Just a little update...

Hey peeps! Just a quick little note to update you with what is going on here. We had a major blast in Chiang Mai, it was awesome. We returned home to Pattaya last Tuesday. It was nice to come home to our little apartment and to our congregation. We have only been here for a few months, but we have made good friends with the congregation. So many of them came up to us our first meeting back to give us hugs and tell us that they missed us when we were gone. It is going to be difficult to say goodbye next month! Bittersweet though, because that means we get to come home and see all of you:-)

Since we have been back, we have been BUSY!!! When we first got here, I foolishly thought we would have all this extra time since we weren't going to be working secularly....ha! We are constantly on the go. Service, return visits, thai language class, homework, etc. Even seeing it written down it doesn't look like much, but believe me it is!

I haven't had any especially stellar calls or experiences in the ministry to write about lately. I haven't been able to find my calls home...the pioneer's lament! But many of the friends here have been having good conversations with Thai people in the territory, there is a lot of work to be done here in Thailand for sure! In fact, just this week, we went with a large group of brothers and sisters to an area about 30 minutes south of town to do territory that has not been worked in 16 years!! Crazy! It was a lot of fun. We really stood out too. There were about 55 nicely dressed people from all countries walking along the beach with bookbags and umbrellas. We got a lot of funny looks:-)

Jake has still been studying with Eric, the boy from Ghana. Now Eric has 2 friends from Ghana here as well. Emano, who is 18 years old, and Stan Lee (really), who is in his early 20's and whose parents are Jehovah's Witnesses back home. Both boys started sitting in on the study, they comment and read and seem to really enjoy it. Jake recently was able to get Bibles for them in english, and he said that their faces lit up! They were so happy and grateful to have their own Bibles. They are really humble guys, and they have such a respect for God's word. They are all soccer players too (woot-woot!!) so we got to go watch them play the other night. It was just a practice game with a bunch of European ex-pats but it was fun to watch.

A few weeks ago, Jake and I were working a territory and we came upon 2 women and a little girl working on a construction site. I went over to them to offer them the tract, and no matter how many times I repeated my presentation in thai they were not understanding me. So finally I asked one of the women "khun kow-djai pasa thai mai ka?" Which means, "do you undestand thai?" They shook their heads no and laughed. So that was the problem. It wasn't that my thai was terrible (ha!). I brought out the "Good News for All Nations" book and we figured out that they were Cambodian. We tried talking/pantomiming with them for a bit...without much success. But they were extremely sweet, so we figured we could get some Cambodian literature and come back. Fortunately we got their names. Fast forward to this week. We were driving down to see them, and as we were coming up to the construction site, we pass this little family walking along the road. The woman looked familiar to me. Then the little girl smiled and waved. So we turned the bike around and drove back to them. I asked for Aim, the women's name. She pointed to herself and was surprised. She was with her husband and little girl and a few others. We gave her the "Truth" tract and also a Watchtower in Cambodian. Jake introduced himself to her husband and showed him the magazine. When he saw that it was in his language, he grabbed it quickly and starting reading the title and then showed the other guy. Their little girl was super cute and was introducing everyone to us. Her name was Nut. How cute is that? So, it wasn't like we started a Bible study with them or anything, but it was an encouraging experience for us. The Cambodians are often here living in poor little shacks and doing all the manual labor type jobs. They are very humble. But they seemed so happy that we remembered them and took the time to bring them literature in their own language. I'm really grateful for the brothers and sisters who work so hard to translate the Bible and its message into all these languages. It is so important and means so much more to people to read in their own tongue.