Church Christmas Outreach

Last night we went to our Church's Christmas outreach event. The event's starting time was 5:00pm, but when we arrived at 5:20pm there were only a handful of people not from our church and many empty chairs. By the time that proceeds started (around 6:30pm?) the place was full. Christians from surrounding churches feel obligated to come so there are many more Christians than none Christians, but when the crowd was asked for whom this was their first time to Church, I'd say there were 10 or more hand go up. For a church of only abour 12 adult members, they did a wonderful job getting such a big event together, especially as they do not have a pastor. The children's program led by a Swiss missionary was packed. The most children they've ever had. The event was still going at 8:20pm when we decided that it was late enough for our two boys, as there was still a 40min drive back home. We pray that there will be a least a couple of people who start coming to our church after this event.

Christmas Outreach

Last week we were both involved in Christmas outreach programs in local school around our area (we are also involved this week). It is an annual program organised by one of the longer term missionary working in Lopburi. Here am I playing King Herod in the birth narrative of Jesus.

It was a bit strange to be going to schools with Buddhist temples built within the school grounds. I can't imagine too many Christian schools in Australia letting Muslim missionary come and teach their children about Islam. We pray that a seed has been sown in the hearts of some of these children and teachers.

The 100th Posting

Well this is the 100th posting on our blog site! We hope you have enjoyed the journey so far.

Lopburi is known in Thailand as the "Monkey City" as it has so many monkeys in one part of town. This part of town is overrun with them really and they are quite a nucience. Unsuspecting tourists are bitten each day by monkeys as they try to steal any food they might be carrying. In our first months in Lopburi Lisa was carrying a bag of fruit and a monkey came and ripped open the bag and stole her fruit. I seen them climb on the back of utes while they have been stopped at traffic lights and raid the boxes of food which might be stored in the back. I hate going to this part of town as I don't like the monkeys at all. Being a Buddhist society, of course you can't kill the monkeys and they are consider sacred by many bring protect and luck to the city (hence the temples that are built for them?).
Last month we went to see the annual feeding of the monkeys at one of the "Monkey Temples" in "Old Lopburi". Large amounts of food are laviously prepared to thank the monkeys.

When we leave Lopburi next year, the monkeys will be one thing we won't miss!

Spaghetti Party

Lots of fun until the kids started eating the spaghetti after they had played in it and after it had been on the ground too!

Loy Kratong Festival

Photos from the Loy Kratong Festival Parade close to our home

“Loy Krathong” refers to the name of a ceremony which is done on the night of the full moon of the 12^th lunar month, by lighting incense and candles and inserting them onto something crafted into various shapes; for example, krathongs shaped like boats, rafts, lotus flowers, etc., which will not submerge under water. These are then taken to be released to float on waterways.In the present, (Thai) people everywhere have the feeling that “Loy Krathong” is a festival for being joyful, for relaxation, and is an opportunity to ask forgiveness from “the Mother of Waters” for depending on the water for drinking and use. More than this, (people) also throw dirty things into the water, which is equal to not respecting “the Mother of Waters.” Therefore, in the krathongs are lighted incense and candles, and sometimes other things or small amounts of money are placed (there) as a way of making merit too. After this (floating the krathongs), (people) ask for a blessing from “the Mother of Waters,” in order to have happiness and good luck. But in some regions there will be more important details; for example, the Loy Krathong ceremony in the North would include feeding the monks at the temple to make merit first, then floating the krathongs in the rivers, as a way of floating away one’s various sorrows, illnesses, danger, and sins with the krathongs. As for older people, they will often use this as an opportunity to observe religious rites. or harvest. They therefore use this period of time to release their emotions to have fun and relaxation."

(Extract from an article written by a past student at our language school)

Sunflower Valley

Our city is known for its sunflower fields so we ventured off with our neighbours and one of our teachers in search of 'Sunflower Valley'. It took a while and a couple of wrong turns but eventually we found it.

Build and they will come?

The answer to the mystery building question. Would you believe that these massive buildings with tiny windows are all around the town of Pak Phanang so that birds (swallows?) will build their nests inside them with their saliva. These 'saliva' nests are then sold in liquid form and other ways as a health product that will give you strength. They sell for hundreds of dollars. Only in Asia!
This is a church being built in Pak Phanang with money donated from a Korean church. They have no one yet to come to the church apart from the Thai pastor of the Presbyterian Church who is coming down from Nakhorn Sri Thammarat to live in Pak Phanang. The philosophy is 'build and they will come'. I'm not sure that is the wisest way forward ...

Mystery Building in Pak Panang

We returned today from our trip to Pak Panang in South. More in our next newsletter. But for now can anyone guess what this building is (click on the picture for an enlarged view)?

Off to South Thailand

Today we are heading down to Bangkok to extend Lisa and the children's visas tomorrow. We pray that everything will go smoothly and then we won't need to do this again until May next year. After that we head off to South Thailand to visit this family working in Pak Panang. They are working alone in this city and OMF would like us to consider working down there with them.

Please pray for God's clear guidance as to whether he wants us here or in Lampang (North Thailand) or somewhere else. Well be staying together in a single room so please they that the children sleep ok.

Aids Temple - Wat Prabat Nampu

Last week I went on a cultural assignment trip to Wat Prabat Nampu which is a temple dedicated to the care of aids patients. It was only about 10 minutes drive from where we live. It was set up in 1992 by a Buddhist monk as hospice care for HIV/AIDS patients. I have never been to a place like this, even though I've worked in hospitals where there have been seriously ill people, this was a surreal experience. We gave the patients bags with instant noodles, vasoline for their lips and lollies but that felt like so little for people with a death sentence.

The temple's museums you have to see to believe. One had body parts in jars. The "life museum" had dead bodies with some sort of preservative pumped into them so that the their skin had dried up. Next to these bodies was the name of the person and a short biography about how they contracted AIDS. I have photos but they are a bit too gruesome to post.

HIV/AIDS is a real and growing problem in Thailand. One source of the problem is that many Thai men see going to a prostitute as normal social entertainment and have no moral problem with it.


Here in the photo above are approximately 10,000 bags of ashes, of people who had died at the temple but had no relatives to come back and retrieve their ashes.

False Teacher visits Lopburi

Two Sundays ago we went to meeting organised for a visiting healing preacher from Singapore at a local Lopburi hotel close to where we live. Many of the churches in Lopburi decided to not have their normal Sunday morning services and go to this healing service instead. They didn't organise his coming, but since he was already coming they thought it might support it. Although I didn't understand some of what was going as things were in Thai, the sermon I had no trouble understanding as it was in English and translated in to Thai. The main message of the preacher from a passage in the book of Samuel concerning sacrificial offerings was that we had to give offering to God so that he could bless us and give us miracles. He seem to make out that God needed our offerings to enable his blessing to occur. Jesus was hardly mentioned and of his all sufficient sacrificing and offering of himself which is the most important and significant sacrifice. I could see where the sermon was leading to ... the appeal at the end with offering bags all nicely laid out at the front of the stage. The urge was there a number of times to shout out "Don't listen to this man - what he is teaching is not true". Unfortunately, I don't have the Thai yet to say this, and no one really knows who I am so they'd think I was the crazy one. We didn't have the opportunity to stay around to talk to this man as we had to get the children home. I felt so sad for the Thai Christians getting such terrible teaching and for the Thai pastors who let their congregations sit under this teaching. Please pray that the people who listened to this man have not been lead astray on his account and pray for the Thai pastors that they never let this happen again.

Day in a Life - 9am

By 9am I'm usually in my first lesson. This is my current teacher. She has been working at the Language Learning Centre (LLC) for over 7 years. In her job interview she when was advised that this was a Christian Centre, she replied, "That's o.k. Buddhism and Christianity believe similar things." The missionary language supervisor at the time firmly replied that they definitely were not. Some time later she became a Christian through the witness of the student and Christian teachers at LLC. She is currently preparing me for my module 5 language check on Friday! She is a very good teacher and I've enjoyed studying with her.

Day in a life of a new missionary - 8:50am

Over the next couple of weeks I want to show you some pictures of a normal day for me at the moment. Perhaps you could pray for them (and for me) that we may be able to have the opportunity to have deeper conversations and hopefully become friends.

This is my sticky rice lady at the local market. I pretty much go her stall every morning after I drop off the kids at childcare and pick up 5 packets of dried beef and sticky rice and 1 packet of dried pork and sticky rice. I eat one when I get to school and leave them on the morning tea table to share. It costs about 20 cents each. I've had a few conversations with the husband/partner of this lady who also works at the stall but when they are busy selling it is hard to find the time for more than a quick hello and a smile.
Here is my half eaten package from this morning. Very yummy.

Walking

This is A walking with the help of a walker. Hopefully won't be long before he walks.

Today I (Rich) had a conversation with the lady selling iced coffee. Invariably the first question they ask is whether I am Japanese. She asked me which language school I go to. A dreaded question because the school is not in a well known street so difficult to explain. I buy my iced coffee from the same place so hopefully we will be able to further our conversation on another occasion.

Please pray for more opportunities to develop friendships with people we meet.

Buddhist Centre to Seat 2 million People

During our Bangkok field trip last week we visit the Dhammmakaya Cetiya Temple on the outskirts of Bangkok. What they are doing is quite startling. This Buddhist sect is building a temple site which can seat 2 million people. It claims to be "the largest venue for mass meditation and prayers for Buddhists and peace-loving people of the world". They have designed the Temple to last at least 1000 years.
The yellow dome you see in the background is made of 300,000 small buddha statues. Followers of Dhammakaya had to pay approximately $1200 to buy one of these statues and have their names engraved on it and placed on the dome. Here is an extract from the sect's website: "The size of the individual personal Buddha image is 15 by 15 centimeters, widening to a base of 18 centimeters. Donation at any amount is appreciated. Anyone donating a certain amount of money for building a complete Buddha image may have one’s name or the name of a beloved ‘inscribed’ on the base of a personal Buddha image. In fact, world peace is shared and is the shared duty of everyone. It cannot be created by a single person or a single religious group alone. Hence, world peace needs everyone to make it happen. As such, the personal Buddha images on the Dhammakaya Cetiya are a witness of mankind’s effort to help create world peace for mankind.
"http://www.dhammakaya.or.th/VisitorZone/detail_page_01_en.php

It is quite unbelievable isn't it.

Dancing Baby

Our youngest son loves music as this video will show. At the sound of music he stops everything and sometimes breaks out in a dance.

Sick again

This week has been a difficult one with both children being sick. A first caught a bad cold from the carer at childcare and then he developed this terrible rash. Then L caught A's cold which lead to an ear infection which he is on antibiotics for. Then L developed a rash (possibly from the antibiotics). Yesterday, we returned to the childcare and found out that A slipped on the floor while crawling and hurt his left arm. Every time he moved his left arm he was in great pain. He had partially dislocated his elbow. In God's grace at the moment there is a missionary at the language school who is a doctor and he was able to pop's A's elbow back in place (and diagnosis L's ear infection too). When it rain it pours as they say. Hopefully we are over the worst.

birthday video

Thought I'd give a video a try. Enjoy

Holiday Pics

Some more holiday pics - Feeding the giraffes at Chiang Zoo

Happy birthday

It was A's birthday while we were on holidays. Our children dressed up in traditional Korean birthday clothes. It's actually A's birthday but L wants to get into the action too. A and L have great fun together and we are so thankful to God for them.

Train Coming

We're back from our holidays and I have been able to download all the photos from my camera. This is photo from just before our holiday when we were taken to a Thai Floating Market. Next to the market was this train bridge (our son love's trains).

It was the highlight of his day when a train actually came past blowing his horn (or my wife to pull her head in - she was concentrating so much on taking these photos that she didn't realise how close the train was!)
Hopefully photos from our holidays soon.

On Holiday

We have currently in the middle of a two week holiday near Chiang Mai where Lisa was born. We staying at a beautiful resort in the mountains (see picture above) with Lisa's parents which has been great for the children. It has been really relaxing and we have been able to get to bed early, sleep in (as much as younh children allow) and watch episodes of Gilmour Girls on DVD. During the day we have been able to relax in the pool or go for walks aroudn the resort.

We made the 40 minute trip into Chiang Mai yesterday to attend an International Church and were a little disappointed at the teaching which was mostly the preacher's thoughts and not direct teaching from the bible.

We move to a hotel in Chiang Mai tomorrow for the last part of our holiday when Rich's parent's join us. One of the purposes of this holiday and family gathering was for A's first birthday.

Unexpect Visa Run to Penang

We received a call at 10am Tuesday morning while I was happily eating morning tea at the language school. Bad news. My work permit had not come through yet so Lisa and the children's visas could not be renewed. It expires on Monday I was told. We would have to leave the country the next day for Penang, Malaysia to get a new visa for them.

I was a bit stunned but there was no time to lose. I went home and started looking at airline websites to try to book a ticket. I booked a flight through Air Asia but wasn't sure whether my booking was confirmed as my credit card payment was "pending". I returned to the language school at 11am for my next class and shifted a language check due for Thursday to that afternoon as we were going on Holidays for 2 weeks on Sunday in Chiang Mai. I did well in the reading and writing section, but failed miserably in the comprehension section. I will do the check again after our holidays. We were up to 1am packing and then were up again at 6am to drive down to Bangkok to pick up some documents for the visa application at the OMF headquarters. By 2pm we were on the plane headed for Penang.

Anyway, we are in Penang now. I submitted the visa applications this morning and pray that when we return tomorrow to the embassy at 2pm everything will be in order. Our flight back to Thailand is at 5pm so there won't be much time to fix things up if something is wrong.

It's funny how last minute situations like this have become more common for me since becoming a missionary. Back in Australia I would be planning things at least weeks in advance to make sure everything would go according to plan. But now life is a lot more uncertain. Hopefully this will help me to rely more on God than I have in my life.

(Sorry, there are no photos for once. I left the camera cable back in Lopburi in our rushed packing)

Board game night

Playing "Ticket to Ride"

Playing "Niagara"

Rich organised a big boardgames night last week. It was a full house and we got to try out our new board game "Niagara". It was reminiscent of the many games nights from back home (thought the nighted finished much earlier than we would back home -we were all done by 10pm!)

The mosquitoes are this BIG

One of our regular walks is to a nearby school where there is this big mosquito you can see in the background. Unfortunately, Rich has blood which the mosquitoes love and he is regularly getting bitten. Fortunately, malaria and dengue doesn't seem to be a real problem where we live.

Tuk Tuk Ride

Our son had his first ride on a Tuk Tuk in Bangkok on our way back from Chiang Mai. Only tourists really use Tuk Tuks as metered taxis are cheaper and has aircon.

While in Bangkok the children had fun at a play area in a big shopping centre which they enjoyed.

Go Socceroos

Australia vs Thailand in the Asian Cup

Watching the game with Edmund from Singapore

One highlight of being in Thailand was going to the Asian Cup match between Australia and Thailand on Monday. It was quite a trip. In summary:-
12:10pm left hone in Lopburi.
1:50pm Arrived in North Bangkok where I parked the car.
2:00pm Taxi to a nearby shopping centre
2:15pm Minivan to the the Stadium.
3:20pm Picked up tickets at stadium.
3:30pm Went to a shopping centre to pass time. Watched a movie.
6:45pm - Motocycle taxi to Stadium.
7:35pm - Game begins
9:20pm Left game 7 minutes to full time after Australia scored their third go to miss traffic. 9:30pmTaxi back to car.
12:30am Finanlly arrived home.
Unfortunately, when I returned to my car after the game I discovered this parking ticket on my windscreen. I didn't even see the sign, though I'm only just learning to read Thai so I wouldn't have understood it anyway. Now have to return to Bangkok to go to the police station to pay the fine within 7 days. Good thing, we were due to go to Bankgok this Friday on our way to Chiang Mai.

This is Lopburi

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with...H - . Pictures from Google Earth. Click on the picture to see a bigger view. On the other side of the big road is a big army base where Rich goes to play badminton. Why don't you go on Google Earth and visit us by satellite.

Toilet Training

What is it with our kids and putting things on their heads you might ask. Just in case you are wondering what is on his head, it's a nappy (or diaper if you are from North America). We have been trying to toilet train our son on and off for what must be going on to a 1 year now. There is no end in sight yet. Our youngest son though is showing a great interest in his brother's potty (and everything else that is his brother's) so will this spur him on? We hope so.

I started learning how to read and write Thai this week! Very exciting. It's like trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

Temporary Friendships

This is our son with our neighbor's daughter (also with missionary parents). He has loved playing with her for the last 3 months. They would chase each other up and down the drive way and play so well together. He would hold her hand while taking her to our house to play. Sadly she is going to North Thailand with her parents. Many of the missionaries with young children are leaving in the next months so most of Luca's friends will be leaving.

• Please pray for friends for our children
  

OMF Thailand Conference

We had a great time at our OMF Thailand Conference last week. The theme was on JOY from the Psalms and with 9 workshops on church planting. We had a chance to speak to missionaries working in South and North Thailand where our OMF leaders want to consider working after we finish our initial language and culture studies in Lopburi. See if you can find us in the photo (click on the photo to enlarge).

Day in the life of our baby

"You want me to put this on my head?"

"O.k"

My Teacher

This is my teacher and the classroom where I have been spending 5 days a week for the last 2 months having my lessons. I'm up to model 3 out of 9 modules to be completed within our first year. It's great having one of one lessons as I can go at my own pace and ask questions without fearing what other people might think. We have several teachers at the language centre and my teacher is one of them. We were talking about weddings and funeral's today and I found out the Buddhist funeral takes about 3-5days. One language blunder was when my teacher asked me what I would do to help people become Christians and I said that I would go home (I thought she asked me what would I do if many people in Thailand were Christians! If there were many Christians in Thailand I wouldn't need to be here).

• Praise God that my teacher and I get along well and that she has been helping me progress in learning Thai
• Please pray my teacher may get a greater understanding of Jesus through her work at the language centre interacting with Christian students.

Long live the King

On Monday's in Thailand, you will see a flood of people wearing yellow shirts just like this one. Monday is yellow shirt day in honour of Thailand's King (the longest living serving Monarch in the world). Other days have other colours - Tuesday for example is pink shirt day, but the yellow shirt is the Thai's favourite as the King has almost God like status in Thailand. A fellow student read the Thai writing on my shirt this week and he said it was commemorating the King's 80th birthday with the hope - long live the King. Our hope is that one day many Thai will know the King of not just Thailand but of the whole world and everything in it.

Uncle's Visit

We had a short visit from Lisa's brother this week and it was great to have him around and for the boys to be able to see him again. They last saw each other just after our second son was born nearly a year ago. If you see the dark marks on the bath tub the children are in, I think that's mold. I went to the supermarket to try to find a cleaning product to remove the mold. Unfortunately I can't read Thai yet. So I made the best guess I could and bought a bottle of cleaning liquid which I hoped would do the job. I splashed the product on the bath and left it for 10 minutes to work. When I went back I was overwhelmed by the fumes in the toilet. From the smell, and the fact that my hands started to sting I looked at the bottle again and saw the chemical symbol for Hydrochloric acid as the major ingredient! It still didn't get rid of the mold though...

2001 Toyota Soluna

This is the car which we bought last week, a 2001 Toyota Soluna.

Having a car has made our life so much easier here in Lopburi, especially for getting the children to childcare and for a shopping run to Big C or Lotus which are the two big shopping centres (big by Lopburi standards but small compared to the ones in Bangkok). Since we have a car we are planning to visit the church in Thaa Rua which is about 30 minutes drive away this Sunday.

• Praise God that we were able to get a car so quickly
• Please pray for safety as we still have to get used to driving in Thailand