Holiday by the beach

We are on holidays with Lisa's two brother's and their families at our mission's holiday guesthouse by the beach 4 hours south of Bangkok. It took us two days to get here (nearly 1,000km on the road one way) but it has definitely been worth the effort. The above picture really doesn't do the place justice. We are here for nearly two weeks, but the time is going so quickly. It has been great to see family and especially for the cousins to play together. However, it has reminded us of how much we miss not having family around most of the time.

Make shift arrangements

Our temporary dining table (no seat for me yet)

It has been over a week since we moved to Lampang and we are slowly sarting to settle in. That said, we still don't have a dining table (or chairs), lounge or anything in the lounge room for that matter. We have beds and a fridge (no stove) so we have enough to live in our house. We don't have a washing machine yet, so we are taking everything to laundry.

Buying virtually everything for the house has been really tiring work as we first have to find the shops selling the things we are looking for.

Moving Again

We're packing to move again! This will be our 4th move in 2 years. We are so looking forward to being able to settle down. We'll be glad to be moving away from Lopburi with the barking dogs which wake us up during the middle of the night or very early morning. We pray that at the place we move to we will be able to sleep through the night and that it won't be worse than what we have now.

Car Upgrade

From this ...

To this ...

We have upgraded our car as our old was was getting a bit tight especially for long road trips to and from Lampang. It is a about 5 years old, a 2003 Isuzu Adventure. It is a manual car (our first) and a disiel engine too. It means that we can take vistors in our car without having to take all our car seats out each time.

The house John West rejected in Lampang

We looked at about a dozen houses for rent in our recent trip to Lampang. This was the best of the lot. We really liked the house, but it was a bit too nice unfortunately. We do not know what group of people we will seek to reach in Lampang and a house like this may exclude all but the high class of Lampang. At 15,000 baht a month (AU$ 100 per week), it is very cheap by Australian standards. We eventually decided on a house which was 6,000 baht per month (AU$50 per week). Our house is in town, whereas this house was a bit out of town.
A very enticing aspect of the above house was that it had a club house with these pools and an air-conditioned gym! It would have been a very comfortable missionary life, but not to be for the moment.

Flooding in Lopburi

We returned in from Lampang (where we were looking for a house to rent) just in time. It starting raining heavily an hour or two later and when I looked out the window our car port was starting to flood. This is where our car was stationed before I moved it. Forunately, the water stopped rising enough so that it didn't come into the house. Our neighbours were not as fortunately and were mopping up the water from their living room. If we arrived several hours later, I'm not sure whether we would have been able to get to our house with the flooding.

Our house owner's motorcycle deep in water.

Songkran Fun

This year I had the opportunity to experience Songkran (the Thai New Year Water Festival) Thai style on a back of pickup loaded with water fighting equipment. Going around the block took us nearly 2 hours. The following video will show you why.

Songkran Water festival

It is our second Song Kran (Thai New Year Water Festival). This is our Thai neighbours in a ceremony honouring their elders. They pour water over the elder's hands and the elder speaks a blessing to them.

Children's Camp

We ended up only going to the children’s camp for 1 day instead of the whole camp as the children and Lisa have been sick recently. There were more than 200 children at the camp and Lisa organised several craft activities for that day. We were only there for one day but we were thoroughly exhausted afterwards and thought we probably would not have lasted more than a day or two. We pray that the camp brought many Thai children to know Jesus.

Wishful thinking

This is our son at the Children's Mueseum in Bangkok. We wish it was this cold in Thailand. In Lopburi it is getting so HOT! It must be getting close to 40 degrees right now. Even with the aircon on in our bedroom, during the day you still feel hot and sweaty (the airconditioner is a bit small unfortunately). I'm trying a new method of wearing a singlet underneath my shirt. A bit counterintuiative I know, but some people swear by it that it keeps them cooler. It does save the embarrassment of having large sweat patches showing all over your shirt though. I'm not yet convinced that I feel cooler because of it though.