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! 

We made it to Thailand!

Greetings from Thailand! I can't believe we have made it here! It really still feels surreal. As we flew into the Chiang Mai airport Jody and I both commented on how similar the landscape is to the Fraser Valley! There is a big forested mountain that looks just like the Sumas mountain in between Chilliwack and Abbotsford. So in one weird sense we feel like we are in a familiar place, but then in many other ways, we are clearly far from home! Neither Jody or I have ever left North America, so this is pretty amazing for us.

Here are my first impressions of Thailand. This place is filled with beauty! There are amazingly ornate temples and Buddhist decorations everywhere. There is so much colour everywhere and always something interesting to look at. The people are also so wonderful here. Everyone loves to say hi to us- especially because we have the boys, but just because their culture is super friendly. There are also some odd things that we westerners have had to adjust to! If you've traveled a lot I'm sure you'll laugh at me for some of these, but that's ok! Number one is the squatty potty! The first time Asa saw one was in the Tokyo airport and he was absolutely thrilled and said he wanted to pee in it- boys will be boys! I have actually yet to use one because the house we're staying in has regular toilets, but I'm sure my time will come. Next is the Tuk Tuk. We haven't actually been in a true tuk tuk yet, but that is what we call them and I forget the real  name. They are basically a truck with seats put in the back and an awning put on top. This is how we have gotten everywhere so far. Here is our team in the tuk tuk:
 

It's amazing how many people can fit into one of these things. On our way home from the airport we also stacked all of our luggage on the roof! We must have been quite the sight to see driving through town. I definitely have to pray every time I get into one because there are so many western safety rules being broken in these things. But the drivers so far have been very good so that puts me at ease a bit.

So far our times of prayer and ministry have been so rich and wonderful. I really sense God's heart to move in this land and touch the hearts of the Thai people. On our first day we had an orientation from the long term missionary who runs the house that we are currently staying in (which is beautiful I might add- such a blessing!). His name is Len and he is such a passionate South African man doing the will of God here in Thailand. He briefed us on many things about Thai culture. One of the saddest things that  I learned is that nearly 100% of the women and girls here have been sexually abused but because of the honour/shame culture it is rarely talked about. Thai's are all about saving face and putting on an exterior that is peaceful and pleasant and all put together. This is a beautiful part of their culture because they truly are kind and gentle people, but it can also be very harmful as things like sexual abuse can just continue on without ever being addressed.



On our first full day we went to the site of this and several other Buddhist temples. We came and handed out tracts and Thai bibles and just hung out with people. Len informed us that tracts are one of the most common ways that people come to faith in Jesus in Thailand. Many have never even heard of Jesus and if they have they assume that Christianity is the religion of the west. The saying goes here that to be Thai is to be Buddhist, so there is often a mental block in the minds of Thai's when it comes to Jesus. Every time we met with someone and began talking and handing out Thai tracts they were always so happy that we gave them something in their own language. After we left we would look back and see almost every person deeply enthralled reading the tract. I gave one to an elderly woman and her husband and in her very limited English she communicated to me, "No, no, we're Buddhist." But I communicated to here with actions and a few Thai words, "Yes, Jesus loves Buddhists!" She looked very surprised and began reading it!

We learned a lot about contextualization of the gospel in our last two weeks of classes in Kona. It was such a good reminder that Jesus has already been at work in every culture, nation and people group and that he created culture as a beautiful thing. All cultures have strengths and weaknesses and the goal of evangelism is not to make western disciples, but to make Jesus known among the nations in a way that makes sense to each culture. It's much less about making converts as it is about introducing people to the God who has loved them and wanted a relationship with them all along. We do this by being the aroma of Christ here in Thailand, or wherever we go. It is to be a sweet smelling aroma of love, grace, healing , and truth- not one of arrogance and judgement or condemnation. Of course this doesn't mean that we water down the gospel or present a picture that you can be both a Buddhist and a Jesus follower. Jesus is very clear that he is "the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the father except through the Son," but to become a follower of Jesus doesn't mean that you have to abandon your Thai culture or heritage.

I know this probably sounds very strange to those of you who don't follow Jesus. It probably seems even stranger that we lugged our family accross the world to tell people about Jesus. But we're compelled by the love of God that has the power to heal and restore all that is broken and hurting in this world. No true Christ follower will ever force the love of God or force a conversion on anyone- that is so far from the Character and nature of God. But we know that there are those in Thailand and in many parts of the world who have never heard of the life giving message of Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection to life that has the power to reconcile us to God, taking all of our bad choices, sin, bad karma and cast them all away forever, restoring us to right relationship with God, who fills us with peace, joy, and true love in the Spirit.

For those of you who are praying people, please pray for all of those who have received tracts in the last couple of days. Pray that the word of God would plant deeply in their hearts and that they would encounter the love of God in powerful ways. I am so full of expectation for what God is doing here in Thailand- and this is only my second day here!  Christian, be encouraged!!! We serve a mighty God who is alive and active on the earth today. Jesus says in revelation 3:20 "Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends."

Now for some pics :)



Here is Asa at his Christmas party where he and his adorable class performed to "Mele Kelikimaka" with a little hula dance. He learned so much in foundation school and is doing so well here in Thailand. He loves to pray and so does Jonathan :)





Here is our team (everyone but the kids) at our love feast- a special meal that we all shared together before being sent out in teams to the nations. These people are seriously amazing!!!



Because everyone needs a cute pic of a baby taking the bath in the sink ;)



On our last day of class we were taught by Danny Lehman who is a long time YWAMer and highly sought after speaker. He had a crazy past of drugs and alcohol abuse before he came to Jesus and Jody has been super inspired by him and his ministry.




Here is our team at a local Thai restaurant on our first night here. We were all delirious from jet lag, but it was amazing to have super delicious and cheap Thai food! It is very common here to eat out most of the time because the food is so inexpensive. Most Thai homes don't even have kitchens. We can eat out and feed our whole team for just over $10US :)