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.

Baptisms at Mae Moh Church

 The Mae Moh Church at the Baptism Ceremony of 8 new Christians

Two weeks ago we had the blessing of witnessing the Baptism ceremony of 8 members of the Mae Moh Church. “Baptism” is the Christian ceremony proclaiming publicly that you have new life in Jesus Christ and that he has washed you of your sins. We prayed for these 8 people that God would protect them and help them in their new life.

Flood crisis worsens in Bangkok

 Don Muang Airport 1 week ago

The same airport this week

 

Cars parked illegally on the elevated motorways sometimes leaving on 1 lane each way

 A underpass completely submerged and now a swimming pool

Please pray for Thailand.

Flooding & moving

There are severe floods affecting Thailand right now. Here are some pictures. There are many things I’ve experienced for the first time in my life in Thailand.

An industrial district in Ayutthaya flooded

The main highway from Ayutthya to Bangkok cut off

The kitchen from the house we moved from last week

Moving Thai style.  I'm on the back of the pickup holding on to the furniture so that it doesn't fall off the back

Rain rain

At our middle's son's birthday party.  His party clothes didn't last all of 1 minute

It has been raining most days for a few months now. It is definitely the rainy season. Fortunately it doesn’t rain all day. Mostly the rain comes in the late afternoon. The playground near our house has been flooded for much deeper than in this picture. The rain means that it is not quite so hot which is nice.

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?”

Bring out the creative side while interacting with God's word

How we help one another to grow in Christ

What radiates from God to us

In preparation for our Organic church meeting this week, we encouraged one another to express our creativity as we read through the book of Colossians during the week. These were two of the creative expressions from Lisa and Trish and it added more than just colour to God’s word. I’m so thankful to God for the ways in which he is helping us understand the riches of his word through community.

Hit and Run in Lampang

 Temporary fix it job

Yesterday I took our cat to the vet to have her leg x-rayed. My car was parked on the street when I heard what sounded like my car alarm. When I went outside it indeed was my car alarm. I turned off the alarm but the people on the street started telling me something and kept on showing me a piece of paper with a license plate number on it. I saw broken glass on the ground and piece of plastic but I couldn’t see how it involved me at all. When I picked up the piece of plastic I saw that it was a broken side door mirror. Then I noticed that my right side door mirror was bent forward at an odd angle. Then I realised what the commotion was about. Some car had swiped my right side door mirror and had driven off. I asked my neighbor what I should do. Then rang the car insurance agent. They wanted me go to the police and file a report and submit a claim on my 1st class insurance. It ruined the rest of my afternoon as I had to find the right police station and get all the documents together.

 Then this morning I had to find the insurance agent in Lampang before going to the garage. The insurance agent was a bit bemused when I refused to lie about what had happened to the front bumper of the car. My neighbour had advised that since I have 1st insurance I should get any other damage on the car fixed at the same time (I was going to lose my no claim bonus anyway). So I asked the agent whether it was legal to have the front bumper fixed too at the same time. He said “sure”. But then I said I didn’t know how the scratch go there in the first place. It probably happened when another missionary had borrowed our car on home assignment but I wasn’t sure. He wanted me to say that I had the car parked outside the house and someone swiped it. But I said that as I Christian I wouldn’t lie like that. He said that if I paid 1,000 baht I could claim this damage without stating what had happened, but why would I want to do that? Why lose money when I didn’t have to (by lying). I said I’d just pay the 1,000 baht and he took it shaking his head.

 Unfortunately, the smash repairers are really busy and they won’t be able to fit my car in for at least another week. Then they rang and said that it might take up to 3 months for the side mirror to come from Japan! They said that they’d try to source it from somewhere else if they can. In the mean while I bought a 10 baht vanity mirror from Tesco to stick on the right side mirror. It is really hard to drive a car without your ride side mirror!

I could really do without this additional hassle ... but it could always be worse : )  At least my parents will be here with a car so that we won't be without a car for a week when it's being repaired.