Thailand DTS - Fall 2008

Wow, the outreach is almost over, well at least the Thailand part of it. We´re just finishing up ministry with the MST project. We´ve had an amazing time working with the men, and seeing God transforming their hearts. We´ve seen prayers answered right before our eyes. AWESOME!!! 2 other teams have joined us in ministry. There have been a total of 51 people going down to the red light districts to go out and take surveys and pray. All the teams really walked in unity despite never really spending a decent amount of time together. Please check out the blogs on WWW.MSTPROJECT.COM to learn about the specific men we ministered to. We finished doing all of the painting inside the building; in the end we painted 3 floors consisting of 2 large bathrooms, 4 dorm rooms, a library, 2 offices, 4 hallways and stairwells. It was exhausting, but turned out great! Bangkok was definitely more busy than Pai, but we enjoyed it! We´ll be heading back to the States in a few days, we´ll arrive on the 21st. We´re heading to an island tomorrow for a couple days of debriefing and a little relaxation... Well see you in a few days...

PS the Mac is up and running again.

Sorry about not having any pictures; we haven´t been able to take pictures with the MST Project due to the type of ministry. Bye now!

Well it´s time to move on. We finished off the floor for the sunday school. With lots of sweat and back pains we mixed 30 bags of concrete by hand, used bamboo as rebar (first time for all of the veterans of this kind of work) and made past the concrete bucket by bucket till we finished the floor!!! It was hard work, but when we finished, there was such a sense of accomplishment and excitement for the way it would bless the children of the church. After the hard work, we decided to have some fun, so we went and played in a waterfall! The other crew finished up there last days with the English Teaching, and Kids Programs at the near by village. The last day we were at the village Juha shared the Jesus story with the children and it had a huge impact on the foundation of love that we have been building with them. Then today we packed up and said our goodbye´s to our wonderful friends in Pai, took one last deep breathe of fresh mountain air, and headed to Chang Mai. We will be in Chang Mai for the evening resting after a viscous drive through the mountains. And then in the morning we will head out to Myanmar for visa trip number one. After speaking with Immigration and our Thai Ywamers we decided it would be best to go to Myanmar still and get a 15 day visa, and first PRAY!!!! that they give us a 30 day visa (which has been happening randomly I guess) and then work with immigration when we get back to Bangkok. Then Saturday we head out for Bangkok on a 10 hour bus ride to start our work with the MST project and The Well!!!! We all finally came around on the sickness. Outside of a bit of car sickness from our lovely ride through the mountains this morning haha! But we are all feeling well, and ready for the second part of our trip! Talk to you in Bangkok!!! Love, your healthy Thai team!

Well here we are on the last week of Pai. It has been an adventure. Lots of English... LOTS of hippie´s and LOTS and LOTS of rice. We finished out the week at our second school. We all seemed to enjoy this school a lot more, since we got to stay with the same class all week. We each had about 15 to 20 students and got in a good flow with them. Except for one of the classes, they were a bit undisciplined, haha. But the rest of the classes really connected with us, and we even got to teach the creation story to them. On the last day the students showered us with gifts, little bracelets, candies, and flowers. We also finished out the week with some more kids programs in the near by tribal village´s. We did lots of Bible stories, crafts, and played enough Duck Duck Goose (Gray Duck depending on your geographical location) to last us a lifetime. Last night though we started our last big project here in Pai. A new floor for the Kids Church. Right now they just have a dirt floor with a tin roof. We asked the Pastor if there were any special projects that he eventually wanted to do, and he explained how they have been trying to save up money to put in a concrete slab for a floor. So our team had a meeting and took up an offering and got just enough to buy all our supplies. We are going to lay around a 30x15 foot slab underneath the tin roof. So the rest of the week, the guys will be mixing concrete by hand... 1 bucket water... 1 bucket cement... 4 buckets sand... 2 buckets rock... over and over again!!! The rest of the team will be heading out to teach in our last and final school, and doing more kids programs in the Lizo Village. (Lizo is the tribe, I don´t know if I said that earlier.) Anyway, we had a touch more sickness, nothing major (Mary Lou, don´t be alarmed but Michael Throw´d up a bitski) and we are all pullin through. We had a bit of a change of schedule, if you remember we were supposed to go to Myanmar, for a day, next week to renew our Visa to last the rest of the trip. But due to an unforseen change by the Thai Government, we can only get a 15 day visa if we do that. So, we are trying to get our visa´s from immigration directly in Bangkok so we don´t have to leave the country for the day. Other than that life has been normal, sliding down waterfalls in the jungle, and walking through bamboo forests to collect firewood. (we have had fire´s almost everynight cause it is FREEZING!!!) Well, I can´t think of anyting else to write so... I will bid you a good day. We miss all of you and have lots of fun telling stories of home and thinking about you all. With Love, Your Favorite Non-Hippie Thai Travelers (Wow I used a lot of parenthesis)

The weekend brought all sorts of excitement! We had our first patch of sickness on the team. Nothing major, but a bit of bad fruit we believe. If anything, it made for an interesting few days. Sunday many of us were under the weather but those of us that were feeling up to it, had a church service where we are staying. Lacey shared a message about Christian growth and did a fantastic job, and Leah and Steve share their testimonies. Everyone else ran sunday school for the kiddies. The new week we changed schools. Everyone was feeling better and back at the english teaching. The school we are at this week is much poorer, and the students are further behind than last week. Like one of our DTS students said "They may not be the brightest bunch, but they sure do grab your heart"!!! And they really do! We are split up into 6 different classes, so it is a much more smaller group and more time one on one with them so that it fun. After these past few weeks our Grace and Mercy goes out to our Foreign Language teachers from school... goo... tough job!! We are still spending lots of time with our local friends in the evening. And eating very well! PiNom our host hear makes Sticky Rice in Bamboo for dessert, which he calls BomBoo Steeky Lai... it´s delish!!! Anyway... HERE ARE MORE PICS!!!!

Hello from PAI!! We have been spending lots of time with the Back Packin hippies here in town and have made a lot of friends that we usually see everyday. One of the guys we met is on a "Spiritual Journey" that has brought him all the way from California to the mountains of Pai. Pai is a very unusual place. We find that many people come here to find spirituality or truth. It has been interesting to be in the mix of so many people searching for answers. It seems that people are almost trapped here, searching for something that they aren´t finding and being caught up in the passive way of life. So we have gotten into all sorts of interesting conversations and have been able to speak a lot of life into people who are desiring more. One girl we are friends with from Europe said that her heart is to go work as a nurse in Africa, but she just can´t seem to leave this place. She is just caught the way of life here. There are a lot of people looking, and no one seems to be finding. But... that is exactly why we are here!

Everyone has been doing amazing. No one has been sick and we are all well rested and fed VERY well. We have been getting all sorts of Thai dishes prepared by a lady in the church that we are working with. It has been amazing! Although a couple of times the food has been a bit spicy for us americans. Michael and Karl can´t seem to put it down though... it just hurts so good!

We have started our kids programs as well, in a neighboring village of Lizo people. It is a beautiful culture and it has been great to be able to spend time with them and minister to their children. We have been doing programs in the afternoon when they get out of school, filled with singing, games, and Bible stories.

Tomorrow is our day off, so we are all looking forward to a little rest... and pancakes! haha

Love, your Hippie Crew!!

PS Don´t worry we put our foot down and told the students that no one could dread lock their hair!!!!

We are HERE!!!!! We arrived on the first in Bangkok. The next day we went through a brief orientation of the country. After the orientation we rushed off to the bus station to begin our trek towards Pai. We arrived in the early morning in a city called Chang Mai, were we spent a day getting over Jet Lag and getting adapted to our new home. In the morning we will be getting in trucks to head up to Pai. Everyone is doing well, tired, but well. We are just shaking off the last bit of travel exhaustion and ready to start our work in Pai. Thanks for all the prayers as we traveled! We will let you know once we get settled in Pai. Love your Thailand Crew!

I will be traveling with to Thailand and Cambodia! Random fact: We have been praying for super cheap flights to and from Thailand every class break for about 2 or so weeks now. Our leaders said that the tickets probably would be more like 1500 dollars or more. But, as we were praying, one of the team members thought we should ask God for tickets that are 1200 dollars.
Guess what the price is looking like its going to be if nothing fluctuates....
TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!! -Lish