"The Kingdom of Heaven Belongs To Such As These"

God has been so faithful to answer our prayer of meeting new contacts once touching down in Thailand. Last Sunday we met a couple that has lived her for 3 years who works with orphanages and children's homes around Chaing Mia. This past Saturday the couple took us to one of the orphanages they've been working with. I'm not sure if any of you have ever visited an orphanage in another country before but it is an experience one could NEVER forget.

I'm so glad that these little one's have a special place in God's heart. Matthew 19:14 " Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

It has taken me a few days of processing to be able to write about what we saw and got to be apart of. To be honest, it was emotionally and spiritually exhausting but also wonderful and intoxicating at the same time. We met children that ranged in ages from 6-16 who were absolutely a joy. When we arrived they greeted us with big smiles and hugs. They immediately brought us water and chairs to sit on. Their hospitality caught me off guard a little. Paxton of course loved it because he had playmates. This particular home houses 30 children. When you see the picture of the outside you will wonder how so many people live in this home. Well, they have segregated the bedrooms and have put at least 7 to each room. Some rooms have more. Their beds are mere mats that lay on a concrete floor right next to each other. They have a few sets of clothing a piece and are given shoes. Every child goes to school and works in the rice fields that provide the home with food and income. This particular home houses only tribal children. This is important because the Thai government doesn't recognize tribal people as citizens. They are given NO rights which means they are given no government funding. This home depends on what it can grow itself and what outside donors contribute. The house mom and dad are christian and have been teaching the children about Christ. They get some donations from second hand clothing stores and recycling shops but other than that they are on their own.

After visiting the children that were at the home the house dad took us to see the other children working out in the rice fields harvesting the grain. I know that before this journey, when I thought of rice, I thought of white pre-packaged grain but these kids grow it start to finish. They plant it, cut it, harvest it, separate it and haul it at least half a mile down a dirt trail to be taken to the home where they live. The house dad told us that each bag of rice weighs 50lbs. They do all of this through out the heat of the day. The part that surprised me the most was how much joy radiated from these children as they worked. They seemed healthy and happy to be working. They sang and laughed as they rhythmically went about their job.

I hope that through these photo's you can see and understand the raw emotions we felt as we witnessed these children in their day to day.

Setting Up A Home Away From Home

Over the past few weeks we have had many meetings where we have gained a perspective on what it will take to set up a home here in Chaing Mia. We have discussed with several missionaries living here and some local Thai citizens the cost of living. We have researched markets, grocery stores, clothing stores, appliance shops, furniture stores etc.... The city has a variety to choose from and is large so finding what you need for a home can get very complicated. We met with the Foltz family a few days ago for lunch to ask about their ministry with Campus crusade and about their time spent here in Thailand. One of the first things they advised of us was to come here and rent a home that is already furnished. They said that it will take months to learn the city and the stores that will give decent prices for merchandise needed (post pans, bedding, appliances and so on). They also said for us to stay here long term we needed to understand that the Thai people didn't expect us to live exactly like them, so when moving here we needed to rent a place with a western toilet and a stove. You see, most Thia's don't have stoves in their kitchens because they prefer to eat out. Thai cuisine is so inexpensive that you can eat out for less than you can cook a meal (most of the time. There are exceptions). The Foltz family said they have seen many an expat move here and try to "live" like a Thai only to end up moving home after a couple of years. They told us that if we want to be here for the long run than we should invest in a few things from home. I thought it was good insight that would only come from the wisdom of someone who has been here and done it! We are not naive to the fact that once we do move there will still be a learning curve but our meetings have given us wisdom for the future.

A pictures worth 1000 words

We have many more pictures to post. Please be patient with us it takes FOREVER to post pictures. HOpe you enjoy these for now!


If you look to your left, in this picture you will see the outside of a temple. There are many temples in the city. We have visited several and I will post pic's of that soon.

Benny, Pax and I using the public transit to get to a meeting.

This is a picture of the first place we stayed. This is one of several cottages that Juniper Tree offers missionary families who come to Thailand.

Paxton loved the planes (when he wasn't riding in them) :)

Update from Thailand

It’s almost two in the morning here and I’m wide awake. I thought that I had for the most part gotten over the time difference but for some reason tonight I just can’t get to sleep. It could have something to do with the cup of coffee that I had around four in the afternoon, the fact that in the morning we will be moving into the house that we will be staying for the rest of our trip, or how excited I am over the meeting that I had this afternoon. Needless to say I am up and probably for a while. I found out some exciting news this afternoon in regards to us getting long term visas to stay in Thailand. I met with a guy to discuss what it is going to take organizationally to stay long term in Thailand and we started discussing the usual; form a foundation, start a business, or get a missionary visa. All of which will require significant amounts of time and money and some are much less stable than others, i.e. business and missionary visas. What was exciting about our meeting was that he said we could for the first two years bring a team under the umbrella of his foundation while we learned the language and decided exactly what platform would best fit our goals. Then if we decided to start our own foundation or business we would have a much greater understanding of how things work in Thailand with much less risk or we may be able to form a partnership at the end of that time. Needless to say that is exciting news for us as we are trying to set up a long term team. I thank God that he puts the right people in our paths at the right time. It’s encouraging for me that on paper I’m not “qualified” to be here, yet God continues to provide and establish us here through relationships. I want to thank all of you for your prayers and support and look forward to what God has planned.

Benny

Communication is Key

Today we have been in Thailand for 4 days and have already seen how frustrating the lack of communication with the Thai can be. The Thia's are so kind and want nothing more than to please you but not being able to communicate is just hard. I have wanted many times to tell the lady that brought us our food how much we appreciate her or the man that drives us how greatful we are but all I can say is thank you. Benny and I have tried many times to say more or ask questions and they just don't understand what we are saying. It reminded me of the Tower of Babel. First of all, how genius was it for God to confuse their language to make them obey because if you can't communicate with someone not much can be accomplished. So there was NO tower being built when no one could work together to get it done. Secondly, how sad it is to look another human being in the eyes and want terribly to love on them with words but have NO way of doing that. Sure there is body language but that only goes so far before people are confused or give up. We have learned that learning the language is imperative to our ministry here. This country is in terrible need for Christ but we need the right tools (language) to do that. We look forward to moving here and enrolling in language school!!

That was on my heart today and I wanted to share. I hope all of you are doing well! We have several appointments this week so I will update you on how those go.

Much Love

The WEE Hours of the morning

So it is approximately 3 am in the morning here and YES we are up...And when I say we I do mean me and Paxton. He woke up about an hour ago bright eyed and bushy tailed. I will confess I was awake too but not wanting to do anything but lay in bed and fall back asleep. Now I am listening to the little guy play in the floor. I know its technically only day 3 but sleeping through the night again would be great :). Hopefully that day comes soon.

We went to a market yesterday called Carre For. It is like a wal-mart/ target. It had everything you could imagine. I fell in love. Now I know where to do all my major shopping. Ladies I know you can appreciate the gravity behind that. :)

I have also fallen in love with Thai people. They are so kind. Every where we go Thai women coming practically running up to Pax to play with him and love on him. Of course he loves the attention. You just get a soft spot when others show your child so much love. We will try and post pic's soon.

Much love
THe Story's

We Made It!!!

We made it! We have been here one day so far, which has been a total blur do to sleep deprivation, but the country is beautiful and the people are very kind. I’ll start by telling you a little bit about our flights over. First let me say the “Big Guy” is great and answered a lot of prayers for us along the way. We woke up at 4am Tuesday morning and began our journey. Our first flight left out of NWA for Chicago at 6am. It was about 2 hours long and Pax slept the entire way. We had a 3 and ½ hour layover in Chicago, which was fun. We walked the airport, let Pax play and got some food. Just before we were supposed to board the plane for Tokyo, Pax fell asleep. So as we boarded the plane but Benny had to carry both of our back packs, which weighed like 30 pounds apiece, while I carried Pax. When we finally got settled into our seats (which were pretty good seats near the front in Economy plus which just means a few inches of extra leg room) a stewardess came by and asked us if we would like the switch to the bulk head seats in the economy section of the plane. We were so excited because this meant we had 6 inches of extra leg room and a bed for Pax. When we got to our new seats there were four chairs and only one was occupied by a very kind Chinese man. The stewardess said we may get lucky and no one comes to the 4th seat. Well guess what…..We got lucky and had 3 seats for the 12 hour flight to Tokyo plus extra leg room and a bed for the baby!! Oh let me also say that the extra seat we had was the ONLY extra seat on the plane! The “Big Buy” is so good!! This flight was going fairly smoothly until Pax woke up sick. He was running a small fever and threw up a little. Looking back Benny and I think it may have been because he was asleep during takeoff and the pressure in his ears made him sick. We could be totally wrong but he perked up when we got off the plane and his fever went down. Other than a few upset moments from Pax he did a great job! When we arrived in Tokyo we had another 3 hour layover. It was 2:30 in the afternoon in Tokyo but our bodies were telling us it was the middle of the night so we were exhausted. We got some food and let Pax play in one of the play areas in the airport. We also took turns napping . Our next flight to Bangkok was 6 hours long. I don’t remember much about this flight except that it wasn’t crowded at all and we got an entire row of seats (4 chairs) all to ourselves! We took turns lying out across them sleeping. Landing in Bangkok is where things got interesting. Each time we landed in a new place and got off the plane the workers handed us the stroller right as we came out of the plane door but this time there were no workers and it was 11 pm, which to us meant 11 am and TIERDNESS had really set in. So we followed the people down the walk way and onto the bus that transported us to the airport where we were to find our next terminal for our final flight. Our final flight to Chiang Mai wasn’t until 6am the next morning so we had decided we would stay in a hotel next to the airport for the night but we were told we had to pick up our baggage. We were confused because our tickets said our baggage would go straight to Chiang Mai and we really really needed to find our stroller. Naturally we went to the information desk but no one knew what we were asking for so we got sent ALL over the airport. This may not sound too bad but again that meant I was carrying Pax’s tired limp body while Benny had 60 pounds on his back! Finally Benny said lets just get some seats, we will stay here for the night and I’ll go find our stroller. A worker had come by and given us a pamphlet showing some reclining chairs in a quiet wing of the airport for people who had to stay overnight but again NO ONE seemed to know where that was. So for the next 3 hours we rested on some benches waiting for the United Airlines counter to open so that we could ask about our stroller. Pax only slept 2 of those 3 hours so Benny and I watched him play at in a play area for the rest of the time. He started getting very sleepy and fussy so we warmed him some milk but he didn’t want it and began crying louder. At this point every Thai woman we saw came over to check on him. Some even picked him up to play peek a boo with him. They were all very kind and quieted him down. It was 3:30am at this point so Benny said you stay here and I’m going to go see if the counter is open and find our stroller. About 10min later he came back smiling ear to ear but without the stroller so I was confused on what he could be so happy about. He had found the lounge chairs! He took us to them and we rested in comfort while he set out again to find the stroller. I began praying….Please Father the next time I see my husband let him have the stroller in his hands walking toward us. Well guess what, that is EXACTLY what I saw the next time I saw Benny. Again the “Big Guy” delivered in our time of need. There is a long story behind how Benny found it that we will tell you if you ask. But believe me our Father is to be PRAISED! It is now 5am and time get our boarding passes for our final flight!!! We got them, ate some breakfast and waited in the terminal until we boarded the plane. While waiting we met a family from Sweden that has two boys 5 and 3. They work for Torch Bearer’s and do almost the same thing we do in Sweden!! How crazy is that. They are also staying here at Juniper Tree with us. Other than being super tiered we all have been doing well. Pax woke up once in the middle of the night for a couple of hours but went back to sleep until 5 am. Which is great considering the time difference. I think we will all be back on track in just a few days! Thank you so much for all of your prayers. He heard them and answered! We ask that you continue to pray that we acclimate fast to the time change, for our continued health and for Pax. It is extremely hot here so it is going to take some getting used to. We do have air conditioning in our room but it’s an extreme difference when you walk outside. Any ways we hope you all are doing well and Know how much we LOVE AND APPRECIATE YOU! We will post again soon.

A special Thank you goes out to the Gresham family for waking up at 4am to start us on our journey here. You guys are the best. Enjoy your vacation time! 

With LOVE in Him

The Story’s