Our director is off to Singapore tomorrow to teach on the subject "
Communicating the Gospel in a Pluralist Context" for
Haggai Institute. I have had the privilege to help him prepare for these 8 lectures: we have been working on the powerpoints for months, and intensively over these past two weeks. The time is upon us, however, so ready or not (hopefully ready) he is off to teach leaders from around the globe.
We have visitors and teams coming beginning tomorrow through the remainder of this month, so that gave me today to get caught up on some of our communication to all of you.
We mentioned a few months ago that we were building a new home in Mae Salong. The home that was built for us upon our arrival was built to last 3-5 years. With our three years up, we decided to build a home that will last us closer to 10 years as we continue to live and work with the Akha.
Once again, our village was incredibly generous, donating their time and expertise to our need. Our new home features such ammenities as cement on the floors (it's not level, but it's not dirt!), an indoor bathroom, indoor running water (when available), and electrical outlets and lights in each room. These modern conveniences are still coupled with bamboo walls and a grass roof, which we love and will probably never go away from (it's so much cooler!).
It's a
huge blessing for us as a family and also for the village who are now using our first home full time as the village community house.
We have a video of the entire construction process - take a look...For those of you who are wondering, the song (Big House by
Audio Adrenaline) is an homage to our old
Campus Crusade days at the Colorado School of Mines. Good times, good times... but you probably had to be there.
I'll get a video tour of the "lived-in" house up on the site next (who knows when, but it's my next project).
Thanks for following our lives here at the Vernon Journal!
Having lived in Thailand for three years, we've become pretty accustomed to some of the odd sights that overseas living has to offer. However, some things still surprise me. Take, for instance, The Ladder Man. We occasionally see these guys around town, but this one happened to be selling his wares in our neighborhood recently, so I took the opportunity to snap a picture for you! 
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