Ministry Centre

These are photos of our new ministry centre which we have started renting for 8,000 baht per month (about AU$270 per month). We found the house through one of elderly gentlemen I play golf with each week. His daughter owned this house and rented it to us at a relatively cheap price. The house is quite old and will cost quite a bit to repair but it is in a great location. We will run most of our outreach activities at this centre. Please pray that it will be used greatly by God. Notice on the centre column a shelf for the idols to sit. We will of course remove the idols but there is a spirit house in the courtyard.
But what to call our ministry centre? At our team meeting last week, we considered various options, The Pit Stop ("Pit" in Thai means wrong or error - so it has a double meaning - "stopping error" - I thought of this one), Hope House, the M Centre ("M" for ministry), The Centre, The Happy House, The Sun House, the Lighthouse and others. What name would you have chosen?

Spot the difference

There has been work going on for the last 10 days with lots of grinding noise. Now can you spot the differences?

Workmanship?

We recently installed a hotwater heater into our guest bathroom as Jenny, a short-term worker from Australia is coming out to help us next month. The electrician had to drill a hole through the wall to get electricity to the hotwater unit. I would have expected the electrician to patch up the wall after he had finished but he just left it like the photo below. I asked him what he was going to do about the wall and he told me that I could just patch it up. What did I expect? The same thing happened when the plumber came and install a new pipe into the kitchen sink. There is still a hole at the back of the house where the pipe comes in.

What's missing now?

We had been praying that someone would purchase the house next door to us which had been repossessed by the bank and vacant for over a year. Our prayers were answered and two weeks ago we saw work being done on the house. What we didn't expect is this. What's missing?

All the trees. Almost every single tree was cut down. Unfortunately I didn't have a 'before' picture but there were several huge trees in the front yard. All gone. Gone with it is the shade for our house and front yard.

We were pretty upset about it but what can we do?

Phenomenon at Conference

This strange phenomenon was seen at the end of our OMF Thailand Conference. The sun was surround by a darker sphere and what seemed like a rainbow was at the outer edge. Can anyone explain it? It was the strangest thing I have seen in some time.

Holiday pics 2

Riding Cousins

holiday pics

Cool Cousins

Aidan has no fear sometimes

These monkeys were quite tame taking food out of your hands, however, the next day one of the other guests got his finger bitten and had to go to the hospital for rabies shots (only 2 as he had 3 pre-exposure shots already - otherwise it would have been 5 shots!)

We are safely back in Lampang after driving nearly 1,000 km over 2 days. We are very tired but glad to be home. We now have a dining table (but no chairs) and a food cupboard.

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.