Be still and know that I am God... Ps 46:10

Thank you so much for your prayers and emails while I was sick in the hospital. It was so encouraging to hear from so many of you! I ended up spending 7 nights in the hospital for my kidney infection. Actually, the kidney infection was pretty much taken care of after 4 days, but by that time I'd developed a throat infection (similar to what Paul had) so they kept me an extra three days for that. The doctor said that my body was pretty worn out from fighting infection for so long and that it might take a few weeks for me to feel 100% again. Boy, was he right; I feel like I'm always napping!

This time of resting has been such a blessing! We had been staying here in Chiang Rai at our room at House of Joy since I was released from the hospital. It's been wonderful to have this time when we aren't “doing” anything and can really focus on where God is leading us. It's been a great time of evaluation and goal setting. Before we arrived in Thailand, it was pretty hard to know what to expect and even harder to set realistic goals. But now that we've been here for just over three months, we can really see how God has been fine tuning our vision for future ministry as we see first-hand the needs of the Akha Church.

The most recent blessing has been God's provision of a new home for us in Chiang Rai! Some friends of ours have a second house which they've been using as a get-away. Unfortunately, the upkeep of the second house has been a burden for some time, so they have offered to rent the house to us. As much as we love the atmosphere at the House of Joy, it is not always the “rest” that we need when returning from time up in the village. With over 130 people on-site, it's usually buzzing with activity!

We started moving into the house yesterday (which wasn't too difficult since we really only have about 6 suitcases worth of stuff!) and will take our time settling in over the next couple of weeks. Please keep praying for my continued recovery and pray for us as we continue to seek Him and His direction for us in the coming weeks!

Unnecessary Roughness

Four nights ago Lori had begun feeling sick so we were laying low for the evening. We had a wedding recently and a new family was moving into our village which meant building a new home, so there had been a lot of things going on. When big events like that are happening there are many more social gatherings, meals and tea. While we were lying low for the evening we suddenly heard a loud rumbling. Down the hill from us we heard dozens of voices screaming in what was obviously quite an argument.

Minutes later a young man came running up to our home saying "Get your truck ready, you have to go to the emergency clinic". I ran inside to get my keys and came out to see four men carrying another man who was drifting between crying and unconsciousness with blood all over his head.

We loaded him into our truck and I left with he and his two brothers. I had no idea where I was going, it had just gotten dark and was pouring rain. As we drove we had to scream at the man with the head wound to keep him awake. About 15 minutes heading out of town we came to a clinic and brought him in. Once he was in the emergency techs hands I tried to find out what had happened. All I could figure out was that he had been hit with something harder than a stick but less than a machete.

Lori had an entire other set of worries. She went from a restful evening to having her husband drive off with a bloody man going who knows where or when he would return and everyone coming to her home to decompress. She learned that somehow the fight had begun when a child who had been acting up all day threw a piece of fruit. Somehow from that there erupted a fight and the injury we had seen. Her reaction was to go to our pastor and to say (in her broken Akha) "Tell them NOT to HIT".

The injury was stitched up, morphine was given for his pain and other medicine as well as instruction to care for the concussion. We returned and went to the home to pray for the peace of the family who was there and the incident faded away.

It's apparently not uncommon. So many people with so many wounds and no way to release them. There is so much council needed and healing in order to begin a change from hatred and fear to love. It was a real shock for us, and we covet your prayers as we continue deeper and deeper into the Akha culture and the lives of the men and women God has brought us to.

Tags:

• Akha
• village
• culture
• medical

Expanding our Map

As you come down the road from Mae Salong you reach a military checkpoint. From there you can go east towards Chiang Rai or west towards Chiang Mai. On the road to Chiang Mai is a little town called Fang (Rhymes with Dong, not Tang). When we were last in Bangkok we met a couple named Jim and Eda who are serving as Foursquare Missionary Associates who were about to leave for Fang to work with Pastor Timothy and his church in the area. During our most recent time in Mae Salong, they called us to let us know that a book they had ordered for us ("Where there is No Dentist", we're coming across more and more abscesses and teeth problems) had come in. So off we went to get the book and spend a day looking around Fang.

It's a great little town, mostly fruit orchards and national forest and we really enjoyed our time there. Pastor Timothy and his wife are wonderful people, very welcoming and hospitable. Their English is very good and we really enjoyed talking with them as we ate wonderful Thai food, visited their home, saw Grace church and went to see a hot spring. Jim and Eda are settling in well and are busy with language classes nearly every day. They are living above the church in a very nice apartment and had a friend from their home church, a girl named Tanya who Lori really enjoyed talking with, visiting them.

Great things are happening with Grace church, they have seen many churches come out from them and are purchasing land for a future church site and orphanage. Be praying for them as they are working on the price for the land and looking to make these expansions.

Tags:

• travel
• Thailand

Arachnophobia

All of you now know that we are living in a bamboo house (see our pictures). There are, of course, many gaps and openings for any number of things to get into our home but generally we do not have problems with bugs or lizards or anything bothering us. The great thing about the open air environment is that little critters can get out as easily as they can get in. And, as the saying goes, they're more scared of us than we are of them.

While that old saying is generally true, it becomes irrelevant if the intruder is a spider, for there Lori and I share a common phobia. In Colorado, especially in Golden, we came across a number of Black Widows in our time and quite honestly the idea that something so small can be that dangerous was enough to set a pretty permanent fear in us. It was really the only thing we hoped to avoid when were moving to Thailand (well, that and Lori had this thing about leeches, which by the way is another story you should ask me about sometime).

So the other day we were cleaning the sawdust left from all the insects who are slowly eating our home from our containers (we keep everything in containers for cleanliness, dust and bugs) when Lori very animantly called me over with a "Oh my goodness there is a huge spider". I had heard this statement before and my common response question of "how big?" was caught in my throat as I saw an enormous spider on our shelf, almost eye-level to Lori. It probably would have fit very comfortably in the palm of my hand, although I don't believe I ever could survive such and experience.

But worst of all, worse than the giant spider, was the fact that it was holding beneath its body a sac of eggs about the size of an old 50-cent piece. We went about talking how to kill it but it was very fast and after a number of attempts to smash it and trap it, it ended up on one of the posts that supports our house. We swung at it but it circled the post and ended up on a bamboo beam that goes over our bed. An interesting thing about bamboo. Because it is hollow you can tap on it like a drum, and as that spider raced across the beam over our bed we could hear every step it took clicking on the bamboo. Of course it was a brave moment for us, Lori began screaming and I ducked away as the spider crossed into our living room.

It was at this point Lori decided we needed help. She ran out to the village and told the first woman she saw that there was a large something (we don't know the word for spider) in our home that needed to be killed. The woman asked "How Big?" and Lori put her hands in a circle. The woman screamed to the men in the village and four of them jumped up, grabbed huge sticks and came racing to our house. Lori was very impressed at their exuberance. However, when they arrived in our home to find me threatening a spider their excitement faded. You see, they thought we had a four-inch diameter snake in our home. They knocked the spider down and killed it with their sticks (see it really was that big) and left quite humored by the "Pa La"s.

Now we're just scared of enormous snakes.

Tags:

• humor
• animals
• language

We're getting familiar with this place...

It's a little upsetting that this makes two blogs in a row... we have a lot of things to share and I will be working on them today, but first we would like to get a prayer request out. We are back in the familiar environment of Kasemrad Sriburin General Hospital. Two days ago Lori had what we thought was a bladder infection but after she got a fever we came down to Chiang Rai to get her checked out. We learned that she has a kidney infection and she has been admitted for treatment. The fever broke this morning and she is improving but the Doctor wants us to stay for at least one more night.

Please keep praying for us and especially for health. There is a lot going on in our village right now and the stresses of new culture, new language and just attacks from the enemy are rough on our bodies. The care in the hospital is wonderful (although Lori has gotten so good at "caring for the sick" that she is struggling a little bit in being cared for) and the rest is good.

Sorry about the lack of contact, we are working on a way to get an internet connection in Mae Salong so we can update you all a little more often. We are praying over a number of decisions right now as we settle more and more into Northern Thailand. I will be writing more posts today to let you all know everything that's been going on but now it's back up to our little apartment on the fourth floor to see how Lori is doing.

Thanks for all your prayers! Lori would love to hear your encouragement if you want to email her.

Tags:

• health
• medical
• Thailand