The Middle of May

                             Progress on the first duplex house.        

•               The rain has slowed us down a bit, but it is coming along nicely!

•                    The floor is done, getting ready to put on the roofing

•                                     Looking out over the pond

• From the road looking in.... our orchard and banana grove is doing great!                   The rain has been great for the plants!

                                                 The uninvited guest

 

•                    Ohm teaching Eurn how to play some of our songs.

•  Doe-Doe, one of the orphans who comes every Sunday. He is being raised by his grandmother.

•  Nat is being raised by her aunt, and is now very active in the youth group.

• Ning and Noi are active members in the youth program, and are daughters of our Thai co-workers.

building progress and Merredith's visit

•  Meredith and I had a good time checking out other modes of transportation.

•  During summer when school is out, we have had a number of village children coming by and hanging out with the saa paper group. This is Lek. He is earning a bit of pocket money by helping out.

•  Our temporary structure that we call our ministry center.  We really are enjoying going natural!

•  Eating phat Thai at a near by restaurant.

• The saa paper group working on an order.

• The building pictures are not in chronological order... just some random pictures we took this week

• The duplex house.. putting in the floor

The men watching  a boxing match after the service

• making a shelter for the Sunday school class, and a place to park the vehicles out of the sun during the week.

Easter Morning Service

• Ready to walk the journey together to meet around the Lord's table to celebrate the risen Lord

i 

We gathered together at the end of our lane to walk the journey together 

• We met around the table  for our worship service

•  Reading scripture together

•  Prayer for out time around the Lord's table

•  The early risers

 

• Breaking the bread on Easter morning

•  preparing rice soup for breakfast after the service

•  Fellowshipping around the bowls of rice

• The young girl, Muay, is from the near by village, this is her first Easter Service

 

• After breakfast the "kids" were excited to have the egg hunt

f

•  Hunting for Easter eggs, if you found an egg with a cross on it, you got a small prize. Muay is happy to choose the bottle of oyster sauce !

• We hid eggs in the circle around our tree. In the future the tree will be encircled by a large bench.

• Taa also found a special egg

• We ended our morning worship time setting off rockets to celebrate our Lord's rising

•  Prawit's rocket went the highest

• Jerry decides to have a try

A Day Of Blessing

• Nan with her sister Noi.

•  Anointing of oil

• We witnessed a new birth after the service, of Nan, the daughter of our co- worker Prawit and his wife Suni.  Nan has been considering baptism for many years, and what a joy to see her decide to commit her life to Christ!

•  

•  Thai New Years traditionally includes a blessing.  We feel it is an important part of Thai culture and one that fits into the Christian life.  We had a blessing ceremony of tying strings around the wrist, only we tied the string in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Traditionally the older person offers the blessing to the younger one, but in a spirit of unity and love we were tying strings on each other offering a blessing in the name of Christ.  It was a wonderful time of fellowship and celebration of unity, forgiveness and blessings.

• Jerry is offering a prayer at our blessing ceremony.

•  After the sermon Sunday we gathered around Surin's leaning house to see what could be done.

 We decided we could fix it ourselves and with the man power of every man and woman, boy and girl, we were able to stabilize the house.

 While we held the leaning house upright,the young people found stones and blocks to prop up the house.

We need to do some roof repair, and a repair of one of the supporting posts, but we are happy that we were able to save the house!

The Sunday Jon Came ... April 10th 2011

• Jan is a Lahu man whom we have known for over 20 years. He was one of our students in the Bible College in which we used to teach many years ago. He and his wife and children are faithful servants of the Lord. Jan has a home for children who have not been able to be cared for. Some of the children are orphans, some have parents who are too poor or too sick to care for them.  There are 14 children in all.  The building where the children stay is falling down, leaking, and is not at all suitable to keep the children. Jan is busy trying to find money to build something more substantial for the children to live in.  We are teaching our congregation to be more about giving than receiving.  They raised over a hundred US Dollars to give to Jan and the children.  We invited Jon to preach and then presented him with the gift for building the housing for the children.

Jan's sermon was about the Christian life... more than going to church and reading the Bible, it is a life changed, an offering of your life to serve the Lord.  Jon's life reflects what he preaches.