Milestones

One day this past week brought the concurrence of two significant events.

First of all, it was my birthday.  Another opportunity to look back at the past twelve months while also looking forward to the next.

A nice spin for my birthday this year (though a day early) was a surprise birthday cake brought by some of the teenagers who study English and the Bible with us.



One of the young women in the photo above, while she would not yet profess to be a Christian, is eager to hear stories from the Bible.  She and one of the others will be graduating this spring and are hoping to go on to university in Chiang Rai.  We've missed them some these past weeks because on Saturdays they have been going to Chiang Rai to take college entrance exams.  Pray that our time with these young people will be of benefit to them not just intellectually, but also spiritually.

Another event that occurred on my birthday, though I had not planned it this way, was that I finished reading through the Bible in Thai for the first time.

A few years ago, I figured that reading the scripture in Thai would be helpful for both ministry and for language-learning.  So I just started where I was in my regular reading, and tried to read a chapter a day (some days I did not get through a whole chapter).  I typically read on my computer, as I can make the fonts big.  (I have issues with my eyes that make deciphering the small curly-q's of the letters in the printed versions a bit difficult.)



It is interesting that the completion of this reading was marked with a beautiful doxology, which makes a fitting close to the end of one year and the beginning of another:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith-to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.  (Romans 16:25-27 ESV)


What a great doxology!  It talks about a message of good news (the gospel)...made known through revelation (scripture)...to all nations...so that God may be glorified.  That is why we are here in Thailand.  May this be my prayer and continued focus of this next year of my life.

Get Organized

After living in Thailand a while, I’ve become used to the level of organization not quite being what I am used to in North America.

But there are exceptions.

And a great exception to this was the recent English Camp we put on at the Muang Yai school across the street from where we live.

This was the first major outreach event we have put on in our community.  We wanted it to go well, but there were a lot of uncertainties going into it.  A big unknown was that our organization had never done anything at this school before, so we did not know what to expect from the teachers and staff.

Another unknown for us was the team from Northview MB Church SOLA (young adults)—lots of new faces in that group and we had no idea going into this what level of participation to expect.
But all expectations were exceeded.

So many thanks to all those who helped pull this off.

Seksan (เสกสรร) and the teachers and staff at Muang Yai school.



Our first contact was with the principal of the school, Udom Buddi (นายอุดม บุดดี).  But since it was English teaching, he handed most of the organizational part over to Seksan.  But everyone performed admirably.  The teachers and students were there early.  We had lists of names of students which helped us to organize the teams.  The classrooms were ready to go.  Great job, teachers.

Northview MB Church-SOLA.



It was a hot day, even by our standards, but these young people from Canada poured out their hearts (and sweat) for the young people at Muang Yai school.  They even took all the pictures so we missionaries could be free to concentrate on the things that we needed to do.

Christina Davis



Christina has a lot of experience putting on English Camps in this area.  So she was a great help with ideas for the teaching stations and she also had lots of teaching materials to use.  She even took a lot of time out of her already busy schedule to help.

Ingrid



Every team needs someone who is good at remembering all those little things that need to get done to make something happen.  And while Ingrid and Lie did a great job at organizing and teaching the crafts, most of what she did happened before hand.

Me



I had the easy job.  I got to use my computer skills to organize schedules and produce materials in a nice color-coded fashion to try to help all the volunteers be in the right place at the right time.  And the icing on the cake was that I got to do the story telling—a simplified account of creation in English.

All in all, it seemed like it went well.  The kids were having fun, and people got to know who we are.  Already we see the difference in how the kids in the neighborhood react to our presence.  A few of the young children seemed to have adopted Ingrid as a grandma as well.

In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. Romans 12:6a (NLT)

Thanks to Jon Stevens for the pictures