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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First off, we finished up our first “semester” in language study.  We’ve been hitting the books hard for 5 months now and it shows.  We are learning as much as our brains will allow us to cram in there!

Children's Christmas song in a Bangkok Church

Secondly, Christmas-time in Thailand and Thai churches is used mostly as a time for outreach.  Where we often use the Christmas season to solemnly reflect on the gift that is Christ, in Thailand we found ourselves handing out tracts and invitations to learn more about Christmas in a neighborhood where a new church plant is getting started, dressing up in all sorts of ridiculous costumes to act out the Christmas story to kids and youth in local schools, watching Thai kids put on a Christmas program, and Sara baking Christmasy things for our neighbors.

Local Thai students line up to learn about Christmas around the world and a bit of English along the way. See the dog lying there? Yeah, that's common here!

Thirdly, we spent nearly a week in Bangkok looking at possible ministry locations for us once we finish up out Thai language studies here in Lopburi.  We met a lot of cool people, Thai pastors with aching hearts for the Thai people, Bangkok universities and university students, just recently started church plants, and got to know several missionaries working in Bangkok quite well.  It was a great time and rejuvenating for us as it is easy to lose track of “what’s next” for us when all we have been doing is cramming new Thai vocab down our brains’ throats!

Christmas decorations at MBK, one of Bangkok's most well known shopping centers

Finally (but not really…  so much more has been happening!), we also took some time during this two-week break from language school to relax and have some time for each other….  AND IT HAS BEEN AWESOME!  While in Bangkok we took the time to watch a movie or two (in English) at a movie theater there.  We walked around and saw the Christmas lights and decorations (yes, despite not believing in Christ, the Thai people really do jump right into the decorations, Santa, light-up snow flakes, etc.).  It was so nice just to spend some time together and have some “us” time.  Despite not yet having kids and ALWAYS being around each other, enough “us” time has still been difficult to find lately…

Here’s a short clip of the commercial side to Thai “Christmas” taken by one of our friends also working in Bangkok.

We’re now back in our home in Lopburi and have a few more days before school starts back up.  We have plenty coming up to keep up just as busy.  The next few months we’ll start back up at the language school, travel to Malaysia to pick up our year-long Religious Affairs visa from the Thai embassy there (Praise God!), spend a week on on a Thai beach as after six-months on the field OMF suggests/strongly urges their workers take a vacation, more Thai studies and finally we will travel to Singapore for a month long Orientation course at OMF’s international headquarters.

So, there you have it.  We hope you all have had a great holiday time with family and friends so far.  So, tell us, what have you been up to?

We invite you to join with us as we pray these nine blessings for Thailand. If you want to know more, or get hold of the prayer guide – visit www.nineblessings.org.

Will you join us in praying for Thailand?

This video is not produced by me, but rather just a re-upload of a video produced by OMF Media. I simply added a background track as there was none in the original video.

I happened across this short video clip produced by OMF (the organization we are partnering with here in Thailand) which helps paint a picture of life in Bangkok, the people living in this HUGE city and ministries that are taking place there.  The video is a few years old now, directors mentioned here have changed positions, but life in the City of Angels is still much the same.

If you have a minute or two, this will be worth watching!

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Earlier this week we read the story of Zacchaeus as it would be told in a Children’s Bible.  I’d thought I’d share that story with you!

Luke 19:1-10 - Thai Contemporary Bible

The Story of Zacchaeus Spoken in Thai
Click link to play Audio

This isn’t an exact translation of the passage above, but it should give you a good idea of what we have been doing and what we are continuing to work through.  Who knew learning a new language could be so fun/difficult!

Have you ever learned another language fluently?

Our fellow Thai newbies!

We’ve been here for two months, experienced A LOT, and are continuing to get settled in.  A lot has gone on, and thus, it is hard to know where to start.

First thing once we got started was to move to Lopburi, the provincial capital of Lopburi province about an hour and a half north of Bangkok.  This is where OMF has their language school that new missionaries attend for up to a year of language study.  Because there are currently so many new missionaries studying Thai at the LLC (Language Learning Center), Sara and I were unable to move into an actual home once we arrived.  So, seeing as we have no children (yet) and are young (still), we moved into a one-room youth hostel.  It was quite stretching to start with.  I’d be lying if I said that tears didn’t flow from my wife’s eyes at times due to the circumstances (lack of kitchen, lack of another room, and lack of internet or even a computer desk to study at).

But even through that God was gracious.  I was able to build friendships with the Thai people working at the hostel and honestly it made moving into our current home all the more sweet!  Now, Sara has a kitchen, we have more than one room, two desks to study at and even internet to once again begin blogging and sharing our hearts with you as God grows our passion for the Thai people.

Aside from physical stresses, we’ve also experienced quite a bit of emotional and mental stress.  Attempting to get back into the swing of being a full-time student was harder than we had thought.  But even through this the Lord’s grace was there and we are (Praise the Lord!) able to remember much of what we studying almost 4 years ago when we lived in Thailand the first time.

This is just a short, sweet update as it’s been way too long.  Thanks for checking in and we look forward to sharing with you more often now that we are getting settled in!  Now off to sweat in our living room as it is currently 90 degrees Fahrenheit and Sara is off baking brownies for Fellowship Group tomorrow…  yeah, she loves finally having a kitchen…

We can’t deny the fact that God has called us to serve in Thailand.  He’s moved too many mountains and continued to open doors in that direction for the past 3 years for it not to be the case.  With that said, we know opposition to us and the message we will be bringing will find us.  We may not know exactly when or how, but do understand that it will be there.

I’ve recently been re-reading a book by an OMF missionary who served in Thailand called “HELP! My Halo’s Slipping”.  In one of Larry Dinkins’ chapters he comments on the stronghold that Buddhism has in Thailand.  Check out the passage from chapter 7 below:

Take [Thai Buddhist's] understanding of John 3:16, for instance.  This famous verse, run through the Buddhist grid, presents a very confused picture of Christianity:

“For God (Buddhism has no concept of a creator God) … so loved (a desire to be quenched) … the world (an illusion) … that He gave (giving is done in order to get, repayment is expected) … His only begotten Son (this God has a wife?) … that whoever believes in Him (Buddha said, ‘Be a lamp unto yourself,’ and ‘work out your own salvation with diligence.’) … should not perish (hell is not eternal separation but temporary) … but have eternal life (the goal of Buddhism is nirvana–the extinction of suffering and the end of conscious existence).”

In fact, the whole of John 3 presents problems for the Thai.  Take being born again.  The last thing a Thai wants to do is be reborn.  As a believer in reincarnation, his goal is to stop the never-ending cycle of birth/ old age/ sickness/ death.  The Thai equate rebirth not with spiritual renewal but suffering.

This just caught my eye and mind in a new way as I read it on the flight here to Thailand.  It reminds me of the fact that, once again, it is Christ alone who is able to bring about true life change and work through these cultural mis-/understandings.

Pray that the Thai people might first have the opportunity to hear about the gospel and then secondly pray for their response to that gospel message.  Pray also for the missionaries who have, undoubtedly, all struggled to bridge the gap between Thai understanding and the Truth of the message.

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Brook and Sara at O'hare

First off, I will say that we utterly underestimated what was about to take place after returning from Colorado in mid-July.  We enjoyed our time in Colorado getting to know OMF and working through all the details of our partnership with them and our denomination.  At the end of our time with them we were merely 6 1/2 weeks from moving to Thailand…

Those 6 1/2 weeks were a blur at best.  We continued to pile on the support development by traveling to and from Illinois twice a week to share our hearts with churches out there.  We’ve dealt with our car being broken into, having to sell most of our belongings, last minute budget changes, more medical testing, saying ridiculously hard goodbyes to family and loved ones, little sleep and long days.  These have easily been the most stressful times that we’ve ever experienced…

We understood that there was value in the the process…that through all of this we would grow stronger, leap higher, etc, etc, etc…  But it didn’t make it any easier.  As much as we were excited about Thailand, goodbyes were still hard to say.  As much as we feel called to Thailand, I still lost sleep over budget questions and all the details involved in finalizing that process.  But what happened was that God moved in miraculous ways during those stressful weeks.

In just 5 weeks we went from 65 % funded to right at 100 % of our budget being funded — to God be the glory.  In five months He was able to lower my cholesterol level some 70+ points (despite my best efforts during support development traveling to negate God’s work in this area…  I stopped running, ate red meat A LOT, and every pastor’s wife seemed to have a pie or cake they were famous for that we needed to try about 10:30 at night) — to God be the glory.  Since April we have seen more than 500 individuals and churches show interest in our ministry in Thailand — to God be the glory.  In just one week we were able to get a letter from OMF Thailand via Postal Service, apply and receive back our passports with the illusive non-immigrant type-O multi-entry visa (didn’t understand a word of that one?  Trust me…  that’s a big deal and a huge blessing) — to God be the glory.  God brought about great conversations with unsaved family and friends about our ministry and how it’s important to us and our purpose in life.  God blessed with a great afternoon with church family following our commissioning service… knowing you’re loved by so many is such an encouragement.

So, with all that said, we really didn’t accomplish to much of this.  It was truly God’s hand moving the mountains before us and paving the way for His work among the Thai people.  We feel so blessed to be a part of this.  Oh, and we are now living in Thailand.  More to soon follow.

So what’s God been doing in your life lately?