A Hailstorm's Destruction

Last week, a hailstorm hit the mountainous Northern Thailand and destroyed many farmers' whole crop, including my friend Pat's. He is engaged to marry my housemate and fellow staff, Ying. His family grows coffee, at least up until last week. Hail with a 10 cm diameter fell for about two hours tearing big holes in their coffee leaves, and ruining the crop and their houses. It will take them two years to get back on their feet and make money again from their farm. A hailstorm like this hasn't happened in thirty years.

Please pray that God may be glorified out of this situation. For the Thai people, tragedies like this happen almost daily, causing life to be very hard. Pat is supposed to leave this family business to pursue both his ministry call as well marriage to Ying in the next two weeks. Pat and Ying hope to marry, prepare, and then become missionaries to Pat's people, the Akha hilltribe group.

p.s. Thanks for your prayers for my trip with Fon this past week. It was great and more to come about it...

Camping with Fon

Fon is a new Christian, studying at the local university. She started coming to our church about a month ago. This weekend starts the crazy Song Khran Festival where people douse each other with water for three whole days!! Rachel, the new American intern on our team, and I are headed camping and hiking with Fon. Please pray for our safety, our sense of humor, and our relationship building. Fon's bringing many non-Christian friends, who I don't know. And they'll be speaking all in THAI! Woohoo! Talk to you upon my return!

Kids, kids, and more kids!

Kieow and I in charge of Field Day

Last week, we hosted our first Kids' Camp! The main objective was to give the youth from Mahathai the opportunity to lead! With a junior staff retreat and devotions daily, these eight teenagers were given knowledge about the Word of God and how to be good leaders! Sixty kids showed up for the week of fun including Bible stories, swimming, a trip to the museum, and Field Day! Coming from the three slum communities in our area, the government housing community, and all over! Praise God for the opportunity to share Him with so many kids and through that, their family!





Favorite parts:
-Fried Chicken every day- the explanation I got was "Kids like it!"
-being a ferry for two hours escorting kids back and forth across the pool and not understanding much of anything they said to me
-the Jr. Staff response to water games, "Won't the heat cause wet kids to get sick?"

You Know it's Hot When...

the balloons hanging outside at the birthday party explode all by themselves because of the heat.

The Ability to Eavesdrop

One of the treats here is babysitting our fellow missionaries' kids. The Mills live in a nice neighborhood right down the road from us. Their kids, my new American intern housemate, and I visited the park after dinner. What's exciting about their neighborhood is this cute little park where they can meet their neighbors as the heat dissapates for the day.

As we came over with the stroller and the trailing four year old, I heard them talking about us, AND I UNDERSTOOD IT! Miracles do happen. I loved being able to understand her talking about us. The Thais always have to talk about how big foreigners are, always remarking that we're fat and tall. And then they remark on the color of our skin, it's so white. Everyone here wants white skin. They sell all their lotions with whitening cream for that reason. But anyway, I decided to talk back to them and interrupt their talking about us. We had a fun conversation in Thai about who's kids Asa and Emmy were. They thought Rachel and I were their moms. And mostly the basics easy stuff like how long I've lived here. So fun.

Thanks to God for each step in learning this language. I'm FAR from fluent but I can eavesdrop!

The Views from Vietnam

When my friends first invited me to Vietnam, I wasn't sure. My only knowledge of Vietnam comes from my father being in the war there. And he doesn't talk much about it now. And Communism. I was interested to see how Communism would make the place feel, such as how Buddhism influences Thailand and Islam, Malaysia. Yet, I didn't feel the air of Communism except when I visited government museums, reading the propaganda and being shooed into strict two person lines to see Ho Chi Minh's body. Vietnam is full of great beauty and sweet people, being tainted by both war and tourism.


At the Temple of Literature, I had to act like a bit of a fool.

My vacation was taken with two buddies, Becky and Catherine. Here we are enjoying one of the MANY cafes of Hanoi together.

I took a picture every time I could the first day of these pointy hats. The Vietnamese wear them to fight against the sun rays. They love to stay white, like many other Asians. Bicycles and motorbikes were the prevalent transportation modes in Hanoi. They honked anytime they passed anything, so there was incessant honking all the time!

Due to the French occupancy of Hanoi, in Northern Vietnam, the architecture is also very French. We enjoyed the buildings, the colors, and the view from atop.

The "Hanoi Hilton" was the home of many Vietnamese "traitors" during French occupancy and then of many American soldiers during the Vietnamese War. This wall depicts the life of prisoners in these halls. John McCain, when captured during the War, was held in this prison for six years.

My favorite museum was the Military History Museum where we read and saw much about French and American Imperialism. It was strange to stand beside a Vietnamese man while we both read the caption stating, "This shirt was owned by a 3yr old boy who was shot down by American pilots." I'm a museum-fanatic, yet hadn't thought ahead of time about the anti-American views I'd find here. My dad was in the Vietnam War, and here I am. The picture shows many US aircraft and tankers captured and bombed down by the Vietnamese.
Many women carrying produce like this asked us aggressively for fruit. This one lady laid this on my shoulder, grabbed my camera, took a picture, and then asked me to buy bananas and pineapple from her all before I could think twice! They bargain quite aggressively compared to Thais.

We took a two day tour of Halong Bay, sleeping on Cat Ba Island. I kayaked in the bay and sailed along on a Junk Boat.

We met some great friends on the boat to Halong Bay. A French girl, guy from Germany and an entire Thai family who live near us! I loved talking to them in Thai and sharing with them about why I'm in Thailand. I got to have some interesting conversations about Jesus with a few of them.

Stories from the Slums

Last Saturday, I began to spend more time walking through the Mahathai slums that we are outreaching to. This slum community is not as "without" as many of the 1500 slums in Bangkok, yet many houses are still assembled of tin, wood, and cement. Many of the houses stand on stilts, and they throw trash continuously into the water under there houses. This swamp land is not owned by them, yet presently they are allowed to live on it free of charge.

First we visited an older man whose legs hurt so badly he can't walk. He has the 30 baht health plan, which means he pays about one dollar to visit the doctor. Because of this lower plan, the doctor barely looks at his leg, and just hands him pain medicine. We prayed with him, offered to talk to some doctors for him, and left walking on the board sidewalk over the swamp.

Another teenager, Dak, has been sick so her grandmother brought her to see the "witch doctor." She looked into the young lady's eyes and said the spirirt inside her was not happy. The young lady must please the spirit inside her before she would feel better.

Lastly we spoke to the leader of the community, SomBoon. The old man was in dismay because the government said this community has been given an ultimatum. They must either improve their housing conditions or leave. The government said they could give them each a loan in which they must knock down their homes and build nicer ones. Many have not the ability to do this, so it looks like the future of Mahathai is dim. This pessimistic future affects their interest in improving their quality of life now.

I hope to start making relationships here, and helping them think of ways to work to improve their community. Please pray for my language skills to continue to improve. Presently, I can understand half of what they say, but have a very difficult time saying much myself. Pray that God would be glorified in this community and that they would come to know who He is.