The First Half of Our Mission Trip :-)

LST, Interns, and Chinese students at our missionary's home for dinner.

Kate holding a thai baby in church.

Starting out hike into the mountains for morning spiritual equipping.

Thai Jungle Shot

Two of our church members receiving their engagement gift from us.

One of our english students named Palm :-)

At the bottom of the 200 foot cave where we had our prayer/praise devotional.

Some of our students from China, Ivy and Iris!!

Sunday Night Walking Street Market

One of my favorite students named Golf!  She ran into us at the night market!

Our Hollywood party with the church and our students

The Spice Girls

Our students with the interns from Abilene Christian University

Christine and Palm at the Hollywood Party

Thursday night Cell Group dinner before devotional

Last breakfast with Pep Team 1

Trying to climb up the water hill 

The troops at the bottom of the waterfall! Epic! Bum is the best.

The view from the walking waterfall!!

Brianna, "Bless your hearrrt."  We only travel by truck bed haha

We were craving Mexican food.  It had to happen.

We might have stolen P-Bum's puppies for one night.  Don't tell the missionary or we're dead.

LST Beach Party!! Woo!!!

Saying goodbye to Brianna and Christine at Chiang Mai International Airport.  The end of the first half of our trip.  Such a great time!

Man, it's been an insane, but incredible three weeks...  My brain is melted and my soul is exhausted but intrigued by the awesome power of God working in Thailand.  During our long, but beautiful, reading sessions, God has definitely shown me how His Spirit is working in the seeds in the hearts of those we're reading with.  I've quickly written down a few statements from some of our readers when they were either asked to explain the story they had just read or had a question:

"God gave Jesus power and let the dead man Lazarus have life again." ~Seven

When asked to use the word "glorious" in a sentence: "The Spirit came down like a dove. It was 'glorious'." ~Seven

When asked to explain the word, "forgive": "God has power to forgive people and help them be born again." ~John

"Jesus is the lamb of God" ~Iris

"Jesus is th eone who gives eternal life and God is our Shepherd who looks after us and cares about us more than others" ~Seven

"I want to learn to serve God as my Master." ~Seven

"So sad that Jesus dies. So so sad..." ~Iris

"Jesus is Son of God and devil is 'the worst' [thing] or evil." ~Yai

Her example for the word, 'study' was, "I study Bible" ~So

When we prayed many months ago for God to be working in the hearts and lives and minds of all of the readers that He would bring to us when we got to Thailand, we never could have fathomed that He was doing all of this.  May His Kingdom be expanded and His name forever praised!  Thank you all for your continued prayers and support!  A new update soon!  

A Wild Ride So Far!

So, we hopped on our plane in LA, took off for Tokyo, spent a night in Bangkok, and finally landed in good ol' Chiang Mai, Thailand the next day.  We've met our missionary, Robert Reagan, and his apprentice, Mark Foster, as well as his two summer interns from Abilene Christian, Julianna and Fish :-)  It's an unbelievable team!  Are we exhausted?  oh you betcha.  Are we loving the thai people, culture, and food? bahaha yes!  have we made slight fools of ourselves already and wonder how we ever managed to graduate college? oh...oh yes... many times.

It wasn't 12 hours after we got off our international flight that we held our info meeting for the local thai people who had come to the Christian Zone after we everyone had been passing out flyers around the area. We told them who we were and that we were offering free english lessons with the Bible and about 20 people signed up with us that night.

We spent the weekend at a lake house on a retreat with the missionaries and interns and it was a much needed day of recouping before heading into the business of reading began.  The lake and rain were beautiful!  We had dinner at Robert's house that night and it started to storm so hard that the roads began flooding.  As we drove our truck back through the high street-waters, we picked up a thai man along with his wife and young daughter who were soaked out in the storm.  They climbed in the back of the truck with us as the water was starting to come in near our feet, and he said in broken english, "i am a pastor..." and we all looked at him with wide eyes and I thought to myself, "incredible...what are the odds that we'd drive by his struggling family in this terrible storm?"  The odds I suppose are God's odds.  He takes care of His children, indeed.

At church on sunday, three or four churches from all over Chiang Mai that Robert and Sean had planted over the years came together for a larger worship and potluck day.  Incredible!  We started reading with our readers today and it was awesome to begin sharing our lives and our faiths with them, some knowing much greater english than others.

My favorite part of today was when my reader named, "Seven" was reading from the first chapter of John and was reading the part where they called Jesus, "Rabbi" but he said in his broken english, "Rabbit" and i had to do everything i could to not bust up laughing. So i bent over my workbook and quietly shook and bit my tongue haha  LOVE SEVEN!!  AND RABBIT!!  So it's been incredible so far.  Humid.  Hilarious.  and downright insane.  God is good and we can't thank Him and you enough.  Enjoy the pictures :-)  

Some Pre-Flight Thoughts

With only 9 days left until our departure to Asia, I'm thinking to myself...Are we insane?!  Who thought this was a good idea? lol  Newly graduated, a thousand times poor, and having no clue how we're going to navigate thai culture once we hit the ground, I'm nothing but a mixture of apprehension and being stoked for the ride haha  It'll be a missionary experience of a lifetime, that's for sure.  No doubt in my mind about THAT part.  God is good. Our team is incredible. and we all have a spirit of faith tangled with adventure that is sure to get us through even the most insane moments together.  Man, the other side of the planet... again.  My brain is exhausted. My soul is ready to go.  My body is craving thai food.  My heart? oh my.  Now THAT i need to leave in America. GO THAILAND 2011!!! Woooo!!!