I’ll be honest.  I don’t know where to start.  Last time I posted on here I was dealing with a snake that climbed walls and our final exams at the language school in Lopburi…

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Our new house!

But, here we are several weeks later.  Happily settling into our new home.  We love our little place.  The neighborhood is great and the people are even greater.  Kids playing in the street in front of our house every afternoon before dinner call me out to play soccer or badminton nearly everyday.  Neighbors who are anxious to get to know us and what we are doing in their backyard.  A Christian Thai family from the church we are partnering with has all but adopted us as their long lost children and have been SUCH a blessing.  They helped us navigate our rental agreement, purchase furniture, get internet in our home.  They’re so close that they even feel total welcome coming in our front gate and front door without warning! :-/

Seriously though.  We are so blessed to be here.  Sara has been able to sleep.  Our neighborhood is AMAZING!  The church we are partnering with is slowly getting to know us and we’re getting to know them….

We feel so blessed.  Thank you for your prayers through yet another time of transition in our lives.  We’ve not had a solid year of just “being” in quite a while…  We hope and pray that our new little nest here in the North side of Bangkok proves to be that little bit of “being” that we’ve been looking for lately…

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Golden Tree Snake... DEAD.

Now, Thailand is known for having TONS of snakes (some poisonous, some not).  It’s actually probably more surprising that we hadn’t seen one here up until yesterday morning.  But, when you see a bright green with black banded snake IN YOUR LIVING ROOM, it gets your attention.  And as soon as Sara saw it, she was done.  I mean, like scared/creeped/shivering like a cold 9 yr old outside at 3AM by herself.

Anyways, the snake quickly made it’s way behind a book shelf that took about 20 minutes to remove book by book, bags, other junk until the snake was finally accessible.  Oh yeah, and that’s when it started CLIMBING UP THE WALL!  What!? Snakes on the floor is one thing.  Snakes in water are creepy.  But snakes slithering up a flat wall is flippin’ weird.  Luckily it was this weird act that was this snake’s downfall.  A quick smack to the “neck” (Do snakes have necks?  Like where would it start and end?  Where are the shoulders?) with an umbrella handle followed by repeated blows just for good measure and to make me feel more like a man in my wife’s eyes and it was all over with.  Well, except that even after dead, the stupid thing keeps slithering, coiling and moving around.  WEIRD!

So, yeah, I guess there is just another story to add to the numerous interesting moments that we’ve been collecting living here in Thailand.  Oh, and it seems the snake isn’t so poisonous for humans but it is known for being able to climb flat, vertical walls… …oh, and it can fly from tree to tree…  If you are super weird and are interested you can read more about this snake and other snakes in Thailand here and here.

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Thailand. 2005.

Hey, remember when we got married?  Wasn’t that a sweet day?  We listened to Nickel Creek as you walked down the aisle in my mom’s yard?  Remember how it was an AWESOME day for weather?  Remember how worried you were that it might rain on our outdoor wedding-parade?  Remember the night before when we were cramming last-minute music into a playlist for the reception?  Remember when we only had money enough to drive 2 hours to Indianapolis for our honeymoon?  Remember how much I wish I could have taken you to the ends of the earth to celebrate our special day finally coming when instead I took to you Buffalo Wild Wings for our first meal together as a married couple?  Hey, remember when we had to cut that sloppy honeymoon short so I could go for a job interview in Wisconsin?

I love so much about you…  …and I definitely don’t tell you this enough…

So, here are the Top Several Things I LOVE About You… (in no particular order… …I mean, it is midnight after all…)

• I love how beautiful you are.  Seriously, you all need to recognize that I am married to flippin’ sexy lady!  Even at 6 AM, with your tattered hair and horrible breath, you still got everything I saw when I first met you….
• I love that you and I, even after months of forgetting our giftedness, can come across a song in which we harmonize, sing together ridiculously, or sing along with an absurd YouTube song…  …I love that you love music just as much as I do…  And I’m not sure anything makes me feel more in love with you than when we are singing together…
• I love that you are soooooooo patient.  I’m pretty sure that when you signed up to be with me forever and ever and ever and ever you would have to be an AMAZING woman, but dang have I put you through the the grinder from time to time; yet, you still are patient with me.  Even as we moved to the other side of the world, you are patient with our situation (even though some times it sucks, hurts, is awful).  You still remain focused on the passion God has given you, the goals He has placed before you, and the purpose we have here…  You’re an inspiration…
• I love your sense of humor.  Anyone spending their day-in and day-out with me has to have one, but you have a sense of humor that sneaks up on me, catches me off guard, and never ceases to bring me a laugh…  …even if it is at my expense…
• I love that you love to cook.  I mean, my Cholesterol doesn’t love the fact that you love to cook anything I desire, but I do love the joy you find in creating new dishes, sharing them with others and opening our home so that others can come, connect, and relate together.  Oh, and the things you can do with food!!!!
• I love that you love old things.  Your perfect vacation would be to go look at old stuff for a week…  …be it houses, boxes from the 1700′s, or just to go to a museum…  you love old things!
• I love that through the last 4 years… … through all the things I have drug us through… …through all the transitions, goodbyes, hellos, aches, pains, joys, etc… …you still trust me.  You still believe in me… …believe in us…  Despite everything around us that at times seem like it may implode, you still are my biggest fan…

You are just as beautiful as the day I met you nearly 8 years ago.  Happy 4th Anniversary, Baby!  Sorry I couldn’t take you to Buffalo Wild Wings to celebrate…  I’m sure you understand

Here’s to 10x as many more anniversaries to come!

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I even got to ride my lang. tutor's 4-Wheeler for a bit. Sweet!

The exam went well today also.  Spent nearly the entire time just talking about the little victories I have had lately in using my Thai and getting things fixed or done.  It’s nice to once again… finally …feel useful.

Coming from the States I felt useful.  I was involved in a lot of things, I was effective at what I did, had a lot of things on my plate (as is my personality).  So, coming to Thailand has been a bit rough in some ways.  Without a good amount of Thai, I felt useless.  I couldn’t tell the mechanic that I needed my motorbike tire changed without both getting a headache and handing them out to everyone I was trying to talk to.  If something needed done at our home, I didn’t know how to give directions to our home and describe what the issue was over the phone. Early on, I couldn’t even describe how short or long I wanted my hair cut when going for a trim on the ole’ Fohawk.  But, finally, I am able to do all of these things… and once again feel a bit useful here.  I bought the parts needed and replaced a sink drain in our bathroom yesterday afternoon, I’ve helped move air-conditioning units at a local church, I’ve taken our washing machine to get repaired, I’ve called for a professional to come and service our Air-con unit when it stopped working…  Oh, and I’ve ordered pizza over the phone and it was successfully (after them calling nearly 4 times because they were lost) delivered.

So, maybe, just maybe, we’ve turned a bit of a corner in our language learning and our lives here after 10 months.  And in good time.  We’re looking to buy a vehicle soon, next weekend we will be traveling to look for housing in Bangkok for when we move next month, and the following week we will sit before the church board in Bangkok to finalize details of us partnering with them to plant a church in the coming years.

Thanks for all your recent prayers and encouragement.  Maybe we’ll be able to do this missionary thing after all…

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Well, look who’s faces made the cut!

Extended version- Call to prayer for 900 new workers from OMF Media on Vimeo.

Join us in praying for more workers to come to serve in this needy part of our world.  Obviously our heart aches for Thailand and the Thai people, but also the many other countries and people groups in Southeast Asia that need to hear the Gospel of Christ.

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(Definitely worth clicking-through to watch in HD)

Many of you may know that I used to really get into Photography.  This video makes me want to get back into it.  And I think I will…

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Less than a split second later my wife, being as omnipotent as any human I have ever met, said, “That’s a dude.”

What!?

A dude!?

In my periphery she had a bust that said anything but “dude” and longer legs and a shorter skirt than I had ever witnessed…

…then I saw the Adam’s apple.  There’s not much you can do to hide that bad boy.  It just sticks out there and screams “I’m a dude!”

Sara didn’t have to do anything to make me regret my double take.  Indeed, it was a dude who turned into a dude-ette.

I’ve never felt so small.  So violated.  So hurt…

…than when my wife caught me double-taking on a transvestite…

The more we are in Thailand the better I get at deciphering the dude-turned-dude-ettes from the girls.  Sara has taught me well.  And women just seem to know the difference.  Adam’s Apple.  Shoulder structure.  Tone of voice.  All of these are a dead giveaway for any woman.  It’s the instinct they have. “One of these is not like the other.”  Women are probably better at “Where’s Waldo” than men also…  …it’s instinct.

Anyways, these are some random personal stories from our past in Thailand.  And, yes.  Those images above… …all dudes turned dude-ettes in the world renowned Miss Tiffany Universe pageant held in Pattaya, Thailand every year.  This year’s pageant just ended and Thailand prides themselves in being open to all sexual preferences, changes, and backgrounds…

Pray for Thailand and it’s mixed up views on sexuality and pride.  Pray for us as we minister in this context.

Your Thoughts?

Pink areas are districts with NO church

I realize not everyone has an interest in numbers. But numbers can help us get a better picture of the growth of the Thai church.  I saw this excerpt of missionary Dwight Martin’s findings on 2009 Thai Church growth over at Karl Dahlfred’s blog recently and thought it was worth reposting here for my viewers and prayer partners.  There. The hat tips are out of the way.

“At the end of 2009 there are 339,048 Christians, which is 0.54% of the total population.  Even though this is a very small percentage, the good news is that the percentage of growth is seven times faster than the biological growth rate of the country.  The number of churches continues to grow as well.  There were 170 new churches started last year (2009).

The need is still great in Thailand.  Over 47% of the sub-districts in Thailand have no Christian presence at all. This means there are 21,814,049 (about 1/3 of the population) people who have very little opportunity to hear the Gospel Message.  Please pray that God’s word will penetrate this whole nation.”

Now, these “Christians” were counted based on church membership numbers.  If you’re the type of person that would like to see more about 2009 church growth in Thailand or how these statistics were found, check out this PowerPoint presentation or see maps of churches numbers for each province at http://www.thaicrc.com.

And may it be our prayer that increasingly more Thai people come to experience the saving grace of Jesus!

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It started off well. I responded to the teacher’s question by starting down a path talking about some things we did back home in ministry there and how people are people and how we should be more concerned about the people coming in the front door of the church than the Christians leaving out the back door all ticked off about something. The problem is that I was thinking perfectly in English and knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get it out in Thai. I just couldn’t get it out. I was missing words in Thai in my story that were really integral to the telling of my story…. And it sounded awful. It was a train wreck where every time I attempted to say it in a different way, I just kept digging my hole deeper, more trains would come join the wreck.

Eventually we moved on and I was able to scrap together a decent enough Round #2 to salvage the language exam. But it did get me thinking. It’s often easy to get tripped up on words in our own language. You know, like you just can’t think of the word to best use in your situation. Usually you can easily add in a substitute word that will suffice and everyone will move on in conversation. But, in Thai, we don’t have those words yet. The substitute words. And while the Thai person stares at me trying to stumble across the word needed to actually start making sense, I’m running around the in the forest of my mind lost as ever.  And every attempt at fixing the train wreck of a conversation on the outside of my head gets me more and more lost in the forest of my mind.

Ah…  The joys of language learning…

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I’m sure most of you have heard at least something about the political turmoil brewing in the past month or so here in Thailand.  What started as a peaceful, large gathering turned violent–leaving police, protesters, army men dead and injured.  It’s a sad state that Thailand finds itself in.  Now more and more people are gathering in the nation’s captial of Bangkok to protest other redshirt protesters, defend their political parties and show support in numbers either for or against the current government.  This video clip by CNN does a good job to give a bit of the background of these protesters and images from Bangkok in recent weeks.

(RSS readers, click through to see the video)

If you’d like to read more about the details of the clashes, the bombs going off in and around Bangkok, or stay up to date on what’s currently happening here in Thailand, check out a few of the links below…

CNN news stories on Thailand
The Bangkok Post – Thailand’s main English newspaper

Twitter – the best way for up-to-the minute updates
@bangkokpundit
@terryfrd
@veen_NT
@tulsathit

And of course, you can always find up-to-date info from my twitter feed @two10eleven or Facebook page.

Thanks for all your prayers for us and the Thai people.  This nation could sure use them about now…

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