Dagwood

When I was a child, our family would sometimes eat at at a restaurant (I think it was Litchfield Farm Shop, later bought out by Friendly’s) where they served a sandwich called “The Dagwood”.  The sandwich took its name from Dagwood of the Blondie cartoon strip.  Dagwood makes these extremely tall sandwiches made up of all manner of whatever.  But they all have a commonality—a piece of bread on either end.

The bread is not the most consequential part of the sandwich, but the two slices to give you something to grab onto as you eat.

As I did last year, I am focusing on the first and last photos of the year I took—that may not be of the most consequential events of the year but they serve as kind of a way of to grab onto the year.




January 2 is Ozz’s birthday.  On his birthday, he and his wife, Sara, came to join us for dinner at our apartment in Bangkok.  Sara is a good friend of ours whom we have known since our early days in Fresno, California.  Ozz is studying at a seminary in Bangkok.

Jus a few days ago, Sara and Ozz again joined us for dinner—only this time it was Christmas dinner at our new place in Chachoengsao Province.  With them was their 8 month old son Elijah.  Elijah is their first child (and kind of like our first grandchild), so their lives have been filled with a lot of change.



Our lives, too, have been filled with a lot of change—first a move to Chonburi and then to Chachoengsao.  Our lives have been filled with some births as well—first the birth of a vision to work in Northeast Thailand and then (when some complications arose), birth of a vision to start a church in an isolated community in Chachoengsao Province.

But even as people are born into this world, others leave it.  And so we bid farewell to my mom in late July.



The above picture of my mom and me I took back in 2007.  It is at the location of another birth, of sorts.  The Haystack Monument in Williamstown, Massachusetts marks the location of the birth of the world missions movement in North America—something that is significant in our lives as we have become part of that.  So even though my mom is gone, there is new life rising up in her place.  Pray that God will use us to bring new life in Jesus Christ to the people of Thailand.

December 31, 2012.  It is a few minutes before midnight and the main street in Ban Phrueksa is relatively quiet—belying the fact that there are a bunch of noisy parties going on on a lot of the side streets.



We seldom stay up to bring in the New Year, but since this was our first in Ban Phrueksa, we thought we would stay up and see what happens.  So we watched the final two episodes of season I of The Mentalist and then broke open a new deck of Uno cards to keep us awake.


Just before midnight we wandered out onto the streets and son the sky came alive with fireworks.



The abruptness of that moment—from quiet to loud explosions—is kind of what our December was like.  At the beginning of the month we were not even imagining living in Chachoengsao.  And then the timing seemed right and so there was an explosion of activity with a lot of praying and then house-hunting and participating in a multitude of Christmas outreach events and then moving mixed in with all of this.

And here we are—starting a new year and kind of a new live in Ban Phrueksa, Chachoengsao, Thailand.  As I reflect back on the year and see death and new life, I am reminded of the transient nature of life on earth.  But God and His work are not transient—His work will last.

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.  Ecclesiastes 3:14 (NIV)


I wonder what kind of sandwich we’ll have this year.