Hope you brought coffee and a snack

Welp... heres the dl. I'm typing this one on the compy at BK because its gonna be long. Its gonna be awesome though, so check it out.

So, I don't really remember what all i did the Tuesday after we got back from BKK (Bangkok). That was almost two weeks ago. Plus Tuesdays don't generally have that much going on. But that Tuesday i found out that Handclasp has a scooter that had just become available, so i started driving it that night.... and hurt myself almost immediately. For anyone wondering what happened to my pinkie toe, i decided to try and get into a wreck first thing, and after i avoided that thought it would be a good idea to kick a little picketed garden. I should work on my temper a little i guess. :-D but my first night on it i drove pretty well, and am leaning fast. I enjoy it a lot. I even gave Bekah a ride to ST from BK. Yeah its just down the street but it was fun.

Wednesday i woke up and Richard, PiiThumb and i headed out to MaeRim to the juvey. We got there and found out that a local Thai massage school was out for teaching for a week, so we didn't have class. But we had fun out there, and got back early. We met up with the rest of the team to go over the final details of the schedule for the Lake Country team that was coming in.

Other highlights that happened in there, but i don't really remember when: I went and got the motorbike re-insured and legal, which involved driving all the way across town and talking to people who spoke little to no Thai, but it was a fun and learning experience. And at some point in there we (Da3, meaw, ekk, and carrie) all went out for the night on scooters. So i was driving around with people on the back. But i bring that up because we found the best Rotee that i have had in Chiang Mai. It was awesome, and i learned how to get gas in Thailand. Sounds like a no brainer but there are small differences, like specifying that you want 91 octane at the pump, not just what point you are using. Anyways, back to the other stuff.

Thursday, we woke up, and Da3 caught a songteaw out to the airport to meet up with the LCCS team. To give you a lil background on who they are: LCCS stands for Lake Country Christian Schools. Its a K-12 christian school from somewheres in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. The team was 17 kids from 14-18 who decided to raise money and give up their spring break to go work. So we got them out of the airport and went straight from there to Dr. Noodle, a nicer lil resturaunt near BK and had some lunch and orientation. We decieded to skip out on the smog and heat, and went from there on over to the Green Palace to check them into their hotel rooms, then met up with them around 5:30 to go out to HueyGeaw waterfall. (side not to those from the SBU teams: we did not go all the way up to the part where we did our orientation. It was acutally the water fall you could see from the resturaunt that we ate at the first day last year) There we had a little more orientation and spontaneous prayer and singing time. And then walked down to Huen Huey Geaw, a resturaunt that overlooks the water fall we were up playing at. By this point the whole team consited of zombies. So we took them back to the hotel.

Friday morning i woke up at 5 am. now im not much of a morning person, but OSU was playin OU in the Big 12 Championship, so i got to see them win the important game. it was awesome. in the process i managed to lay the scooter over. No i didnt hurt myself again, and the scooter was fun. But i did. And even got to see the whole game before i went to meet up with the team. We split up into four teams, and headed out in songteaws to do the "Cultural Scavenger Hunt" and had a blast wandering about the old city. Highlights from that trip included meeting a monk that looked like he could hang with any MMA fighter you wanted to put him agianst, walking through the raw meat market at Chiang Mai Gate Market, eating fun fruits including Dragon Fruit and Durien (which lived up to its smelly rep), me kicking a piece of concrete with my busted pinkie toe and bleeding all over Kad Luan (Warorot Market), and eating fried up insects (whirly gigs, silk worms, crickets, and mole crickets), and meeting a drunk Thai guy who gave all the boys hugs and welcomed us to Thailand (this was before lunch). That lasted till around 2, then the team met up at GP (green palace) where we parted ways for a bit. The team went out to Agape House, which is an Orphanage/Foster home for babies and children that are HIV positive. Da3 stayed behind to get ready for Fantastic Friday. And by get ready, i took a nap :-D. But then rearranged BK and cleared out the inside so we could all fit.. We played some icebreaker games once the team got there, then they taught everyone how to linedance, and all in all it was a blast. And we had an awesome turnout, we even managed to have more Thai people with us than we had farang, so that was even more exciting. It was even so much fun, that noone wanted to leave, but the Highschoolers had to get some rest, so once they left, so did most of the rest.

Woke up on Saturday, and met my new students (at the time they were mine and Lili's, but now they are just mine cause she picked up another class). Their names are Thai and Chai, a bf and gf couple, but they are a lot of fun. So we went through class, and then Glenn and Janet took Da3 on out to House of Blessing. HoB is an orphanage about 30 min away from CM. They are mostly hill tribe kids, but when we got out there, half the team was playing, the other half was split paiting and then clearing out a spot of land in the back to make a garden. So Lili played, Bekah painted and played, I went back and helped with the garden. I didnt really check out the painting, but we cleared out a good sized area and broke up the soil. By then the older boys there were doing most of it, they really got into it, and mixed in the the soil we bought with the soil that was there. We worked til about mid afternoon, then packed up and headed back to GP and ST to shower and get ready for the evening. We left GP and headed to a small park inside the moat where we layed out mats, tossed the football and frizbee around (both ended up in the ponds at one point or another), but more importantly met up with our friends from BK ate pizza and got to hang out some more. We really got to show the team how important relationship building is to what we are doing here. We also were going to sing a couple of songs, which turned out to be quite a few songs because our friend PiiSinn showed up and volunteered to play guitar for us. He is an increadable player.

After the team left, Da3 three and friends went out to the Saturday Night Walking Street, wich was a lot of fun exept that we ended up losing Dew. But it was fun to hang out with with everyone. Another one of the girls we taught out at North CMU has started hanging out with us, she came to BK with us for the first time that friday night, and also came to the park and walking street with us, as well as Ken, Dew, Palm, Carrie, Ekk, PiiSinn, Ray and Ham. After walking street, headed home to get some rest.

Woke up Sunday morning and met up with the team at GP, loaded up and went back out to HoB. HoB is a Christian based orphanage, so they do worship every Sunday and we got to join in with them. It's hard to explain the feeling of worshiping God in a language you don't even understand. it was so much fun, very charismatic wich was even more fun, and it was awesome that these highschoolers got to experience it like that. After a little part of worship, the kids all leave for Sunday School, which the team got to teach this day. They did a great job acting parables of Christ. The kids and the team both had a lot of fun. We ate lunch (which was amazing btw, even had some nice and ripe mango. So Goood!), then played with the kids a little more. The hard part was watching the team say goodbye to the kids. It was really moving. Especially when PiiOom (i'll talk more on him later) got everyone together and we made a huge circle holding hands with each other and the kids and PiiOom prayed over and blessed the team.

We headed home then and got changed a little, and loaded back up so the team could go to the Sunday Night Walking Street. For those of you who dont know, there are two main places to get cool suveneir type stuff (at least according to me, you make make a case for a third at Kad Luan, but i still say these are the main two). One is the Night Bazaar, its basically a flood of tourist and vendors that are trying to rip of the tourist by over charging. That place is fun because the haggling is over huge discounts, i love it. But the Sunday Night Walking Street (the saturday night one is a smaller version of the same thing, even less tourists and not so crowded) started a few years ago to encourage entrepenourship among the Thai people around here, so its all mostly all handmade items, all of it really cool, and most of it uniquely northern Thai. We shopped there from like 5:30 til 8ish. It was fun to walk around with the groups, and just look more closely at stuff i would usually pass by. I also had two guys in my group that put all the girls on the trip to shame in their shoppin ability. Then the team met up and left, i stayed behind to meet up with more friends at Wawee coffee there, hung out with them for a while, and then headed on home.

Monday we woke up and went over to the Cumming's House. This is literally a family's home here that they have started a foster home out of. They have been doing this for a few years, and are building a new larger facility that they can live out of and not have to worry about rent going up on. Again i will go into the Cumming's story a little later. But the girls played with the kids that were there, and also sanded and repainted some of the play equipment they have there. The guys headed out to the land the Cummings are getting and we started laying out a hedge. They weren't allowed to put up a wall along their property line to keep people out, so they decided on a more natural approach. And i say started 'cause we got the plants all layed out, but when we started diggin, it was all dried clay, so going was excruciatingly slow. But we got a good amount done, and then headed to Grace to clean up and swim, then to dinner and sweet resturaunt called like Jungle something. But it has the coolest bathrooms in the world, and thats not an exageration. And then went home and on to bed.

On Tuesday, i was feeling it a little bit so i was slow in the morning, and almost missed my ride out to the elephant camp. That turned out to be an amazing time, we watched the same show that we watched the first time we went out there a month ago, but it was a lot of fun with a bunch of highschoolers. Then they all went out on elephant rides, i didnt feel like paying for another ride, so i hung back and ate, as did Brooke, so it was fun to chat with her a little bit about her time here. Then the team got back, went to the souvenier shop, then we walked a ways back in to the nursuery, and got to see a tiny lil baby which ate Bekah's key chain. That was sadly funny. We loaded up then and went to Huay Tueng Teaw (i just butchered the spelling there, sorry), the reseviour lake that has the little huts on it to eat luch. hung out there for a couple of hours, i ended up actually falling asleep in one of the huts. It was nice. We headed from there on back to BK and met up with Rob and Jordan to do some spiritual mapping. That ended up being really good, because it gave the team an opportunity to participate in something that they can easily keep track of and later see the results and say,"hey, i got to help with that process." Afterwards we went and ate Moo gra ta, which is where the put coals under a peice of tin and you cook your food yourself. They had a lot of fun with that. I feel like we went and did something after that.... the team went to bed. Maybe i did too. i dont remember. Wait, now i do, i went home and that was th night that it rained. It was beautiful. I love thunderstorms and didnt think i would get to see any this spring.

Wednesday, the boys woke up at 5 to go get a head start on the hedge. I slept in :-D. But i slept in and went with Quintin and PiiThumb out to the juvey. Quintin took us out there because Richard was the one in charge of the team so he was with them. Things didnt go quite as planned though. We got out to the jail, walked all the way back to the building we teach in, and found out that KruDucit was not there at all. Which was a bit dissapointing. We asked the kids if they wanted to just sit outside and learn some English anyways, and they said no. But that was when the awesome started. They said they still wanted to hear the story that PiiThumb was going to tell this week. Well he had planned on telling the story of Cain and Abel, and he got all of a minute into it when a couple of the older boys started asking questions, and basically PiiThumb layed out the gospel for about 45 minutes straight. I had a little trouble keeping up with it, ya know cause it was in Thai, but they kept asking questions and just drinking it all up. It was soo awesome to be there for. So that was a bit of a high. We left there and I went to eat lunch before i met up Glenn for our coffee time, then the two of us went to BK for Kanoon Club. I hung out there with peoples, and then went and grabbed dinner and met my other new student. Ill be teaching her on wednesday nights at 7. We went through our first lesson, it was fun, then i left BK and headed to the Night Bazaar to meet up with the team, only got to be there with them for a bit, because they were leaving at 9, but i had some Chicken McNuggets, it was good. Then Da3 and some of our friends went on over to ST because it was going to be an early morning, so Ken, Ken, and Ket all spent the night.

We woke up 5 on Thursday. Met up with the team, and went to see the Monk parade up by Huey Geaw waterfall, and let the team have some debreifing time with PiiKim Ratliff. Then we went on up the mountain to Wat Phra Tat Doi Suthep so the team could see it. Spent about an hour there, then went back to GP to check them out of the hotel and eat our last meal together, which was at Miguel's Mexican resturaunt. It was a great place to say goodbye, then took them to the airport and waited till they got all their luggae and such checked in, said out last good byes, and then left them. I went home and napped, then woke up and we met up with Palm who was one of our students at North for her birthday. Some of her friends came with us, including Where who we also taught North. We had some snackish sweet stuff at a resturaunt, then went back BK where we ordered pizza and watched part of a movie, and just hung out and talked. It was great fun and plus Where has started hanging out with us a little more now.

Friday i woke up and started running errands. I got a 15 meter monitor cable so that we can more easily use the projector at BK, then worked on the computer downloading pictures, music from my Ipod, and making up a little slide show to show at Fantastic Friday. Rob and i also hung out for a few hours playing Wii upstairs in his and Jordan's place. That was awesome. Then got everything (as far as slideshow and music) going for FF to start. The original plan was to go to a nearby court and play some BBall and Frisbee, but about that time it started to rain again. So we scrambled for a new plan and Rob brought down the Wii and we played Mario and Sonic Olympics. It was actually increadably fun. We did a little tournement thing and competed against each other. Then about 10 something, Rob, Brit (Brooke's little brother who came over for his spring break) and i walked downt to Mike's to get some burgers, then walked back and went upstairs to watch OSU play TN. That was a blast.

Saturday I woke up early and met with Thai and Chai again, went through the lesson thing, then went to Lotus to do some shopping. After i got back to ST i was worn thin, and i layed down on my bed and didnt move til about 630, at which time i met up with Da3, Dew, Palm, Where, Ekk, Brooke and Brit, and we all went out to a buffet by the river to eat some dinner. It was a great little spot, and we enjoyed just chillin and spending some time together. After we ate, i left the main group and went to The North Gate to meet up with some other friends to listen to live jazz.. That was fanTABulous. I love jazz, and those guys tore it up for about 2 hours, and were still going when i left because i had to get up early.

This morning i woke up at 8, called my mother to wish her happy birthday, and ended up getting to talk to my little brother, my dad and my mimi also. That was really nice to say hi to everyone, and a quick praise, it looks like my parents may have finally sold the land. I'll miss the place but they are ready for something smaller. Then i met up with Bekah, Lili, Brooke, Ekk, Brit, Dew, Palm, Where, and then two of Dew's relations, and we all piled into a truck and drove up to a waterfall to have lunch and play. It was a wierd waterfall too because you could walk normal through it. It wasnt slippery at all. But we had so much fun there, I took a load of pics. Then we came back and went to worship at BK, left from there and went to walking street and Ekk and Meaw and I got massages. Then came back here and started typing.

I did take a break long enough to watch OSU hand the game to Pit. dadgummit. But when you get out rebounded 2 to 1 and one of their players gets over 30 pts, 23 of them before halftime.... bah.

Anyways.

As far as prayer requests, I have a couple of em. On is for PiiOom and PiiKat, they are the two that run House of Blessing. They are right now in the process of getting new land and bigger facilities as well. Please be praying for them as they seek the Lord's provision and direction heading into this. Also pray for their kiddos, some of whom get adopted, some grow up in the orphanage and need help paying for education and what not.

At the Cumming's house, they started when Mrs. Cummings was volunteering at a Gov run foster home, where there are just too many kids to workers. So she took on of the kids home because she was sick, and nursed her back to health and eventually adopted her, but now opens her home to take care of the babies and toddlers who are sick in the foster home. They nurse them back to health and work to try and get them adopted. They have been over the past few years had trouble staying in houses because the landlords would raise rent on them after leases were up, so they would find a new place. But now they have had help from a private donor through a foundation, and are joining with a foundation as well so that they can move to this new land. The land itself is already paid for, as is the house that is being built right now, but they are seeking direction as they join this foundation and now start expanding beyond their front door. Pray for them as they are being prodded out of their comfort zone that they would grow in their faith and trust, and follow God's directions even when it isnt exactly what they were planning. Pray for them also as they have teams of voluteers coming over to help with the kids they have that they would have good help and examples coming.

Please also keep Richard, PiiThumb and i in your prayers as we continue to go out to the prison and work, and for Da3 as we go out and continue to meet new people and make contacts around CM for Baan Kanoon and Handclasp.

Pray also for the LCCS team as they are starting up school again, that they would get over jet lag quickly, but also that they would not forget all that they did, and that they would be sensative to the Holy Spirit as they proccess through everything they saw and did while they were here.

Also please be in prayer for BK as in two months now more than half of the staff will be taking off for the states. Pray for Rob and Jordan as they are going through language so that they will be ready to take care of things and take over once the Ratliffs, Newcombs, and Neills head out.

Thank you so much for your prayer support as well as for keepin up with me as im over here.

Maybe ill get some pictures or videos up in the next couple weeks.... latras, and love yáll