Journey Notes

Prayer and Thanksgiving

2009-04-13T22:16:00.004+07:00

I'm writing this update on my phone from our hut in Maesalong as Lori is driving to the hospital with a woman from our village. A few minutes ago (about 10 pm) we were called on to come see a woman who is having severe stomach pains. It was quickly obvious she needed hospital care so Lori is racing off with her to the nearest hospital (about 45 min away) while I stay back in my recent role of night caretaker for Abi (who, we are happy to report, is night weaned!).

Please pray for this woman and for safety as they travel to town!

In other news, day 1 of our village VBS has been a huge success. For our village and surrounding area we have 40 children participating in the event! This has been a long time coming and it is wonderful to see the fruits of the labour. Please remember us in prayer as we hope to do a total of 3 vbs's in different villages this month.

Thanks to everyone for keeping us covered in prayer and for all of your love & support!

New Zealand Medical Team

2009-03-21T14:00:00.000+07:00

We always welcome guests with medical expertise who can assist us with our Mobile Clinic and help us broaden our medical knowledge in the process! Our recent medical team from New Zealand was no exception; the team consisted of 8 medical students and 1 medical doctor. They were scheduled to be with us for 6 nights and we had planned to do 4 clinic days in 4 different villages. Unfortunately, due to Abi's hospitalization we had to cut our time short a bit, which left us with only 2 full days available for clinics. However, through the teams hard work, we managed to squeeze in clinics at all four villages and we ended up treating over 150 patients!

Three of the four clinics we did were especially exciting for Paul & I because they were in villages not associated with our organization. As is the case in much of the world, sometimes, here in Thailand, church groups have trouble getting along.Unity among Christians and Christian organizations is one of the areas that Paul and I really have a heart to see improve among the Akha. So, in providing a "no strings attached" clinic, we hope to not only bless the individual receiving the medical care, but to build relationship with village and church leadership which might remind them that the body of Christ can still function even outside of denominational affiliation!

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January Travels: Bangkok, Hat Yai & Mae Salong

2009-03-09T20:13:00.006+07:00

In January we were blessed to have my (Lori's) parents in country for a visit. Their arrival coincided with the Grand Opening of the new Foursquare church and ministry center in Bangkok. We flew down to meet them in Bangkok and while there took the opportunity to see a few sights. Can you believe that this was their fifth trip to Thailand and they had never been to the Grand Palace! (We must not be very good tour guides, eh?)

After a few days in Bangkok, we headed down to Southern Thailand for a few days at the beach! We ended up staying in Songkla (just outside of Hat Yai) for 3 nights. Our little hotel was right on the beach and we had such a nice relaxing time!

Esther (who has lived with us for almost 2 years now) and one of her friends came along as well. Neither of them had ever flown in a plane or seen the ocean, so it was exciting to be with them as they experienced these new things. It was also Abi's first time seeing the ocean (Although, it certainly wasn't her first time on the plane... she's been on nearly 30 plane rides thus far and she's not even two yet!) and, of course, she loved it! (Some photos of her at the beach are bound to show up on the baby blog sooner or later. So stay tuned!)

After we made it back up north, we all headed up to the village for about a week. My parents were troopers, braving the cold showers and hard beds with ease. We stayed pretty busy pouring a concrete pathway and building a deck as the finishing touches to our "new" village home. My dad, the builder, loved getting his hands dirty, working alongside the Akha men and noticing all the differences in how things are done here. And my mom, (not so keen on getting her hands dirty) was the resident baby sitter and kept Abi and her village friendsoccupied and out of harms way.

Mom & Dad... thanks so much for coming! We can't wait for your next visit!

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Published

2009-03-09T11:07:00.003+07:00

The last few months I have been working with Aje on the publication of an Akha primer. Part of that work has meant that I have had the honor to listen in on the meetings of Akha leaders from Thailand, Myanmar, China and Laos as they discuss the newest Akha orthography.

Orthography: a method of representing the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols (Princeton Wordnet)

The books that have just been published, and are shown here, use the historical Lewis Orthography, created by Dr. Paul Lewis - a dear friend and servant to the Akha for many years, and (perhaps) the most accomplished Akha linguist to date. Most Akha texts in Thailand currently use this writing system, and it will continue to be used for a number of years in the future until a more universal system can be incorporated, and existing texts (such as the Bible, Akha histories, medical texts, etc.) can be updated and republished.

As you can see from the picture, the Lewis Orthography incorporates tone marks (such as ^ _^) in order to delineate Akha tones. However, since a unique font must be used for this writing system (making computer usage less universal) these Akha leaders from 4 countries are in the process of deciding upon a universal writing system which requires no additional font sets and instead uses ancillary Roman characters (such as q,v) to delineate tones.

OK, so it really is that dull. The exciting thing is that the Akha people are taking their language, their script, and their future into their own hands and making an effort to preserve it in a way that is relevant to the current world.

Because of those efforts, we are giving a lot of our time and energy in order to concurrently publish the primer of the unified script, and hope to see that work published and distributed by the end of May.

In other exciting news, we will also be working with Aje and Nancy on an English publication this year: the background story of Akha Outreach Foundation as it enters its tenth year of service to the Akha people.

So stay tuned!

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Akha Women's Retreat - 2009

2009-03-02T13:05:00.015+07:00

In January, I had the honor of participating in the annual AOF Women's Retreat. While any women's retreat is a blessing and allows for the women to "get away from it all," this is especially true for Akha women who labor from morning til night, working in the fields, carrying water and firewood, cooking the meals, and hand washing the clothes & dishes!

My role in the event was mostly "observer" with a little bit of "translator" and "photographer" thrown in. For one of the sessions, we were blessed to hear from an American friend, Marlene. Having been a family counselor for many years, she shared out of her expertise about the different stages in a woman's life. This is an important topic for Akha women, because in traditional Akha culture it's generally considered taboo to talk about things like menstruation or menopause, which often leaves women unprepared and scared when natural changes occur. In any case, I was elected to translate for this session.

Although I've been here for nearly 4 years, my language is not what you would call "microphone worthy". So I stumbled through the session saying things like "Do you understand me? Did I say that correctly?" and "How do you say _________?" It was like being tossed in the deep end and told "Sink or swim!" While moments like this are difficult, for sure, I'm grateful for the opportunity to step up to a challenge and find that, even if I can only doggy paddle, at least I didn't drown!

My other, less challenging, job was to take pictures during one of the craft times. My mission was to capture a picture of every woman for the slide show scheduled for the final night. As an added bonus, I got to witness the skilled craftsmanship of nearly a hundred women making traditional men's headdresses. Take a peek at the pictures to see for yourself!

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The Dye Man

2009-02-17T14:42:00.005+07:00

Well, this week marks the end of a busy season in the Vernon household. In fact, this is the first real down-time we've had since Christmas (which is why the blogs have been so quiet recently!) The past couple of months have many worthy stories of family, ministry and travel and hopefully I'll have time to tell a few of them this week. (So stay tuned!) But before I get to those, I was going through my photos today and just had to tell you about this one.

I've been trying to share glimpses of some of the unusual things that we find in everyday life here in Thailand. And this certainly counts as "unusual" in my book! Allow me to introduce The Dye Man. He rides through our neighborhood once every few months. As he rides, he plays a Chinese hand drum (as seen in his right hand) to let his potential customers know that he's approaching. He has a metal bucket hanging from a rack on the back of his bike which contains black dye as well as a fire to keep it hot. If people need something dyed they can flag him down and he will dip it in dye right there on the street in front of the house.

For months, I wondered what this guy's trade was. I thought it was SO wierd that he rode around with a black bucket of fire dangling from his bike! Finally, I flagged him down and asked him. Now I know, but I still have a hard time getting my brain around it! Why would people need to dye their clothes black? Maybe something has gotten stained? Maybe they have a funeral to go to? But are there really enough people wanting to dye things black for this guy to make an living of it? Apparently so...

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On the Road to Elephant Mountain...

2009-01-03T19:43:00.005+07:00

A couple of weeks back we had the opportunity to accompany a missions team from Singapore to the Akha village of Doi Chang (Elephant Mountain) to attend the Christmas celebration there. We had a great time and even enjoyed the cold cold weather (temperatures in the 40s), but the trip was not without adventure! On the way to the village, after driving for about an hour up the dirt road, we heard a loud "clunk". A rod used to brace the frame had jiggled loose and simply fell off. Our poor truck, it has a hard life, driving on such rough village roads all the time! Luckily we were able to locate a couple of tools and Paul with his "MacGyver-like" skills was able to re-attach it. We finally made it to the village and finished the rest of the trip without incident. Needless to say, we got the truck into the mechanic as soon as we got back to the city. Luckily, he re-attached the the rod (with all the proper tools) for free!

Here are a few pictures from our Singaporean friends! Thanks guys!

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A day in the fields...

2008-12-18T13:11:00.005+07:00

A couple weeks ago we had the opportunity to accompany a friend of ours to his family's land for the day. It was an amazing experience! There is just something inexplicably wonderful about breathing in the fresh mountain air and eating lunch that was just picked!

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Haven't We Already Been Through This??

2008-12-09T09:19:00.003+07:00

So our truck is broken again. This time it's the gearbox - gears 1,2,3 & 5 are all a wreck. The great news is that it coincided with a loose wire that disconnected the starter, allowing our mechanic to catch it (and forcing us to stop and learn what was wrong). Best case scenario it will only cost us about $100, but the constant problems have us considering upgrading our vehicle again.

So this week we will be in town, working with Aje on the new Akha reading primer. This book will be presented to all of the akha leaders (in the world!!) at the Hani-Akha conference in China around the new year.

Please pray for us!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

2008-11-26T14:15:00.002+07:00

As Lori is prepping the Pumpkin Pies, Green Bean Casserole and Jell-O Salad for our Thanksgiving meal here in Thailand, we remember all of you - our friends, family, support team, and church partners - with much Thanksgiving and Joy.

We have much to be Thankful for this year - it has been a healthy year for us physically, a milestone year for us linguistically, a growing year for us in ministry and an unspeakably wonderful year for us as we have watched Abigail discover the world around her.

We are coming out of a busy season of village travel - having celebrated the rice harvest in four villages, attended a funeral and generally traveled to Akha villages throughout the region - building upon old relationships and forming new ones.

We are currently preparing for the next year, as I am sure many of you are, and trying to get our business affairs in order as we have a short break around Thanksgiving. There is so much we still want to update you all on - medical and dental clinics, ministry direction and future plans and general life happenings - but for now we want to wish you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving filled with friends and family.

Thanks for following our adventures here in Thailand!

Cows and Guava

2008-09-13T11:35:00.007+07:00

When we are in the city (as opposed to the Akha village) we live in a house in a little Thai neighborhood. The neighborhood has quite a few vacant lots (due to the Market Crash of '97) and so a herd of cows regularly saunters by to munch on the vegetation in the lot across from our house. In America, we just don't get much exposure to farm animals, so it's still a bit odd to see them roaming about.

Another fun part about our "city home" are the numerous fruit trees that we have in our yard. (However, I have to confess that we are fairly ignorant about most agricultural matters and it actually took us about two years and several scoldings from our Akha friends to finally become aware of all the fruit bearing trees in our yard!) We have a green mango tree, a guava tree, several tamarind trees and banana trees. Right now is guava season. Abi has learned that yummy fruit comes from that tree and so she reminds us to check for ripe fruit daily by wildly pointing to the tree and saying "mam mam" (which means "food" or "eat")!

Click the icon to the left to see the rest of the photos from the afternoon with the cows and guava.

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Yep, We're Fine

2008-09-03T13:07:00.002+07:00

those of you who have heard about the unrest / state of emergency in Thailand, please know that it is neither affecting us or our work here in Northern Thailand. We have no desire to comment on all the goings on - you are welcome to get all the information about what is going on through your various news sources.

We have been enjoying our time with a dental team from Colorado, having treated nearly 100 patients over the last two days (55 oral surgeries/extractions and 40 cleanings)

We will get some more pictures and details us from this team as we get the time, but just wanted you all to know that we are all doing well in Northern Thailand

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Spinning Cotton

2008-08-29T18:48:00.003+07:00

Living in an Akha village is a constant discovery of talents and craftsmanship. Whether it's a man making a bamboo ladder, women creating ornate Akha stitch work, or the simple, pure skill of the machete as a daily tool.

The other day while Lori was out in the village she came across another incredible sight. Our Akha grandma had picked cotton off of the tree behind her home and was spinning it by hand into yarn.

Here are a few moments of her incredible skill:

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It's truly a blessing to live among these people.

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Side by Side

2008-08-16T20:55:00.000+07:00

We're in the city this week catching up on computer work before heading back up to the village for three weeks or so. In my efforts to share a little more about everyday life, I thought I would share this picture of Paul and our Akha friend working side by side on their computers. Paul has been teaching this young man how to edit video off and on for several months now, but because the video editing program is in English, he's still not completely confident with it. So, he's set up camp in Paul's office this week (Thank goodness we purchased a new larger desk a couple weeks back!) and can ask Paul questions if he get's stuck.

This is one of the best things about living here... the spontaneity of life! We had no idea that we would get to spend so much time with this young man this week, but he had time and we had time, so here we are. We're so excited about this young man and the powerful work he is doing as he reaches out to his Akha brothers and sisters in Laos. We are honored to be even a tiny part of what he and his co-workers are doing! Join us in prayer for them and the nation of Laos!

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CMCC 2008 Missions Team

2008-08-14T16:44:00.003+07:00

We have had (and will have) visitors and teams from all over the world in these months from July to September.
We've had doctors from Singapore and Germany who offered their expertise in free Akha village clinics.
We've had an old Colorado friend who now lives in Scotland come through for a few days.
We are about to have a number of dentists from America come out to do volunteer dental care for the Akha.
And we had a missions team of international students living in Chiang Mai, Thailand who attend the CMCC youth group come spend a week with us in Mae Salong on a work project building stairs in the common path areas of the village.

Although all of these visitors deserve their own posts, notes, pictures and videos - the group that spent the most time in our village was the CMCC team - so we put together a video of their project to share with them and with the village. Take a look here...

(there's also a short moment of Abi in all her village glory ...dirty, dirty, dirty! and loving it)

Here's the clip:

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In case you are wondering. All these videos are finally getting completed because I am in the city helping teach a young Akha man who is reaching out to his fellow Akha in Laos how to edit videos. He is editing videos of Laos trips on his desktop while I edit videos right next to him on our computer. It's a strange time for the Akha world... Grass roofs, dirt floors and nicely edited home videos on the television. Pray for he and his coworkers in their wonderful work.

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How to Take a Village Shower

2008-08-13T11:44:00.008+07:00

Recently I've been thinking about how much you (our beloved readers) still don't know about our lives in Thailand! Even after three years of blogging, we haven't begun to scratch the surface of all the interesting things we see and do on a daily basis. So, I'm hoping to start blogging a bit more about everyday topics (in addition to the special events and stories that we already try to post) to help help you better understand our lives and ministry to the Akha.

I've often been asked how I bathe in the village, so I thought I'd give you a step by step tutorial on the process! When I first arrived in the village, I had no idea how to shower at the public wells and had to walk about a mile to our Akha mom's house to bathe in her indoor bathroom. Luckily, some of the young women in the village took pity on me and taught me all the ins and outs of bathing modestly in public! Of course, with our new house (We promise a video tour of the finished house is coming soon!) we have an indoor bathroom, so indoor bucket showers are also possible. However, I actually enjoy being outside and have become quite accustomed to showering like this, so I still prefer sarong showers (weather permitting).

Remember to click on the pictures below in order to read the captions and view the full size photo.

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Pray For Lori (and Abi, Esther & some Germans)

2008-08-09T14:31:00.005+07:00

While I'm stuck in meetings discussing the new Akha orthography (actually, a really cool experience that I will fill you all in more on later) Lori is much more literally stuck in Mae Salong with a broken vehicle.

You heard it right, our truck is broken again.

A very similar problem to all our other vehicle issues, actually, as there seems to be a crack in the feed from the radiator to the engine.

She has the baby, Esther and two German visitors - (one of whom is a doctor who just helped out with a free clinic in a local village, I'm sure that's another cool story that we will fill you all in more on later) - so her hands are full.

Please pray for peace for them, for safety and for a tow truck that actually can tow a vehicle (as opposed to the rope/bamboo contraption we dealt with before.)

Don't worry, we'll leave the vehicle in Mae Salong before we have Lori do anything dangerous.

Thanks for your prayers.

The Ladder Man

2008-07-15T12:49:00.002+07:00

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!

I often wonder how he can actually make a living as a mobile ladder salesman. Although, I confesss, I'm probably looking at it from an overly American perspective....The Icecream Man is one thing, but the Ladder Man just wouldn't fly in America! On the other hand, I guess it does make sense here; most Thai families have a scooter instead of a car or truck, so they can't simply run to the local store and bring a ladder home... the ladder has to come to them!

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Building a Home with the Akha (Video)

2008-07-14T15:51:00.005+07:00

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...

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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!

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Where have we been?

2008-06-11T10:37:00.004+07:00

Well, we've been all around, actually, but the times that we have not been teaching at the Bible college, receiving training in community development, assisting our director as he prepares for a teaching series in Singapore or showing Tiffany and Tamara around Northern Thailand (we had a great time girls! - hope you enjoy Bangkok) we have been in the village.

It turns out that although we do have a new home (video tour in a few weeks) we do not have the ability to get DSL internet, thus destroying our great ideas for video calls, blog posts, study and work from the village. There is a satellite option, but it is rather expensive and we aren't quite ready to make that commitment yet. So, for the time being, we will do our best to get posts up as often as possible - but the will likely come in chunks like you are seeing right now.

We are off to the village again this weekend and will be there for the next two weeks. Please pray for us as we will be beginning our forays into new villages as we begin the Mae Salong Project!

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Holistic Ministry

2008-06-11T09:22:00.007+07:00

When we share about our work with the Akha, we stress a holistic approach to ministry. Simply stated, this means we seek to minister the whole gospel to the whole person through the whole church. There is a spectacular article by Ron Sider et. al. over at forMinistry.org if you would like to read more on these ideas.

This focus in our ministry has led us in surprising directions, including living in a village, the Akha Clinic, helping children receive formal education, and patience in the pursuit of definitions in our ministry as we build meaningful relationships with our village.

It has also largely kept us from preaching in church on Sundays or telling people "theological dos and don'ts" as we have observed the culture around us.

This year is the beginning of a new season for us, however, as we are now taking [tentative, deliberate] steps in the expansion of our ministry beyond our village. We are seeking to build relationships with our extended community of Akha, ultimately connecting with the 30,000 Akha living in the Mae Salong Region and assisting them in their journey towards spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual health.

In the light of this direction we took a little time out of our village schedule to attend a training workshop that was hosted by Community Health Evangelism, an inspirational development program through Lifewind International.

The training was very beneficial to us, helping us to give more details in the way that we would like to help villages in their development as well as helping us to define and to defend why we do the work we do. Even more exciting, however, are the CHE resources which will serve as in invaluable tool as we move forward in our holistic ministry.

The total body of CHE materials now exceeds 1,500 specific lessons covering topics from A to Z. LifeWind manages and makes this resource easily available to trained CHE users. LifeWind also develops specialized materials on topics such as HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care, Maternal/Child Health, and Birth Life-saving Skills (BLISS) as cutting-edge resources addressing critical health issues. All CHE resources incorporate Participatory Learning, a teaching style proven effective in training people of all kinds, especially those with limited {formal} education.
-From the Lifewind website, italicized words are mine

So, we're excited about these tools, and these ideas. We are excited to see holistic development and lives that are characterized by health. And we're excited to see what God does with all these seeds which have been planted in our minds and hearts.

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ministry

Signing Time!

2008-06-10T10:25:00.000+07:00

This is A-Paw. She is hearing impaired. When we first arrived in the village three years ago, she was an outgoing, playful little four year old who had no idea that there was any difference between her and her friends. Unfortunately, without any exposure to sign language, in the past three years we've seen her eyes glaze over and her temper flare more and more often as she realizes that she doesn't really understand what's going on around her and that she can't adequately communicate her own wants and needs.

After visiting us last fall, our good friend John really wanted to help A-paw and her family, so he donated the first six DVDs in the Signing Time Series. Now that we have our new house built, we've brought up an old TV and started showing the series once a week to anyone that wants to come! A-Paw is a brilliant little girl and, after only a few lessons, has most of the words memorized. We're hoping that this, admittedly limited, exposure to ASL (although slightly different from Thai Sign Language) will give her a bit of an advantage should she ever end up at a school for the hearing impaired. If nothing else, we hope that she can have a few more words with which to communicate with her family and friends.

The added benefit of the Signing Time series is that it's a great way for the hearing kids to learn a bit of English. Our village has been nagging us to teach English ever since we've arrived, but we've been reticent to start official lessons, knowing that most of the kids in our village go to Thai school all day, and then head off to Chinese language school for three hours every evening. We just couldn't imagine that they would have any time or brain power left to sit through another lesson! Luckily, Signing Time seems to be a great solution because it makes learning fun! It uses songs and great visual footage to help the kids remember each new word, not to mention the, signs themselves, which are so intuitive and help the memory as well!

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We Have a Visa!

2008-04-25T18:37:00.008+07:00

We are happy to announce that we have recieved our visa for Abigail from the Thai Embassy here in Singapore. The process was amazingly simple since we already had our work permits and visas (and having all the paperwork from the foundation we work through really helped). The bad news is that outside of Thailand you can only receive a 3 month visa, so we will have to begin the 1-year application process for her as soon as we get back to Thailand. But she is on the "official grid" now and the process, though long and expensive, is achievable.

Since we had to come to Singapore anyway, we are enjoying our time here. We have some friends who have a daughter just a few months older than Abi who have graciously played host for our impromptu trip. We have seen the Singapore sights and eaten of the numerous food options here in the Lion City while little Abi and Maya have had a great time playing and interacting with one another.

We are heading back to Thailand on Sunday afternoon and plan on getting back to the village this week once we have begun the application process for Abi in country.

Thanks for all your prayers! We'll (try to) keep you posted.

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We're In Singapore

2008-04-24T07:51:00.001+07:00

Well, Bangkok would not give a visa to Abi so we are in Singapore and are about to head to the Embassy with her paperwork. Keep us in prayer!

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Technical Difficulties and Updates

2008-03-15T07:50:00.003+07:00

I need to apologize to all of you, especially our new readers from the recent issue of Foursquare's Missions Advance magazine (see article here), for the current state of the Vernon Journal. We recently had some server changes which have required some coding updates on all of our pages, and a complete overhaul of our news feeds on the right side of the page.

Unfortunately, I just do not have the time right now to completely update all of the pages on the site (the entire site has needed design and code changes for some time), but I have been able to get our ministry blog (Journey Notes), our prayer and praise blog and our personal blogs (Lori's, Abi's and Mine) up on crutches for the time being.

As for the rest of the site, our info, media updates, partner pages and the upcoming Mae Salong Project pages, they will not be updated for a little while. We are heading back to the village today and will not be back in Chiang Rai for any significant amount of time until the end of the month.

We are also waiting for some developments from the server over at Foursquare Missions which will allow us to begin receiving online contributions toward our ministry. As these features become available over the next months our site will be updated accordingly.

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Here are our current updates...

We are planning on building a new home in our village in Mae Salong:
This was actually not our idea, and was difficult at first, but as we have thought more about it we are getting very excited about the prospect. The village leaders want to move us away from the center of the village and use our current house as the village home for cooking, hosting and storing things as needed. Actually, our home has always been used for these purposes, but now that we have a growing family they want us to move to a home with a little less foot traffic.

We are hoping that we will get an internet connection in our new home:
We still will have a bamboo house and grass roof, but because of the proximity to the Chinese town of Mae Salong we might be able to put DSL into our new hut. It's still just an idea and there are a few development issues that might stand in our way, but if we are able to set up an office with full internet connectivity in our new home it will allow us to more effectively communicate with all of you as we spend more and more time in the village compiling the data we collect from the Mae Salong Project.

Visa Travel:
After we receive our 1-year visas at the end of this month we will have to travel to Bangkok to apply for a 1-year visa for Abigail. If we cannot get this visa in Bangkok we will have to travel to Singapore to purchase a visa there. We are planning on traveling to Singapore at the end of April anyway, but would love to have all our visa issues worked out before that trip.

School Break Plans:
School break has begun in Thailand and will continue through the beginning of June. Other than our visa needs and ministry travel plans (we have some exciting developments in the works that we will update you on if they work out) we have some plans to minister in our village as we build our new home and settle in again for the year.

Around the Thai new year we will treat our entire village for stomach worms (ourselves included). Although we will all be sick for a few days, the village is really looking forward to this medication as they understand that when the stomach worms are dead, the food (and therefore, the money) goes much further for the family.

We will also be "teaching english" through some sign language videos that John donated for the deaf family in the village. This way the kids will all learn sign language while learning english words and will be able to communicate with the deaf children as they are learning to sign.

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Thanks for your patience with us as we deal with the site changes and please keep our energy and health in your prayers as we enter these very busy months.

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