Quick trip back to Lampang

Dinner with Lampang friends at the Lampang Resort

Last week I made a quick trip back to Thailand to renew my visa and work permit. You might think that it is a long way to go to just renew my visa (from Australia to Thailand) but it took me 6 months to get my visa. If I didn’t renew it then I would have to start the whole application process again. Unfortunately, I can only renew my visa in Thailand. However, this gave me an opportunity to make a quick visit to Lampang and visit our friends there. It was a whirlwind visit with lots of meeting up with people and eating. It was great to be back in Lampang and catch up with people and our friends in Lampang want The Lighthouse to open again as soon as possible.

Wonderful Wife Drawings

Some weeks at kidsclub at The Lighthouse its a last minute what are we going to do to illustrate the Bible story.  Many weeks we use the Betty Lukins lovely felt set, other times we act the story out, but this week shown, my lovely wife comes to the rescue with her artistic skills (something which I completely lack).

Kids Club craft photo

It has become a weekly ritual that Gae our wonderful Thai Teacher who helps us at Kidsclub each week, to take a photo of what the kids make for their craft.  Look out for that scary looking woman at the back!

New Short-term Workers

Fedora (L), Hannah (R)

We welcome our two new short-term volunteers, Fedora (from Singapore) and Hannah (from the US). We are so thankful that they could take time out of their lives to come and help. We certainly could do with their help with our team shortly reducing from 8 full-time workers to just our family from next month. We pray that will have a blessed time here in Lampang.

Playgroup

Every Thursday morning at The Lighthouse, Lisa runs a playgroup for children aged 1-3 years old and their mothers. Our daughter participates too as she’s 3. Lisa puts out toys to play with, they have storytime, a song and a craft.

 Playing with Playdoh

 Dress ups

 Storytime

 The theme for this week was GREEN

Term 2 at Kids Club 2011

Since the start of the new term at Kids Club at The Lighthouse, we’ve had to restrict the number of children to a maximum of 35 kids and start a waiting list as the number of people in our team has decreased.  Kids Club also moved from a smaller room (which now is the English teaching room) to this larger room.  In January there will be more changes as I start helping with Kids Club and Peter takes over my Saturday English class for January and February until an English teacher from Singapore arrives in late February.  It’s great to have so many kids but it looks like we those on the waiting list will have to wait until at least February to get in.

Teaching Civil Servants

Last week I started teaching English to civil servants at the Sala Klang (สาลากลาง) Lampang. The topic for the evening was eating out”.

We had a lot of fun as we role played conversations at a restaurant. “Do you have a reservation?”

Thammasart University Lampang

 Playing Blokus

Perpetual Commotion or "Dutch Blitz"

For the last 3 days we have been at Thammasart University, Lampang Campus with the Dutch Team to teach English. Thanks to Judith and the other English lecturers for letting the team do activities at the university. I was able to bring some board games to the Self Access Learning Centre (SALC). SALC is used to encourage students to practice their English. We hope to be back there in the future sometime.

Visit to Orphanage

James 1:27
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

This week our team had an opportunity to visit a local orphanage in Lampang. The temple where our team members teach English on Sunday afternoons was being used for the national elections so we couldn’t teach there. So it was suggested to our team that we go visit the orphanage instead.

It’s hard to believe but I’ve never been to an orphanage before in my life. That really surprised me. Why haven’t I ever visited an orphanage? It’s not as if it’s hard to miss the Bible’s emphasis on caring for orphans (or the fatherless).

It was hard to imagine these beautiful children not having a mother or father. My heart went out to them. I’ll be looking to make more opportunities to visit this orphanage in the future and hopefully adding a little to their lives for the brief time we are there.

Meal at Phii Jee's

Our Lighthouse team and some other English students at a lovely dinner at Phii Jee’s (front row 3rd from right) house on Monday. We had a great time with lots of food, eating and chatting.

Unfortunately, our daughter vomited up most of her lunch just as we were getting ready to go so she and Lisa couldn’t make it.

OCF team in 2 local Lampang Newspapers

The recent OCF team ran programs in 3 Universities in Lampang as well as one college. The team had photos in two local Lampang Newspapers as well as the website of the college (see here: http://www.lcct.ac.th/office/english/photo_10_11/lighthouseactivities/index.htm).  The website photos include those of me trying to teach cricket.

Translation of the photos captions:  Bottom photo: English activities ... On 19th January 54 (Buddhist calender) which just past, the Rajaphat Suan Dusit University, Lampang joined with a university of Australia for activities practicing English conversation with 1st year students.  There were many different kinds of activities, to create fun amongst the students.  There were two periods of learning 10:30 - 12:00. 

Facebook helps the Student Night

 Facebook invitation for the Student Night at The Lighthouse

The OCF Australian Team at the Yonok Idol Final Event

Last night we had our Student Night with the help of the OCF Australia Team. We had a great time with lots of eating, talking, playing board games, Nitendo Wii, playing music and dancing! (I’m sure photos will be up on Facebook soon!) Normally we have no idea how many people will come to an event such as this. Sometimes we buy lots of food and not many people turn up. But this time we advertised the event on Facebook and we had 27 say that they were attending. In the end we had closer to 40 but we weren’t complaining. It was a great night and I think most people enjoyed themselves.

We were all sad to see the OCF team leave this afternoon. They made lots of friends in Lampang in their two weeks here and worked very hard. They are all certainly welcome to come back.

OCF Australia Team in Lampang

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 Yonok University, Lampang with the OCF Australian Team

 Tomoko our Japanese Teammates demonstrates making Sushi (what else!)

Teaching guitar

We are into the first week of the OCF Australia Short-term mission in Lampang. Here are some photos from this afternoon where we are running a Yonok Idol (a.k.a American Idol) competition and cooking classes. So far things are going well but as with all short-term teams in Thailand a lot of last minute planning.

Rajaphat University

The South African short-term team has come and gone. The photo above is at the Rajaphat university in Lampang where we ran some English classes for these accounting students and also for highschool English teachers from surrounding provinces. It was a very enjoyable team to have and we were able to do some new things which we haven’t done before. I took 4 of the young men to the sports field near our house and we played 5 a side soccer (football for the purists) with another team which happened to be there. Also I was able to join some people playing boules.

In less than a month the an OCF short term team from Australia will be coming for 2 weeks and preparations for that team have begun.

School for the Blind, Lampang

We currently have a short-term team from South Africa helping us and last week they visited The School for the Blind in Lampang which is close to where we live. They helped teach English by singing songs, telling stories and playing games. Today, the team went to the Rajaphat University in Lampang to teach accounting students English. We are back there tomorrow morning with the team.

Lighthouse Shirts

It was months in the making as the team discussed the finer details of the shirt design, but our Lighthouse shirts have been printed and they look great. We are already planning a second printing only 2 weeks after the first one. There will be some minor modifications on the second printing. We’re going have a small Lighthouse logo on the front of the polo shirt (but not the T-shirt). In Australia I’ve been involved in making a shirt, logos, signs but here the team has had to do it all. Great experience. Our students have asked for the shirts too.

In Thailand you have special colours for each day of the week. Last Saturday I happened to wear by purple Lighthouse Shirt (I have a navy blue one as well). And the colour for Saturday - purple! I matched. Now I intend to buy a yellow (Monday), pink (Tuesday), green (green) ,orange (Thursday) shirts and red (Sunday) for the second printing to add to my blue (Friday) and Purple (Saturday) ones. Unfortunately, the rest of my team mates don’t share my enthusiasm to fit in culturally with Thais in wearing the right coloured shirts on the appropriate days.

On the back is the Bible verse from John chapter 8 verse 12.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Weekly Routine

 Birthday Invitation for our son's upcoming party

Since coming back to Thailand in mid-May, after 3 months our family has established a routine of sorts.

I take the boys to school usually in the mornings with our daughter in toe. Our daughter is at the very cute age and draws lots of giggles from the students as she waves to them goodbye each morning.

Then on Monday and Friday mornings I have 2 hours of Thai study with my language helper. I’m so glad to have finally found a language helper, and have these two sessions locked in.  When things get busy language study can be the first thing which gets left undone. I try to have at least another 1 or 2 sessions of language study by myself during the week if possible.

Thursday mornings we have a team meeting. Friday afternoon I prepare my English lesson for my Saturday morning English class. Sunday mornings we are at church. Once or twice a month I’ll get up before dawn to play golf with a group to doctors and my friends Kawano finishing before 9am to leave plenty of time to get back for church. Sunday afternoons we alternate between a team BBQ and an open BBQ for all our Thai friends.

Three afternoons a week I take our eldest son to Taekwondo during which I have an hour to chat with the other parents many of who have children in the same class as our son. If we can we try to get to the park once a week to meet new people though lately this has not been possible.

Any spare time, we will try to meet up with our Thai friends or try to keep up with the back log of admin. This is a typical week when we don’t have any special activities on. Next Sunday we will have our middle son’s 4th Birthday so we’ll be busy preparing for that this week.

It doesn’t sound like much but somehow we find ourselves up until 11pm most nights trying to get things done. I’m looking forward to finishing my formal language in the next year or so the possibilities this will open up to do other things which we don’t have time for now.

Recent Activities at the Lighthouse & Lampang

It has been a busy time at the Lighthouse and in Lampang. We recently had our son’s birthday party combined with kidsclub at the Lighthouse. It was chaotic with nearly 40 children. This was the beautiful rocket ice cream made by Lisa.

The next day we had our fortnightly Sunday afternoon BBQ to which we invite all our Thai friends and those coming to the Lighthouse. We had the most people ever with 11 adults and 4 children (not including our team). We were having some great discussions too.

Finally we enrolled our eldest son in a Taekwondo school. At first he didn’t want to go but I persuaded him to just have a look. If he didn’t like it he didn’t have to go. We’ll from instant he stepped into the door he was wrestling with another boy and he couldn’t get enough. He wanted to go everyday after that. Many of the other parents send their children 5 days a weeks, but we can’t send our son more than 3 times a week. It has been a good chance to speak to the other parents for an hour many of whom are parents of children in our son’s class at school.

English teaching opportunities galore

Since we've been back there have been plenty of new opportunities to teach English in Lampang.  I've started to teach at a local tutoring school for highschoolers (photo above).  The co-owner of the academy (Golf) I've known since our first months in Lampang.  For part of the lesson I'm using the "Big Picture Story Bible" and reading one of the stories with comprehension questions afterward.  With over 50 students it's hard to teach conversational English.  I'm teaching there again this afternoon.  A woman went to Golf this week asking if he was able to help her son prepare for an interview for an American Foundation in Thailand which gives Thai students a chance to study and travel overseas.  So Golf directed her to me.  So this week I'm helping this woman's son with interview skills.  Also, I was contacted by a couple who run a fruit drink shop, whether we could help at another tutoring academy which had just opened.     

Obviously, we can't take up all these opportunities, but they have been a way of making new contacts and hopefully through them we can find people who are seeking Christ.  It does show that more and more people know about us now than before.

However, if we had some short-terms staying for an extended period of time, they could take up these opportunities and our team for other opportunities.

The Unexpected

Last Friday night, Nick (Team Leader) and I were at the Lighthouse as usual for our International Student evening. The two weeks before that no one turned up so I was not that hopeful. I prayed for people to come but it was 7:15pm (15 minutes after the starting time of 7pm) and no one had come. Mentally I was packing up and preparing to go home in another 15 minutes. But then one of the Chinese exchange students, Sonya turned up. The Chinese students hadn't been at the Lighthouse for a couple of months, but Nick had bumped into them at the market earlier in the week.

Later in the evening, close to 8pm, two Thai uni students from the local Rajaphat University turned up. "Tee" had been once to the International Evening many months ago and brought along a friend. If Sonya hadn't come, we probably would have gone home before these two arrived.

So I left thankful to God for answering prayer and bringing students when we weren't expecting any.


Later this morning I'm off to the train station for a 7 hour train journey to Lopburi where I will start my level 2 language exams. I feel so unprepared. Didn't have much time to study this week, with discussions with the landlord about reducing the rent while we were away (they agreed - praise God!), North Thailand Team meetings in Chiang Mai and other things. Surprusingly, this will be my first long train trip in Thailand. Not that I'll be looking at the scenary much - I'll be desperately trying to review as much Thai as possible. Also, I had to change my train ticket a couple of days ago. I didn't realise that the exam was over two days until my team leader queried why I was only staying one day in Lopburi.