The Experienced, Mature, Balanced Team

Today marks a week since we left California.  What a whirlwind it has been.
We have been staying in the province of Chonburi in central Thailand.


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Our bodies are beginning to adjust to the time zone and the climate.

There have been three major activities that have marked this first week. One of those tasks is working on getting our visa extension.  This is a rather complicated task but we are making progress on what needs to be done to make this happen.

A second activity has been learning some of the practical things about living in Thailand and how the Thailand Mennonite Brethren Foundation functions.  This part can be fun because part of living here is eating here and we get to experiment with new foods like the very nice looking “cinnamon” roll we bought at the night market.  Make that fish roll.  Move over Cinnabon ®.

But the main thing we have been doing is getting to know our team better.  Part of that has been doing team building exercises with a representative from Clarion.  The other part has been just hanging out as a team.



Phone Keo, Chansone, Bob and Christina came down from Chiang Khong so that we could all get to know each other better.

One of the things we have been thinking about is what to call ourselves.  Most of the other missionaries working here have cute names for their teams like Operation Second Wave or Team 2000.  One of the other missionaries joked that it doesn’t matter what name we pick, everyone is just going to call us The Old Team because we are all a few years older than 30 .

Since we are all in the second half of life, our team has a lot of things going for it.  We have a lot of experience with life in general. We have a good grasp of our strengths and weaknesses.  We have learned how to adapt even when we’re operating in our weak areas.  And while we all have our differences, we have one thing in common—we love each other and we love the people of Northern Thailand.

So while our other team members are returning to the north and we will be moving to Bangkok soon for language studies, we look forward to the day when we will join them there—showing and telling people about that great love that God has for through Jesus Christ.