/2 hour trip to the zoo. (I wrote a poem about this trip
here.)
We had covered most of the expenses for the trip, but the kids had also brought along a little spending money. To save money, they opted to walk instead of paying for a shuttle bus ticket. But after a while, they were getting tired. Most of the kids ended up spending what little money they had on ice cream. We got our little group back to the restaurant at the zoo in time for a late lunch. They kids were hungry, but they didn't have much money left. Even though the food prices were inexpensive (less than $1.50 a meal), they figured all that they could afford was skewers with "meat" on them, which cost about 30 cents. Then, we announced that we were paying for lunch and they could order whatever they liked. There eyes all lit up and they became quite excited at the opportunity.
February - Torch Ginger
 |
| Torch Ginger |
In early February, Ingrid went with our intern and two high school students to a Women's retreat that was for all of our Mennonite Brethren churches in Thailand. The retreat was in Rayong, about a 10-hour drive from where we live. I went along as a driver, but I stayed at a different place about a 5-minute drive from where the women were.
The place I stayed was called the
Villa Bali Eco-Resort. Ingrid and I had stayed there previously on a vacation trip. The resort consists of about 20 cabins. There are lots of trees with flowers and shrubs that thrive in the mostly shady environment. There were several clusters of Torch Ginger plants. These unique, pinkish-red flowers are about a meter tall. The white edges of the petals makes the flowers contrast strongly with each other and with the background, which gives them a kind of other-worldly look which I find quite appealing.
March - Yai Yuanjai
 |
| Yai Yuanjai |
For Christmas 2022, Ajan Nat brought a team from Chachoengsao to help with Christmas outreaches. One event she scheduled was a dinner for some high school classmates of hers, people she had not seen in almost 40 years. After dinner, Ajan Nat talked about the true meaning of Christmas, and she shared her testimony. About five of her former classmates attended, along with their spouses. One woman, Bang Awn, was miffed that Ajan Nat would use a festive occasion for religious purposes.
At that time, we were regularly visiting some people who lived down the street from Bang Awn. Each time we would visit, we would bring a small gift. Bang Awn was watching this and saw that we Christians truly like to help people. She called Ajan Nat in Chachoengsao to tell her that she knew someone who truly needed help. When Ajan Nat visited with a team in March, Bang Awn introduced us to Yai Yuanjai.
Yai Yuanjai is originally from the next county over, but even Ajan Nat remembered her reputation as a hard drinking woman, though she no longer drinks. Her husband and only son are deceased.
A couple of years ago, when she was out on her motorcycle, she was struck by a vehicle and was injured quite badly, her lower leg almost completely severed. The driver, thinking she was going to die, stole the jewelry she was wearing and her money and drove off. Yai Yuanjai was taken to a hospital. The doctors wanted to amputate her foot, but she thought she was going to die anyway, so she refused. The doctors stitched the skin back together, but her foot hangs loosely. She survives on the small government pension and disability payments, but that is very little. Her neighbors and grandson will help her, but only if she pays them.
We visited Yai Yuanjai and told her about Jesus and she expressed an interest in following Him. We prayed for her leg, and while God has not yet healed her leg completely, she has less pain and is able to do more things. We gave Yai Yuanjai a children’s picture bible, which is all dog-eared from her going through it so much. Now she is happy to tell people how much God has helped her physically and spiritually.
March - Phuket Beach Sunrise
 |
| Sunrise at Kata Beach, Phuket |
I can't say I was happy when it was decided we would have our regional retreat for missionaries in Phuket during March. There were two reasons I felt this way. One is that Phuket is a popular destination for foreigners and so it is very crowded and everything is quite expensive. The second reason I wasn't excited was that it was hot season. Hot season on the coast, with the even higher than already high humidities, is not very comfortable. (The clothes we brought with us got damp just hanging in our hotel room, even though we had air conditioning.)
The beach was close to our hotel, but it was hard to get to because we had to walk all around the walled-in Club Med complex. The beach was quite crowded in the afternoons and evenings, so I opted to go visit it early in the morning. This meant I could watch sunrise from the beach by going away from the shore and looking back to it. One morning the tide was out far enough so that I could capture the rippled sea bed.
April - Songkran Fun
 |
| Songkran Fun With Water Balloons |
The children get their main summer break from school during the hot season. In the middle of April every year is the Thai new year known as Songkran. This is the time of year when families reunite. Traditionally, younger people would honor their elders by pouring water over their hands. This has morphed into an annual water festival. People take to the streets to throw water at passers by. Others ply the highways with pickups loaded with water-filled drums so that they can anoint the people who are standing beside the road. And on really hot days, one can appreciate this.
Usually, during school breaks we will have lots of opportunities for the kids to hang out and play and maybe learn some things, too. When we got out the water balloons, they were really excited. What fun to get soaking wet on a hot summer day.
April - Sacred Lotus
 |
| Sacred Lotus |
Throughout Thailand, you can find sacred lotus plants growing in ponds and ditches. In Buddhism, the lotus represents purity. This is because even though they may grow in murky water, the flowers open bright and clean. Unopened buds are often given to monks.
Lotus plants are also sources of food. The seeds of the lotus plant are roasted and eaten. The inflated stems (which enable the stems to float) are also eaten.
The bloom shown here was found in a pond near where we lived.
 |
| Lotus Flower Buds for Sale |
 |
| Lotus Seeds |
 |
| Lotus Stems |
May - Baptism
 |
| Somchai Gets Baptized with Prayun Looking On |
We first met Ta Somchai when we were handing out packages of food and other things to people in the community who were bed bound. At the time, Somchai could not get out of bed due to a problem with his leg. He and his wife, Prayun, were living in a borrowed house that did not have running water. We continued to visit Somchai and Prayun to pray for them and share scipture with them. Eventually, they were able to come to our worship gatherings and were baptized.
We did the baptisms in a large plastic tub. When Somchai went under, he was slow to come back up again. We were wondering if something was wrong, but he said that he was just enjoying being immersed in water—something he had not done in a long time. He is pictured here with Prayun looking on.
May - Rosary Pea
 |
| Rosary Pea - Abrus precatorius |
In April, we started noticing rosary peas breaking out of their pods dangling from vines in the forests of Kamalasai. We remember these seeds from when we lived in Haiti where they were known as
lian legliz. However, we had not seen them in Thailand until now. The sight of them brought back fond memories for myself and Ingrid.
The rosary pea plants have pretty pink flower clusters. I had seen them growing before, but had not recognized what plant they were until I saw the seeds.
 |
| Rosary Pea Flowers |
June - Greetings From Thailand
 |
| Greetings From the Children |
I didn't take this picture, but it was sent to me. In June, I ended up having to make a trip to California to attend to some business. Ingrid stayed behind to attend to activities in Kamalasai. We chatted most days on video calls. But a highlight for me was when after the kids made pizza during their Saturday gatherings they shared a photo with me so I could see their faces. I still miss them when I see pictures like this.
June - Storm Clouds Over Swamp
 |
| Storm Clouds Building Over Kamalasai |
One activity Ingrid and I enjoyed in Thailand was cloud watching. The rainy season can bring some pretty awesome cloud formations. One day we were out on such a trip, and we ended up at a reservoir near the village of Khao Lam. The clouds were building, prepping for the storm that was to come later in the evening. When I see such things, and think about all the energy that is represented by these storms, I am reminded that they are the work of a God who is far, far greater than them.
July - Dinner on the Mekong
 |
| Dinner With Lai and Kim |
In July we took a road trip to northern Thailand. The purpose of this trip was two-fold. One reason was to bid farewell to those we worked with several years earlier and bring closure to what had been a difficult period of my life. The other was to deliver our car to some friends whom we sold it to.
One evening, we had dinner with two young women whom we used to teach English to back when they were high school students. Both of them had gone to university hoping to work in the tourist industry. However, they graduated when COVID was going strong and the tourist industry crashed and then both of them ended up as teachers back in the same district them came from. Lai (left) works for the Border Police as a teacher in a frontier school. It is in the same mountainous sub-district where she grew up, but about 1/2 hour further away. (The police run schools in remote areas near the border where it is hard to get regular people to teach.) Kim teaches high school English.
July - Wiang Kaen
 |
| Wiang Kaen District |
When we went back to Wiang Kaen district, where we used to live, we decided to take the more "direct" mountain route to get there. It looks more direct on the map because the map does not show all the small, tight bends in the road unless you zoom in really close. Wiang Kaen District made up of the watershed of the Ngao River. It is surrounded mountains on three sides, and on the north side, the Ngao River empties into the Mekong.
In this photo, we are in the southernmost sub-district known as Por, and we looking down-valley (north-east) into the watershed. The mountains on the far side form the border with Laos. That is the area where Lai works. The dominant ethnic groups in Por are Hmong, Yao (Mien) and Haw Chinese. This photo is not very exciting artistically, but it gives a good overview of the kind of area where we worked in the north. For me, this landscape is very appealing. I like mountains, and I really missed these when we moved to Isaan.
August - Saying Goodbye
 |
| Last Sunday in Kamalasai |
We spent 2-1/2 years in Kamalasai. On our first Sunday there we had our first worship service with Kung, an intern, and a few people she had led to Christ. Now it was our last Sunday there, and there were several adults representing two house churches and a bunch of children. We invested a lot of time and energy into building relationships in the community and this was some of the fruit. We had a worship service and there was lots of good food and then it was time to say good-bye.
The church has actually grown more in the time since we left than the time while we were there. We were there to help lay a foundation, now there are others who can build on it. We thank God that he allowed us to have a part in bringing the good news of Jesus to the people of Kamalasai.
August - Haeo Su Wat Waterfall
 |
| Haeo Su Wat Waterfall in Khao Yai National Park |
It was time. Time to leave our home of 12 years and move back to North America. My sister and brother-in-law were there to help us move. We loaded up all of our suitcases into the back of the pickup truck, which did a good job of filling it up.
 |
| Truck All Loaded and Ready to Go |
We decided to detour through the mountains on the way to Bangkok, where we would catch our plane. We spent the night in a town called Khao Yai, before heading into Khao Yai National Park. When we entered the park, whenever we would stop we would hear the sound of gibbons. Occasionally we spotted gibbons along the road. We took a side road down to a waterfall called Haeo Su Wat. From the parking lot, we descended a lot of rustic stone and wooden stairs to get to the bottom of the falls. Then I had to clamber over a bunch of rocks to get to where I could set up my tripod to snap this picture. I got finished just in time, because as I was leaving a whole busload of people was coming down the stairs.
September - Mushroom Rock
 |
| Mushroom Rock Near Chico |
After we arrived back in California and we only were there about a week before we were off to British Columbia for meetings and a retreat for returning missionaries. After that we loaded up some things we had stored and had someone take us across the border to the Bellingham Airport where a rental car was awaiting us. We gradually made our way south, stopping to see friends and to give a presentation to North Park Community Church in Eugene, OR, along the way. In Chico, California, we detoured to Richardson Springs, where Ingrid's youngest sister and family were participating in the Discipleship Training School (DTS) for families at the
YWAM base there. It was our first time to go to Chico, and the YWAM base was far up a canyon at what was once a resort for the rich and famous back in the 1920's. There was a unique rock formation appropriately named mushroom rock that we all climbed up to one evening.
September - Wild Ginger
 |
| Wild Ginger |
There it was at last! The wild ginger plant.
My search for this had begun the day before, when I saw a sign along the trail mentioning the existence of this plant in the upper reaches of the trail. But I had run out of time before I found it, so I went back again to look for it the following day. And there it was—about a hundred yards past where I turned back the day before. It wasn't much to look at, and there was only one plant at this location. Still, it was interesting to find this plant that was of importance to indigenous peoples. (In December, I noticed several clusters of these plants near the Chilnualna Falls trail in Yosemite National Park.)
 |
| Wild Ginger Information Sign |
When I saw the plant, the leaf reminded me of a plant that grew on vines in the town where we last lived in Thailand. Sure enough, when I did some research, I found that they are in the same plant family, Aristolociaceae—the pitcher plant family.
 |
| Aristolochia (Rooster Flower) Leaf |
The plant we knew from Thailand had a flower like this.
 |
| Flower of Aristolochia pothieri |
And it had a fruit like this:
 |
| Fruit of Aristolochia pothieri |
October - Co-workers for the Kingdom
 |
| Visit With the Jenkins |
In October we made a trip down the east coast to visit family and friends, many of whom we had not seen in a long time. There were many photos taken with said people, and it was hard to choose one. I decided to post a photo of our visit to the Jenkins in New Hampshire. Several people we visited we had not seen in a long time, but the record goes to Sue Jenkins. We probably last saw her when we were preparing to go to Haiti back in 1986 when we were visiting a common friend back in New Hampshire. At the time, she was herself preparing to do Bible translation with Wycliffe. In the meantime, she got married, did Bible translation in West Afica, had kids and now grandkids. But we shared a commonality in that we had moved back to North America after working overseas for many years. As such, we had several common experiences as well as lots of unique ones. Jay is a great story-teller and it was especially fun to hear stories of their children growing up in Africa.
Now, they have settled in Milton, New Hampshire. Milton lies along the Salmon Falls River, which divides New Hampshire from Maine. We were able to walk along the river and enjoy the fall colors while we were there.
 |
Salmon Falls River in Milton, New Hampshire
Opposite side is Maine |
October - Coastal Maine
 |
| Maine Coast |
A highlight of our trip was to spend our 40th anniversary on the Maine Coast. We found a nice cabin near Thomaston. This is close to where we went for our first anniversay 39 years earlier. We had hope of enjoying the fall colors, which we did to some extent. But this year, some leaves had already fallen while others had not changed yet. And right after we got there, the eye of a remnant of a tropical storm passed right over where we were staying and the winds knocked even more leaves off.
After a couple of days, though, the sun came out. In any case, whether in fog or rain or sunshine, we had an enjoyable time there.
 |
| Some Fall Colors in Southern Maine |
November - Fallen Monarch
 |
Fallen Monarch Tree
Grant Grove, Kings Canyon National Park |
In November, we finally settled into our home in Fresno. It took quite a while for us to get the house in order, which we did not finish until December. In the meantime, we enjoyed a visit from Ingrid's youngest sister and family over Thanksgiving weekend. While they were here, we made a trip to Kings Canyon National Park. They had visited the park with their older three children 16 years earlier. A highlight of that trip was Grant Grove—a grove of some spectacular giant sequoia trees. One of the trees, named the "Fallen Monarch," fell over a long time ago. The outide of the tree is intact, but the inside is hollow and one can walk through the gigantic log.
 |
| Siblings in the Same Tree 16 Years Ago |
November - Isabella Lake
 |
| Isabella Lake |
In November we made a trip to Kern County to visit supporters and to give a presentation at a church there. We spent one night in Weldon, located in the Kern Valley near Isabella Lake. When we first visited there 30 years ago, my cousin told me that the dominant weather characterstic of the area was wind. We have made many trips to the area over the years, and I would have to say that I agree with her. Rarely is the time when the lake is calm. But the morning we left Weldon, the air was fairly still, to the extent that we could actually see reflections in the lake water. This picture was taken looking northeast from Kissack Cove, near the community of Mountain Mesa.
December - Chilnualna Falls Trail
 |
| Chilnualna Falls Trail |
What better way to end the year than with a photo of my favorite girl on one of my favorite trails. We finally had the opportunity to take a break and get away from our house for a day. We decided to go to Yosemite Park. Our first stop in the park was at the Chilnualna Falls trail. This is one of my favorite trails, though we did not hike the four miles up the mountain to the main falls. Instead we just hiked about 1/2 mile to the lower cascades, which are beautiful enough. The trail begins in the steep canyon near these cascades. Adjacent to these falls, just past where this photo was taken, the trail ascends some narrow, stone stairs that fall off into the creek on one side. Not for the faint of heart, but oh, so beautiful. It is a worthy destination on its own.
 |
Lower Cascades Along
Chilnualna Falls Trail in
Yosemite National Park |
 |
| Some of the Stairs on the Trail |
December - Yosemite Valley Reflections
 |
Reflections of El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls in Merced River
Yosemite National Park |
After we visited Chilnualna Falls Trail, we continued on to Yosemite Valley. I don't enjoy going here as much as I used to because it is usually so crowded. Even though it was a chilly winter day, there were lots of people visiting the park. We decided to focus on going to less popular spots on the west side of the valley. This picture was take where the Northside Drive comes close to the Merced River. There is a small parking lot there and I scrambled over the rocks on the river's edge to take this photo. On the left is El Capitan and on the right is Bridalveil Falls.
And so another year comes to a close. With big changes happening in our lives, we can hardly imagine what next year's Top 24 will look like. But we look forward to whatever it is that God has in store for us.
