Wife's Birthday and Songkran Fun

My wife’s birthday falls right in the middle of the Songkran water festival, Thailand’s biggest and most popular festival. Lisa got to open her presents this morning and I went to the market to buy jork (rice porridge). I was planning to make scrambled eggs but we had no eggs (they were all boiled up for the Easter egg decorating for the kids at our Organic church meeting). Lunch was with Mr Kawano, the owner of the taekwondo school our son goes to along with a family from our son’s school. Then we all crashed for the afternoon and slept until around 4pm. Then it was off to have more Songkran water fun. Unfortunately, Lampang has full on water spraying on 12-13 April so today it was very quiet.

Yes, that's me on the left completely soaked and our two sons

We did find a family near the clock tower round about splashing cars as they went by so we joined in and had fun with them. Tomorrow we might be off to Ann’s parent’s house who is one of the English students at the Lighthouse.

Day in a Life of a Missionary

This morning went with my son to the Pattamasaevi (ปัทมะเสวี) Mini Summer Camp to teach English for an hour. Taught Colin Buchanan’s song “Remember the Lord” with the message that God is always watching and working for the good of his children. It’s a very “Aussie” song with lines like “miss your breaky” and “busted for something you didn’t do”, “dad is crusty and your mum’s in a flack”. Anyone wanna “av a go” at trying to explain “your mum’s in a flack”?

After English teaching went home to drop off my son and then went around town to do some jobs. Stopped off in front of the post office for lunch and ate this great noodle and dumpling soup for all of 35 baht (just over AU$1. Would have been 30 but I asked for the “special” - which means you get a bit more than normal, much more than the extra 5 baht you pay). Add a bit of dried chilli and fish sauce ... yuumm.

Collected the mail and then back home to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson.

Prayer night at our house tonight.

Funny Kids

Our kids are a handful some of the time (no most of the time). It is the long summer break now so they won’t go back to school until mid May. It’s not all fun and games though as they are catching up on homeschooling during the holidays. Our middle son will change schools for the third time. The last school he watched a bit too much T.V for our liking and he was in an international program so not picking up as much Thai as we would like.

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.

Our Son's Kindergarden Graduation

 Our son's kindergarden graduation class

 Yes, its really me from 30 years ago!

Can you pick me out?

Our son had his kindergarden graduation ceremony on Friday. Here are some photos of my graduation 30 years ago.

Simply the Story

 Right now I'm in Chaing Mai attending a "Simply the Story" Workshop.  The first part of the training is learning how to be a trainer and the second part of the week we will be training people in how to use Bible Stories.  They say that even in place like North America which is a highly literate, over 80% of people prefer an oral learning to reading something.

Unfortunately, the main presenter (Dr Larry Dinkins) has lost his voice after doing two workshops already.  He still has another 2 workshops to go!  Larry Dinkins was a missionary in Thailand with OMF for over 20 years.  He has a PhD and helped setup a Bible College in Chiang Mai and was lecturering there before he had to return to the US.  In his opinion though, "storying" has been the most effective means of commicating the Gospel and it is going to be his main focus until the end of his days.

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

i

 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.

Broken nose photo

Well, Lisa wanted a photo taken for posterity reasons, so I guess she wouldn’t mind posting this photo which was taken last night. The cast came off this morning so you won’t be seeing her with it today. We had a bit of a scare last night when she had taken the cast off before going to the shopping centre. When we returned to the car we couldn’t find the cast and her followup appointment was early next morning! We had already got in trouble with the doctor while in the hospital for accidentally removing the gauze in her nose (and not telling the nurses until the next day!) and we thought “oh, no”, he is going to think that she is even worse a patient. Fortunately we found it and it wasn’t broken. Lisa feels a bit wary around the children right now. The Dr has stressed that her nose can be easily broken if hit again and to take care the children don’t hit her nose. In the last couple of days the children have accidentally hit or bumped into her nose twice!

We were a little hesitant about going into the public hospital here in Lampang (we normally go to the private hospital) but generally it has been a good experience and Lisa’s nose looks normal so she’s happy. I don’t think we’ll be forgotten to quickly as they rarely have foreigners as patients.