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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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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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.

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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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Thanks for your ongoing prayers and support…  Life has been crazy over here and we look forward to sharing more and more about our lives here in Thailand!

Blessings!

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We play outside during the Thai water fight holiday, Songkraan

So, it’s pretty obvious that I have been the world’s worst blogger since the first of the year.  For that I am sorry…

I’ve been meaning to get some new content up on here for a while now but, truth be told, I didn’t know how to just jump back into it.  I’ve decided there is no smooth, amazing way other than to just do it.

The past few months have been interesting.  We’ve traveled quite a bit, settled in and out of language learning more than once, continue to make Thai friends and expand our vocabulary and depth of conversations.  At the same time, it has at times been more challenging than we ever had anticipated.  Language learning got old about the first of the year.  6 months into our time here in Lopburi and the daily task of language learning and classes was a really un-sexy thing to wake up to every morning.  Adjustment to the Thai culture and way of life has been more difficult this time around also.  If you follow Sara or I on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll know that our neighborhood can be quite loud most of the time, which means going home to find peace when needed has seldom happened for us.  That’s been tough.  We have also really missed our family and friends.  I’ve struggled with going from feeling like was an integral part to a ministry in the States to being only a decent language student who could barely tell you the story of Jesus walking on water and who is definitely unable to pray for anyone in Thai.  I have two sisters graduating from High School this year and will start their lives a bit more on their own.  Just yesterday, it seems, they were tiny 3 yr olds.

So, yeah, the past few months have been a bit more down than up.  But, at the same time, we’ve seen once again how God provides for us daily.  And yes, not much about being a missionary in Thailand is wonderful and comfortable, but God provides.  He sustains.  We’ve had breakthroughs in conversations with Thai people, I’ve been able to counsel a few of my non-Christian language teachers on family issues, and Sara and I continue to hold onto each other more than we probably ever have.

So, this is my attempt to climb back onto the blog saddle.  We look forward to sharing more about our lives here.  The ups and downs.  The breakthroughs and breakdowns. The little victories and failures.

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(RSS readers click through to the website to watch the video)

I’ve seen videos of the possession that can come from these tattoos, the chants the Buddhist monks give during the process and the willing people lined up to receive these tattoos.

Thailand can be such a dark place.  Please pray!

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