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...