2 Weeks to go and We'll be in Southeast Asia!!!

Today marks the beginning of the advent season and the beginning of our countdown to leaving North America.

As my kids count down the days on their advent calendar and we remember the birth of Jesus, we also get the excitement of counting down the days until we leave for Southeast Asia. We continue to be in awe as we think about all that the Lord has done in our lives to bring us to this point. It is so surreal to think that our lives are about to change drastically in ways we can't even imagine, but we are excited, knowing that God will give us the grace to handle any challenges we may encounter.

I'm always struck by the story of Mary, a 14 year old girl who chose to accept the call of God on her life. This decision brought great shame on her and her family. When it was time for her to give birth to God's Chosen One, she found herself in the unfortunate situation of being on her way to a foreign city and forced to give birth in a barn removed from the comforts of home and her family to care for her. I can imagine her crying out to God saying, "Lord, you knew at what time your son would come, could you not have provided me with a room at least?" Did Mary even know that there would be a greater purpose for enduring a labour among the animals? Did she know that her son's entrance into the world into a bed of hay was a symbol of God's great humility and love for the lost and least of the world?

While by no means is our calling comparable to Mary's, I am reminded that sometimes saying "yes" to God means that we won't always understand the purposes for some of the road bumps along the way, but we can trust that our God is sovereign, that he acts out of goodness and love and that "all things work together for good for those who are called according to HIS purpose (Romans 8:28)." And so we jump in. We say, yes Lord, we will go even though there are many unknowns before us. We will trust you for the grace to get through each day.

I thought we would share a few pics of our last month. The top picture is one of Jody and Asa on their first ever boys camping trip! They had so much fun enjoying the beautiful wilderness in this amazing land that we've gotten to call home for the last few months. The picture here is one of my lovely friend and fellow staff member Thaisa and I before her baptism. She grew up in Brazil in a catholic tradition and had never been baptized as an adult and wanted to take the step of water baptism.

This little monkey is such a joy to us. He is a year and a half and certainly keeps us on our toes chasing around after his big brothers and getting into all sorts of trouble!

All of our boys love bugs and creepy crawlies, but none quite as much as Jonathan. Here he is covered in dirt and playing with a gecko, one of his favourite activities!

We are now 85% funded! We still need about $500 per month in donations to completely meet our goal. Would you consider signing up to give even $10 a month? All donations will receive a tax receipt. ** Click here for online giving (https://chimp.net/groups/lauren-jody-goodwin-gj26)

and ** here for direct withdrawal from your bank account. (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKiBdkGuRU4Sl9SX2Z5Qk9GcVE)

We are so thankful for each and every one of you that is following along with our journey! Please continue to pray for us as we prepare to go!

What's next for the Goodwins?

Greetings Friends!

It has been quiet some time since I have written. We have been home for about a month and half now and in some ways it feels like we never left, and in others it feels like just yesterday we were living a completely different life!

God has been so faithful to us though. Jody is blessed to have his job back and we were also able to get back into our old rental place because an awesome friend of ours was willing to stay in our place while we were gone.  So as far as logistics go, coming back home has been pretty much seamless.

Many have been asking us, “So, what’s next Goodwins?!?” One thing I can answer with certainty is that God has set our hearts on fire to see the great commission fulfilled and be an active participant with his Spirit in reaching the remaining unreached peoples of the world with his love. The great commission is found in Matthew 28:18-20:

“¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in^[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

During our time in Southeast Asia we realized how very fortunate we are to have access to pretty much every spiritual resource we could ever want. We could attend a bible study or church service every day of the week if we wanted, listen to a plethora of amazing teachings on YouTube in our own language, pick up one of the many Bibles in our home at any time of the day, and openly gather with friends to discuss our faith in Jesus. In many places around the world, this simply isn’t the reality. Even if the Spirit of God was prompting you to seek him, you may not have access to scripture in your language or any body of believers who could share the Good News with you. This broke our hearts and made us realize that we may not have a degree in missions, but we certainly are willing to participate with God in his mission to bring the gospel to every tribe, tongue, and nation. Isn’t it amazing that God cares so much about humanity, culture, and ethnicity, that he will not stop pursuing the people of the earth until every people group has a chance to hear about the Creator in their heart language?

The good news is that the fulfillment of the great commission is closer than anytime ever in human history!!! YWAM missionaries in collaboration with many other organizations have a plan to see at least a portion of scripture translated into every language on earth by the year 2020! Friends, this is so exciting!

So what is next for us? Well, we have said “Yes” to God. We will go. We will be a part of this exciting mission. We are just in the process of finalizing all of the details of what exactly we will be doing and I can’t wait to share them with you! That however, will have to wait for just a few more days and another blog post ;)  I am in the process of starting an official email list for our missions updates so if you would like to be a part of that please follow this link to sign up. Its quick, easy, and secure :) http://eepurl.com/b1SWdX  Love to you all my friends!

Last post from Southeast Asia

*Written on Feb 23*

Well, our time here in SE Asia is almost over- we have only 3 days left. We have had a truly amazing experience here with many doors having opened to serve.  We were able to serve in the local public school teaching English, soccer, and leading after school dances and games. This was an amazing opportunity since the schools here are pretty opposed to western influence and the kids are often taught that foreigners are bad. The kids were a little scared of us at first, but they warmed up fast. This was a very special experience for me because as a teacher myself, it is hard to see the conditions that students learn in around the world. We are so so so blessed to have the resources, supplies, and overall excellent schools that we have in Canada. The schools here are incredibly basic- just a wooden frame with a roof. There are chickens and pigs running around outside that cause quite a lot of distraction (maybe the kids are used to it though!). There are no text books stacked at the back of the classroom, no manipulatives for math time, and certainly no computers. The kids only have a notebook and a pen or pencil. But they are sooooo filled with joy. I had an amazing time teaching them and playing some English games. By the end of the classes we felt like good friends :)


Our team also had the opportunity to lead some after school activities and during this time we were able to teach the kids dances to Christian songs. Although the students and teachers didn’t understand the music, we felt so blessed to be able to blast worship music over the grounds of this communist school, declaring that God is sovereign over this place. We were also able to bless the school with new custom made soccer uniforms as well and this was a big way of gaining favour for our long-term missionary that we are working with. He and another Christian friend have now been asked to coach the soccer team at the school which is going to be an amazing opportunity to reach these staff and students with the gospel.


In our last week here we were able to travel to a more remote area of the country where a long term missionary is preparing to move with his family. They have rented a nice big property with the intent to build an artificial turf soccer field to rent out as a business which is a very popular thing to do in Southeast Asia. The soccer field business is really just a front to allow their family access to the region and to help them make connections with the locals. Their long term plan is to share the gospel with the local community and plant churches. This is true trailblazing because this community of about 10,000 people has several un-reached minority groups and has never had a white person live among them. Most of the local people have never even heard of the name of Jesus and when asked if they know of him it is not uncommon for them to respond “he doesn’t live here, try the next village over.”

We were able to help our friends paint several rooms of their house and tear down some old structures on the property. Although this doesn’t seem spiritual in and of itself, I know that we were able to greatly bless this family and help them to get into their house and begin their work much faster. I wish we could have stayed longer to see all of the projects to completion! Please pray for this family and that the Holy Spirit continue to make a way for them among these unreached people. What they are doing is an amazing part of fulfilling The Great Commission.


¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

           -Matthew 28:18-20

After a long day of painting and cleaning we were able to go down to the local river for a swim. As we walked through the village, we drew quite the crowd and a large group of village kids followed us and swam with us. There were at least 25 children from age 4-15 swimming with us. They would often just congregate around us and stare and when our friend who speaks the language asked them what they were looking at, they said they had never seen white kids before! I think it is pretty cool that my kids can say they have been to a place where they are the first white kids anyone has seen!

To sum up my time here, I will say this: I love this nation and its people and have been deeply impacted by it. I don’t know if I experienced “culture shock” here (maybe I will know when I get home!), but I have definitely been hit pretty hard with the reality that life here is vastly different than my Canadian life.  Many people here are very poor, have very little access to medical care, and live in very dirty and basic conditions. But none of that breaks my heart as much as the spiritual poverty that you find here. In Mark 14:7 Jesus says “The poor you will always have among you, but you will not always have me.” This verse becomes so real in this place, because although these people are materially poor, they have a rich culture and community that in many ways gives them something that us Canadians desire; however they lack the hope of Jesus.

Imagine with me: you grew up in an animistic culture and your grandparents and great grandparents have all carried out the same rituals, animal sacrifices and idol worship for as long as anyone can remember. Now you have a sick sibling and instead of taking this child to the doctor your parents sacrifice a goat in hopes that the spirits will have mercy on the child. But your sibling keeps getting worse and no one seeks a doctor because this must have been the will of the spirits or the bad karma of the family. This is the belief of millions of people throughout this nation who are either Buddhist or animist.

Now imagine this- you meet a missionary who has moved into you village. You have never talked to a farang (foreigner) before and you are surprised to find out that they speak your language. You begin to build a relationship and over time they share several stories with you about a whole different picture of God. First they tell you about the God who created all things, the Most High Spirit- all you’ve ever known is the worship of multiple spirits and deities and you’ve never been told anything about the origin of all things. They tell you about the fall of man, how evil, and sin, and shame, and bad karma entered the world. They continue to tell you stories until you finally have enough understanding to hear about God’s son Jesus who came into the world to reconcile all things, to take away our bad karma and our shame, our need for animal sacrifices, and has the power to overcome any evil spirits. They tell you that Jesus has made a way to overcome suffering and to have eternal life free of the endless cycles of building good merit, never being good enough and being reincarnated over and over again. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice once and for all, doing away with animal sacrifices and giving us a way to have a relationship with the God who created all things.

After hearing all these stories you encounter the Holy Spirit who opens your heart to these truths. You sense the love of God and true peace for the first time and you tell the missionary you want to have a relationship with this Jesus and this God who created all things. But then you realize that if you decide to follow Jesus you will no longer be able to participate in spirit worship and animal sacrifices that have been done in your village for centuries. Your family may disown you and they may withhold your government documents which means you can no longer leave the country, and will make it difficult to get a job. You count the cost, yet you know that what you have heard is life changing truth so you decide to follow Jesus anyways. There are only a few other people in your village who have made this decision, but the missionary tells you about God’s plan for the church and the fellowship of believers so you join together and being to learn what it means to follow Jesus. There are many challenges ahead of you as you face family and community pressure as well as the struggle to transform your way of thinking from an animistic world view to that of Christianity.

These are the real struggles that new believers face in this nation. And this doesn’t include the fact that openly sharing your faith is against the law and the government in general is not favourable to Christianity and could potentially imprison you if anything you do becomes too public or causes too much of a wave. We are so blessed to live in a place that has freedom of religion, and freedom of expression. Please join with me in praying for this nation and these people. God is really on the move here, but we need to pray for the strengthening of the local church and for courage and great faith in the midst of trial for the national believers.

Oh, ya know, just a bowl of live frogs for sale at the local market :)

The local teachers love Jonah!

Here are the cool new soccer uniforms we were able to buy for the kids.

Here are a few pics of the river we were able to swim at.

Onto Another Country- February 7, 2016

This post was written on February 7, but I wasn't able to post it until we were out of the country. We are now back in Kona, and soon back home to Canada. I have written another post about this nation that I will be posting in a few days :) 

We made it to our next country! I am not going to name to country online just to be extra sure to guard the identities of the missionaries we met there. If you are curious, feel free to send me an email or PM and I will tell you, but if you know, please don't mention it in the comments :) This is a beautiful country, but very different from Thailand. The first things that you notice right away when you cross the boarder is that the landscape is much more sparse.  There are not nearly as many buildings as in Thailand and there are very few western brands and labels (such as 7eleven which is all over Thailand!).  You can also tell that  there is much more poverty here and that life in general is a lot simpler for the majority of people. If Thailand is a land of dogs (they are EVERYWHERE) then this nation is a land of cows! As we were driving to our destination city we saw so many wild cows roaming the streets- the kids loved it!

The border crossing

Since arriving we have been blessed by the amazing hospitality of our host and translator. We didn’t quite know what to expect since it can sometimes be difficult to work with local people due to security issues, but it seems like the city we are in is more open than many so we are getting to have amazing experiences here with our local hosts.

So far we have done prayer walks of the city and of the university campus. The campus here is very basic- a bunch of buildings spread out over a large property (with many roaming cows!)- very different from our western university campuses!

Jonah allowed us to have another interesting cultural experience when he came down with a crazy blistery rash that covered his face, arms and legs. We decided we needed to take him to the doctor because it seemed to be getting worse, although he didn’t have a fever and was acting like his happy, normal self. Our local friends took us to a clinic and when we arrived there was no one else waiting in line and the doctor was lying on a mat doing something on her phone. She sat up when we arrived and took us into a side room where she very quickly looked at Jonah’s welts. Our translator then told us that the doctor believed it was an allergic reaction to some sort of bug bite and then prescribed us a few different medicines. She gave us a few pills of prednisone, split in half (apparently a child’s dose?), and a bottle of antibiotic. The bottle was only a quarter full so she proceeded to take her open water bottle that was on the counter and pour some water into it to dilute it! She then charged us $15 and sent us on our merry way. Our hosts were surprised that the visit was so expensive, and said that if we had gone to a public hospital it would have been much cheaper.

This whole experience definitely left me so thankful for our Canadian health care system. It also hit me in the face how scary traveling with little kids can be and how much I need to trust God and remember that He is the one who called us to do this. Praise God, I never let fear take over, but I realized that my thoughts were going that direction and that I needed to call on the Lord for protection for Jonah and wisdom for me as his mother to know what to do.  After having a detailed consultation with a friend’s friend who is a western paediatrician on the phone, we discovered that the doctor’s diagnosis was likely accurate and she had actually given us good medicine, despite using an open water bottle to dilute the medicine without carefully measuring it! Jonah is doing much better and the rash is clearing up well.

Today we had the amazing experience of going to a local church in a small village. The Tuk Tuk ride took about an hour and we got a flat tire along the way, but it was well worth it! Jonah had fallen asleep when the flat tire hit, so when we all got out while the driver fixed it, I was just holding him in my arms. We happened to break down in front of a family’s home. Some of the members were just hanging out and a few of the women were laying out some sort of root vegetable on mats so they could dry in the sun. There were many children, middle aged adults and elderly people all just hanging out and working as a family. The father was also holding a baby about the same age as Jonah. I said hi to them and they all smiled and kind of stared at our spectacle of a flat tire! But as I held sleeping Jonah and watched the other father holding his sleeping baby, it was a good reminder that God made ALL people in his image and that everyone is precious in his sight, worthy of respect and dignity. I live a vastly different life than these people live day in and day out, but we both hold our babies when they are sleeping and enjoy how precious they are at that age.

When we finally made it to the church we were greeted by such a warm welcome! The service had already begun and people were singing at the front, but we were greeted with such lovely smiles. Our team was able to sing a few worship songs, and then I shared a testimony of God’s ability to restore relationships through the story of my marriage to Jody. I really felt the Lord saying that this was something the congregation needed to hear. It was a privilege to be among Christians who are counting the cost to follow Jesus in a nation where being a Christian is not looked upon fondly.

At the end of the service I was able to spend time and chat with some of the ladies with the help of our translator- one who was nursing a two year old. Her daughter would walk up to her, lift up her shirt and have her fill of as much milk as she wanted. No one around was phased by this even though the woman’s breasts were completely exposed. She was asking me if I fed my baby with my breasts and I said of course! All the ladies laughed and were very happy to hear that. I think they assume that western women only use formula. The more we talked the woman let me know that she had 9 children, two of whom had died as infants. This was another stark reminder of how different my western life is. This nation has a high infant mortality rate and you could tell it was almost a normal occurrence among these woman to have an infant or two die. Yet still, we both nurse our babies, and struggle with the challenges of raising little ones. I wish you could have been in the village with me to experience the sight of piglets running around, the scent of hot sticky rice cooking, and the sounds of local Christians praising our great and awesome God, but here are some pictures to give you a bit of a better idea:

Chickens at the market

Adventurous little eater

Amazing village church. Everyone takes their shoes off everywhere in Southeast Asia so there are piles of shoes wherever you go!

The boys checking out a village pig while a village lady checks them out ;)

LOVED these sweet ladies, my sisters in Christ.

This is a Tuk Tuk and how we got around most of the time. Its basically a motorcycle with an attached trailer.

Awesome Times at the House of Grace

 We just spent the last two weeks at the House of Grace in Nan province- North-east Thailand. The House of Grace is a children’s home that takes in kids who live in remote villages where they have no chance to get an education. The kids live in the house 10 months of the year and go to school at the local public school. There were 35 kids in the house from ages 7-18. The house is run by an amazing Thai Christian family who disciple and care for the kids. We had an amazing time here and fell in love with all the kids! Our kids also had a great time because there were lots of toys and fun stuff for them to do. 

Here are the boys playing on the swing-set.

The kids were incredibly hard working and industrious here. They all knew how to cook over open fires and had many other skills. Here are a few boys cooking up some mystery meat over the fire! (There is a lot of mystery meat in Thailand!!!)

Thailand is a land of dogs! I have never seen so many dogs in my life! Jonny loves them all, but this dog Rambo was particularly special to Jonny boy.

I wish I could have gotten better pics of the property, but there were chickens and chicks running around everywhere- dogs, cats, you name it! There was also an open drain that the kids thought was very cool! The kids really did have a blast here!

Our team ran a discipleship class for the kids each evening. Here we are on the last night praying for the students.

Here are some of the girls reading from the sourceview bible (the one that is broken into 4 speaking parts- its very fun to read aloud!)

Even though our kids can't speak Thai they had a lot of fun playing with the kids. There was always someone interested in entertaining the "farang" kids (Thai term for foreigner)!

Here I am shredding a coconut with one of the girls. Holy smokes, this is a lot of work! We are so spoiled that we can afford to just buy shredded coconut in the store in the West!

One of our main activities during the day was to go around to the local public schools and teach English. This was an incredible opportunity to share the gospel. These schools are all buddhist schools but we were able to openly share the Good News and pray for the students in each class simply because we were teaching English! My partner Thaisa and I taught the students the Bible story of the Good Shepherd. We taught vocabulary from the story and then read the story to the students in English with Thai translation. We then explained the story and I would often share my testimony, giving a clear salvation message. We ended each class with prayer and then were able to hand a Thai children’s tract to each child at the end.

This was such an AMAZING opportunity to share the gospel and plant seeds in the lives of hundreds of kids who have likely never heard the gospel before. I am still shocked that we were able to do this in a public school. The teachers and students were so thankful to have us there. It was an experience I will never forget. Here are some more pictures from our two weeks in Nan.

Thaisa and I teaching English :)

Before we would split up into classes to teach English we would get to do a general assembly with the kids where we would sing Christian songs, perform a drama, and share testimonies. Here they are praying after a testimony time.

Ki-Wook sharing a testimony with our wonderful translator Lim :)

We have just recently moved down to central eastern Thailand in preparation for crossing into a new nation. This nation is communist and closed to the gospel or evangelism so I will not be able to post while we are there. Jody and I will also have to temporarily close our Facebook accounts to avoid being recognized as missionaries. We will be back in Thailand at the beginning of March and my plan is to write a few posts while we are away and post them once we are back in Thailand. Please be in prayer for our team that we would be able to usher the presence of God into this nation and encourage the underground believers. Also pray that we would have opportunities to share the Good News. We are allowed to talk about our faith if the conversation is initiated by the person we are talking to, so we are praying that we would have lots of these types of opportunities!

Thank you all for your continued support and prayer! Please keep praying for us as we are feeling the weariness that comes from moving around all the time. We know that God is moving and we are so excited to continue to do his work here in Southeast Asia, but we need prayer covering that “we don’t grow weary in doing good.” Love to you all!!!

A Thai snake! The boys loved finding this!!! Not poisonous ;)

We got to attend the Church of the family who runs the children's home. It was a wonderful time of fellowship. I love praising God with an international body of Christ!!!

Christian is an 18 year old Brazilian on our team and our kids adore him! He is a big help to us :) 

Every time we take the kids out there is an inevitable "Asian Swarm" that will begin to form!

Jody making friends with the locals :)

The boys get fed treats everywhere they go! They have come to expect it, which is something we need to continually remind them about! Don't ask for treats, we tell them, but they always end up being given something anyways!!!

Bible Distribution!!!

Hello again from Chiang Rai- the most northern province of Thailand! We have just completed a week and a half of bible distribution here and it has been amazing! This blog will mostly be pictures with stories because there is just too much to tell and I will end up writing a novel! Plus, a picture really is worth a thousand words ;) I will be showing some pictures of one of the children's homes we went to. There are many children's homes in Thailand and they are usually run by local Thai Christians and are funded by western support. The homes are set up for children who are from remote Thai villages where there are no schools and the families are quite poor (poor in money, but live off of the land and in a communal way). They live in the children's home for most of the year so that they can go to local schools. Some of the children are also orphans and have been taken in by whoever runs the home. This one was lovely. The children were so happy and kind and you can really tell that the staff loves the children and do an amazing job of running the facility. We went with another team from Brazil to do dramatic performances and share testimonies. We also spent a lot of time just hanging out with the kids and eating meals with them.

Because Jonny-Boy is just sooooo cute ;) He is 2.5 now and is loving his time here. Although, he does get very overwhelmed by the swarms of Thai kids and adults who love him because he is white and huuuuge for Thai standards! So we often have to carry him around when there are large crowds around! But he is adapting so well over all.

Here is our team plus the Brazil team and all the kids with face painting and balloon animals that we did during a fun fair in the afternoon.

We stayed at a YWAM base in Chiang Rai and the base leaders had a 5 year old son. He and Asa became fast friends and played together from sun up until sun down the whole time we were there. Here are the boys being our spiritual warriors as we went out and delivered bibles from home to home.

Here we are distributing bibles at a high school right around the corner from the base. This is a public school in a Buddhist nation yet we were allowed to come here and preach the gospel of Jesus and hand out bibles!!!

These are our teams standing at the back of the auditorium waiting to give out over 500 bibles!!! Thank you so much to all who contributed to the purchasing of these bibles.

This is Asa with one of the high school students who just received her bible. After all of the students where out of the assembly you could see many of them sitting around reading it. So amazing! We continue to pray that the word of God would go deep into the hearts of these students.

A group of 250 elementary students holding up their new bibles!!!

The next 3 photos are from when we did evening bible distribution in the local neighbourhood. The goal of the YWAM base leader is to see a bible in every home in the province of Chaing Rai! The bible that they have chosen for this project is the Thai Source View bible. More information on this cool bible can be found here https://www.facebook.com/sourceviewthai/, but the basic idea of the source view bible is that it divides the text of the bible into four different speaking parts instead of chapters. This makes the scripture come alive, especially for oral cultures. The speaking parts are colour-coded into four colours and the colours are dispursed between the houses in a neighbourhood. The hope is that neighbours would get together and read the bible aloud. This is something that seems so foreign in the west, but it is really happening here in Thailand!!! Each time we would deliver a bible we would show a short video clip in Thai on our phone that explains how this bible works. We would then ask people if we could pray for blessing or if they needed prayer for healing. We saw SO many people healed during this time! I will share one short story of healing. One of the teams went to a home and after giving out the bible they asked if he had any pain in his body (this is all done through a script on our smart phones since none of us speak Thai! Google translate is an amazing tool!). The man said that he had pain in his shoulder. So the team prayed. He said the pain went from a 10 to a 6 so the team said "lets pray again!" They prayed a few more times and each time he was surprised to report that the pain got less and less. They prayed one final time and he said the pain was gone! He then began to rotate his shoulder, which he could not do at all before. A huge smile went from ear to ear as he realized he could rotate his shoulder completely without pain and the he could raise his arm above his head. He began speaking excitedly in Thai and swinging his arm around and around. The team shared that it was Jesus who healed him and that he can learn more about him in the bible that we just gave him. He was so thrilled and amazed at what God had done!!! Watch a video of the healing here: https://youtu.be/vvG7-ao6W9M

Sohee giving a bible to a precious mother and daughter.

Ki-Wook showing the Thai video explaining how the bible is to be read among neighbours.

Here is our team along with the Brazil team and the staff of the Chiang Rai base. We had such a wonderful time together! A funny thing about our time together was how many languages were being spoken. The Brazil team spoke mostly Portuguese with only a few people who could speak English. And none of the Thai staff spoke Portuguese so there were many times when Portuguese was being translated into English which was then translated into Thai! I love that my kids are getting to hear so many different languages and meet people from all over the world.

On one of our days off we got to go on an elephant ride!!! It was such a special experience for our family. The boys loved it and did so great. Jody has made a video and we are just uploading it to youtube now so we will share the link when it is available :)

Ki-Wook is an awesome photographer so we are blessed to have some really great pictures to share :)

Bless you my friends! Please continue to pray for all of the homes that have received bibles. Pray that God would move mightily among them and reveal himself through his word. Thank you again so much to those who contributed to the purchasing of the bibles. We couldn't have done this without your support. Please know that it is making an eternal difference!