Returned Just in Time!

5 days before Rich & our second son's flight was due to depart they received the dreaded call that they had been bumped off their flight.  Fortunately, we were offered another flight.  We did not realise just how fortunate we were until a week later, while in quarantine, when Sydney went into lockdown and international arrival numbers were halved.  We are very thankful to God for his provision as the next available economy flights to Sydney from Thailand are from January 2022!  

It has been great for most of our family to be united again after such an extended period, although we miss our oldest son and he misses us.  Despite the disappointment of Sydney’s lockdowns, our second son has settled well into the rhythm of his new school online. He just wishes he could have a chance to make a start on the guitar he is planning on making in his Industrial Tech Timber class! 

We have begun our final home assignment, which will be completed at the end of this year.  We would love to connect with you, or your small group online, or just via a phone call, until the lockdown in Sydney ends. Please let us know if you’re interested, and send us your number. 

Transitions - Running out ofHhotwater

Since we've been married, we've moved almost 20 times and each time there is a transition process which requires time and effort to get settled again. For example, with our latest house, we have been running out of hotwater. There is a 315L hotwater heater but it doesn't seem enough for 5 of us to have a shower and washing the dishes. We've had a plumber in a few times already now. It seems that we are on an off-peak plan which only heats the water during the night. So if we use all the hotwater during the day we won't have anymore until the next day! I asked the plumber whether we could install the electric hotwater heaters that we've used in Thailand (see photo) in all the houses we've been in. He laughed at me. Doesn't seem like it's an option in Australia. I have seen gas ones through Rinnai but not electric ones as we don't have gas. Now a call to the electricity company to see if we can change our plan so that we can have water heated when needed during the day.

Our moves:-

1. Strathfield

2. SMBC

3. Strathfield

4. Croydon Park(Aidan born - 10 months

5. Enfield

6. Cluney Rd, OMF IHQ -  6 weeks

7. Lopburi - 1 year

8. Lampang - Suksawat

9. Wahroonga - HA 1 (9 months)

10. Lampang - Suksawat

11. Lampang - The Lighthouse

12. Thornleigh - HA 2 (1 year)

13. Lampang - The Lighthouse

14. JOFC - 2 years

15. Chiang Mai - Koolpuntville 7 (8 months)

16. Orchard St: HA 3 (8 months)

17. Chiang Mai - Koolpuntville 7

18. Chiang Mai - Thanawan

19. Eastwood

#41 Home Assignment - Rest & Renewal -Fishing 2009-2010

Scotty Lyons Fishing Charter, Mar 2010

Jason with the catch of day with a sizable mac tuna

Our sons first fishing boat trip

It was this home assignment that I really developed a passion for fishing and in particular rock fishing.  I enjoyed fishing before that, but had not fished much at all.  I do remember a few times fishing on family holidays but I had little idea of how to fish.  I recall fishing on a bridge when I was young and getting lots of fish on the line, but as I was pulling the fish out of the water and up to where I was standing the bridge, the line would be cut and I would lose the fish.  I realize now that they were probably whiting and my hooks were too short.

I had a couple of offshore fishing trip trips.  There was a memorable charter with Scotty Lyons with my father-in-law and friends from church, when the bonito were running and Jason Koh latched on to a sizable mac tuna.  Poor Tony’s sea sickness medicine was not up to scratch and his stomach provided a lot of fish food.

But it was on a family holiday to Avoca that I started rock fishing for the first time and was hooked after the rush of catching a bucket full of bonito (type of tuna fish) and the fishing line screaming as the fish pull line.  

Rock fishing is considered the most dangerous sport in Australia as many, mostly Asian fishermen are drowned each year as they are hit by waves and thrown in the water.  Some cannot swim or are not wearing life jackets.

Rock fishing is one of the things I miss most living in Chiang Mai, 700km from the nearest beach / ocean. 

Rest and renewal is one of the objectives of home assignment and fishing helped towards achieving that.

Are you excited about going back to Thailand!

I was asked whether I was excited to be going back to Thailand by 4 different people last week at church.  My guess is that they expected the responsive to be a positive “Yes, we’re pumped”.  Maybe If we were going for our very first term, or if we were going for a holiday in Phuket.  But no.  None of us are really that excited about going back.  Not because we don’t like Thailand.  No there are some great things about Thailand and generally we like living in Thailand.  We are looking forward to seeing our Thai and expat friends again.

But no, we are not excited about going to Thailand because it means uprooting our lives again, packing more boxes and unpacking them.  Cancelling the internet and home phone, informing various government agencies, insurance companies, the electoral office and countless other places that we are leaving.  What to pack, what to throw away and where to put it all.  The children had settled into their Australian school and made good friends.  My oldest son was invited to his first AFL game to watch the Sydney Swans by one of his friends from school who was a member (so as a guest he could get in for free!).  Today wasting time I didn’t have wondering whether I should cancel our onward flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and change to a later flight because we only have a 1 hour and 20 minute window to clear immigration and get our bags and make it to our flight.  That seemed like enough time, but for the last 2 weeks the flight from Sydney to Bangkok has been on average 40min to 1 hour late every day.  

There will be a time when we are really excited to be back in Thailand (not going).  It’s not today.  But it will probably be in 3 or 4 months time when we’ve moved to our 10th house in just over 10 years and mostly unpacked and have some semblance of normality in our life again.

No we are not excited to be going but.  But we are resolved to go back because we know that is where God wants us at this point in our lives.  Because obeying God is more important that a life escaping hardship. 

So probably a better question might be, “how are feeling about going back to Thailand?” rather than “are you excited to be going back”.   

Understanding Home Assignment

 St Ives Family Church

This is our 3rd home assignment back in Australia.  Most people still don't have a good understanding of what missionaries do on home assignment.  "It's good that you can have rest back in Australia".  While it's true that some of time is allocated for rest, most missionaries find home assignment very tiring and more busy than when they are on the mission field.  They don't realise the time and effort in readjusting to life in Australia.  Even enrolling children in schools, getting the right uniforms (second hand so it doubles effort and time) and stationary and filling out the forms can takes many days.  With 4 kids in tow, that is not easy.  There are medical appointments, centrelink, debriefing meetings, visit to supporting churches.   

Even though you leave many responsibilities behind on the mission field, there are still emails to answer and phone calls to make.  Like when our househelp advised us that a water pipe broke at the back of our house in Thailand and that our kitchen was flooded.  For the person who you've been sharing the gospel with and whose started to follow Christ yet has so many questions and you are the one they want to talk with.

We are 2 months into our 8 month home assignment.  Today was the first day of school for 2 of our 4 kids.  They were still missing a few things they needed - hopefully they could cope with that.  It's not easy starting at a new school and making new friends.  Forget to get our son's clarinet serviced so had to run around trying to find a shop to do that.  The first shop had a 4 week wait!  The second shop was another 30 minutes away.  

Getting the kids started at school has been one hurdle overcome.  We will be spending time this week, preparing for church visits and presentations for small groups.  New prayer profiles have been prepared and they were printed this morning.  I will be attending a men's biblestudy on Tuesdays nights at one of our supporting churches.  On Wednesday morning a tradesman is coming to fix the gutters in our house and advise about a garden shed.  There is a prayer letter to send out which is over a month late already.  OMF day of prayer on Friday.  Prayer points for my region in Thailand need to be sent to the UK for a Thailand prayer letter.  Saturday we will be having lunch with some friends and longtime supporters.  Sunday we are sharing at Cornerstone Presbyterian Concord and then attending the child protection training at the church.  The OMF homeside Ministry Team co-orindator requested a meeting with us this week but with all that is going on this week, we asked if it could be next week.

 Cornerstone Homebush Bay

Cultural Learning - Cricket.  Great that Grandad is a cricket fan.

Christchurch Monthly Missions Prayer Meeting

I started going to Christchurch St Ives in 1990, when I was in year 10 (around 16 y.o). About 5 years later I joined the Mission Action Group (MAG) as it was called back then and met some of the people in this photo. They have been faithfully praying for missions at Christchurch for over the 20 years that I've known them. I felt humbled and honoured to able to join them this morning for the monthly missions prayer meeting at Christchurch and thank them for their faithfulness in prayer. Tears well up with gratefulness, even through strokes and parkinson's disease and other difficulties they still make the effort to come and pray.  

If you didn't include me, I'd say that the average age of this group would be over 70.  I wonder why it is that the older generation tend to come to mission prayer meeting more.  Is it just that they have more time?  Or is something else?

Start of another new school

Our Second Son’s first day at school

We’ve had to move house 9 times in the last 7 years. With that has come changing school. For our oldest son, he has gone to 5 different schools and he is only in year 3! Our oldest son adapts pretty well so we didn’t expect much trouble. He has a gift of making new friends quickly too. We had concerns about our middle son most. And he didn’t want to go to school for a couple of days, but was soon enjoying and there were no complaints of going to school. His frequent awards from school helped a lot. He’s received about 8 rewards in the first 4 weeks of school with his brother only getting one. So overall this school transition was pretty smooth. Some of them have not and even after months and months our son still didn’t want to school and that’s always hard.

There were tears today as mum was trying to help our middle son with his spelling. He said he didn’t get any words right in his spelling test this week.

On home assignment we have to move around between different Churches and that can be difficult for the kids too. They get used to one Sunday school program and then they have to try to fit in to another one. So our middle son didn’t cope last Sunday at another new Church (though our eldest loved it as they played great games).

So we are thankful that all 3 of our kids have settled into school. They cannot have the stability of being in place for long but we hope our family and God provides enough support for them not only to cope but thrive.

Losing my cool

Yes, it’s not the best photo, but we were on the run trying to make our plane back to Australia and we didn’t have time to take a nice photo.

But before we get to that, in Thai culture it is not cool to lose your cool. Rarely do Thai people show their anger, especially in public. It is a sign that the person is so angry that he or she has lost their self-control and this happen rarely and when it does watch out. So we’ve tried to not get angry, at least in public.

There have only been two times that I’ve been angry to the point of shouting in Thailand and this day was the second time. The first time was when our old neighbour’s pitbull got out (again) and nearly bit our children (but that is another story).

Back to nearly missing our flight home. It was going to be a long day. In the morning we frantically finished packing up the house and the van came at 11am to take us to Chiang Mai airport for a 2:15pm flight to Bangkok with Bangkok Air. We would then have 6 hours of transit before taking a Qantas flight back to Australia at 9:30pm (we had booked an earlier Bangkok Air flight which would have meant only 3 hours of transit but then Bangkok Air cancelled that flight). When we landed at Bangkok airport we stayed in the Bangkok Air lounge near the gate where we landed as they had nice lounges, free food and a kids play area. About 3 hours before the Qantas flight was due to leave we started to find our way to the Qantas transit desk and we made it to the closet transit area which was Transit Area A. However the Qantas transit area was Transit D, which was about 1km walk with no travellators. My wife was 28 weeks pregnant and was fine with walking short distances but walking 1km was a long way and would be quite painful so we went to the Bangkok Airways Transit desk and asked for a wheelchair to take us to Qantas transit area. They asked us whether we had booked the wheelchair in advance and I said no, because we had no idea that we would have to walk over 1km to get to next transit area.

They said that the wheelchair attendants were busy and it might take some time to get a wheelchair but we said we’d wait. We still had 3 hours before our flight was due to leave so I thought there would surely be enough time. After waiting 1 and half hours I was starting to get a little worried. I went to the Bangkok Air transit desk and asked them how much longer we would have to wait and they contacted the wheelchair attendants again and we were told they still had no one available yet. I was now worried enough to ask at the information desk what we could do. They told us to try Thai Airways. Thai airways said they couldn’t help. After waiting for nearly 2 hours and only 55 minutes before our flight was due to leave, the Bankgok Air staff came and told us that they would not be able to get us a wheelchair. There was no one available.

It was then I started to lose my cool. I explained again that tt was over 1 km to get to boarding gate and my wife was walking painfully and slowly and there was no way we would make it to the boarding gate in time as we still had to check in at the Qantas transit desk. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier”, I demanded angrily, “Now what are we going to do. How can we catch our flight in time” (in Thai mind you). Then the Bangkok Air staff member said in an annoyed tone, “You had 6 hours since you landed” (implying that it was our fault). “Well, how were we to know that we had over 1km to walk to the next transit area” I retorted.

Anyway, I walked away from the counter in disgust wondering what we would do now. Our family started walking towards Transit Area D knowing that we couldn’t possibly get get there in time. We had walked about 50metres when a Bangkok Air wheelchair attendant came toward us with a wheelchair. I couldn’t believe that this wheelchair was for us as the Bangkok Air staff had told us only 5 minutes ago that they had no wheelchair available to take us to our flight in time. I still don’t know how this person became available but there was no time to ask questions. My wife got in the chair and we raced to the Transit Area D. We were one of the last passengers on board but we got there in time. Without that wheelchair we definitely would not have made it. The wheelchair attendant received the biggest tip I’ve ever given in Thailand. We were so relieved.

We were thankful to God that he provided the wheelchair for us when we had lost all hope. Of course we can’t prove that God was the one who provided the wheelchair for us. But over the last couple of years we’ve seen God meet our needs even before we new about it (like us moving 3 days before our old house flooded, or short-termers coming just when we needed them). So we are looking to trust God in the midst of our unexpected early home assignment and the plans he has for us in the year ahead.

Blessings of Home Assignment

Date Night

Grilled swordfish

Lamb

One of the blessing of this home assignment has been the opportunity to have regular date nights. Before we came back, Sophie who had visited us with the Christchurch short-term team in Dec 08, offered to babysit with another member of the team, Jo while we were on home assignment. It was such an encouragement to received such an offer (especially as we'd been having a hard time when her email had come in). She then organised a roster of other people from the evening service at Christchurch so that we could have a date night once a week.

O.k we don't dine like this every date night, but we were given a gift from a friend to go have dinner by the waterfront so able to have this lovely moment last night.

Thanks so much to our babysitters, Sophie, Jo, Becky, Chloe, Dani, Craig & Heidi, Emma who the kids have loved.

If you want to help your missionaries with kids on home assignment, this is a great way of doing it.

Home Assignment Events

Lisa speaking at a Christchurch Women's Event

Sharing with a Christchurch Biblestudy Last Night at our home

Our display table

As you can see we are continuing to share about Thailand and our 1st term at different events. Soon we will be shifting from Home Assignment "sharing" mode to preparation for our return. Our medicals have been completed. We have a meeting with OMF still to go. Our recommissioning service will be at Christchurch St Ives, on Saturday 1 May at 4pm. Time is flying and before we know it we'll be in Thailand (God willing).

Pirate Day

Our son, far right

Our son is really enjoying Kindergarten. So much so it is hard to take him out of school for any medical appointments. It is such a change from his attitude to school in Thailand. We hope and pray that this will change once he has more Thai language.

Missionaries in Residence

This week we have been missionaries in residence at SMBC (Sydney Missionary and Bible College) where we studied. We basically live at the Bible college all week giving various seminars, holding suppers, but mostly hanging around and talking with current students who are interested in missions. A good week, but very tiring. Last day there tomorrow. Then more sermon preparation for this Sunday and talk to give on Monday to the Thai Fellowship in Sydney.

Hitting the deputation Road

Things have recently heated up on the deputation trail for us. I preached today at all 3 services at Ashfield Presbyterian getting there just before 9am, dropped off the family home at 4pm and then back for the 6pm service and home by 9pm.

This week we are missionaries in residence at SMBC all week followed by the all 3 services at Ashfield Presbyterian next Sunday.

It was good though. This church is one of the most faithful churches which prays for us and it was good to see people we fellowshipped with 10 years ago still serving at Ashfield. Ok. Off to bed...

First sermon in 4 years

This morning I preached my first sermon in 4 years I think. I didn't preach at all in our first term in Thailand and I'm glad I didn't in one sense as my Thai really isn't good enough, though it would have stretched my Thai a lot in doing it. I can't actually remember the last time I preach before this, though I do remember the long nights in preparing sermons. Not preaching week in week out, each sermon probably took more than 40 hours at least in preparation time. Thankfully, this sermon took less than 40 hours (not that I was counting but it deal feel shorter than previous occasions). Next month I will be preaching twice at Ashfield Presbyterian so will have another opportunity to preach.

Opinions differ amongst missionaries as to whether it is a good thing or not to be asked to preached at a church because of the amount of time it takes in preparation and the lack of response in the congregation. Some think that going to Bible Studies and sharing to a smaller group which can interact with you is much more effective.

I know some missionaries with 6 or more supporting churches and they are preaching to all 5 congregations on a Sunday and I can imagine how tired they must be if they had to do that a couple of times.

Anyway, I don't preach that often so it was good to be able to spend several weeks thinking over Luke 8:40-56 (Jairus' daughter and the bleeding woman) which was a passage which was very helpful to me in Thailand.

I'm working on my next sermon on Romans 12:3-8, and what it means for a church to be a community.

Target Asia

Last month we shared at the OMF Target Asia meeting along with other missionaries on home assignment, missionaries preparing to leave for the field and short-termers who had recently returned. OMF Australia organise 4 Target Asia meetings per year. I find them extremely helpful in finding out what God is doing in other parts of Asia and working in the lives of people. Unfortunately, the majority of the attendees (apart from those who were there to share) were older people. What would be do without these faithful and prayerful older people? How can we get younger people to attend these great meetings?

The next Target Asia meeting is on Saturday 20 February. I encourage you to go if you live in Sydney. The meeting is for the morning only and concludes with Lunch together. Contact OMF Australia for details.

Christchurch Thursday Women's Group

This morning Lisa spoke at the Thursday WEB group at Christchurch St Ives which is group of about 100 women. She is a last minute person so the last couple of nights have been very late. Her presentation consisted of a letter to our daughter. By the sounds of it, the presentation went well.

Cornerstone Presbyterian Biblestudy

We are well and truly on the deputation trail now. I shared at this Biblestudy last night and I didn't get lost on the way! Speaking at Sunday School and Bible reading for Lisa at Christchurch this Sunday.

First Christchurch Biblestudy

Being on home assignment one of our roles is to report back to our sending church and to those who have been faithfully supporting us. On Tuesday night we shared with Tim & Em's Biblestudy (above). This Biblestudy wrote letters to us (pen and paper kind - amazing for Gen Y'ers) and prayed for us and it was great to be able to meet them in person.

We are looking forward to sharing at many other Biblestudies.