Rainy Season in Thailand

As you can see, we are making the most of the rainy season here in Thailand! The kids had a blast today riding their bikes in the rain. Last night, we had a major lightening and thunder storm. We turned off the lights, turned on the music, and watched the show! It was beautiful.

On Saturday, we moved into our new home! We've gotten quite a bit done already--it's livable and I can cook--but there is still much to be done. Of course, everything is much more laborious due to the language barrier. But that's all part of the adventure!

Our partners have given of themeselves above and beyond the call of duty to help us get settled and find our way around. I ventured out alone today to a western market in town that someone told me about. I only got lost twice and returned with just a few of the things I had on my list!

Thanks for your prayers. Please pray specifically for the Lord to open doors for our kids to meet and make new friends. Kahprun ka! (Thank you)

Sandra for all of us 

We made it.

This is a picture of Jared doing his Tom Sawyer impression on Cash Creek near my sister's place in the Capay Valley of Ca.

Greetings from Chiang Mai!

We made it! After a long trip that was somewhat reminiscent of the movie, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” we made it to Chiang Mai. We were greeted at the airport by a welcoming committee—a whole gang of folks that made us feel very loved. We’ve been doing some initial settling in (as much as can be done without being in our home yet), waiting for our luggage to arrive (it never made it out of San Francisco!), and having some fun cultural experiences. We took the kids to the local market a few days ago. We tried some unusual looking fruits and saw fried frogs, live eels, and other interesting things.

Paul is flying down to Bangkok today for a quick trip to get our container of household goods through customs. We’re hoping to have them by the end of this week, and then we can move into our home!

We will only have spotty internet access until we get settled into our house. Once we get in and DSL installed We will be blogging as often as we have fun things to share with you all.

Thank you all for your prayers of these last days.

Sareth, our Cambodian country leader, came from Phnom Penh to greet us as well and said that the new church up in the northern province has now added another 100 people making the total somewhere around 500. 

Rattlesnake Training

It is rattlesnake season in northern Ca. My sister owns a B and B in Capay Valley near Sacramento. Uncle Kevin keeps examples of rattlesnakes and Gopher snakes frozen in a chest freezer located in their barn. The snakes look remarkably alike, can you tell the difference? The snake on the left is a Gopher snake, all the rest are Rattlers. It is really important for our kids to know what the enemy looks like, how he acts, and where he likes to hang out. Sounds like a sermon illustration waiting to be apllied.
We have only 5 days left in country. We just heard from the shipping company and it looks like our stuff is going to arrive a day or two after we get there, great timing.
Jared asked us yesterday when we were going to go back to Denver. He also asked where we will live when we get back there. He still is trying to grasp our homeless situation. Please continue to pray for our family transition which is going to really kick into high gear in the next week.