Stress, heat, and fire ants!

The last three weeks have been busy and stressful. 

Please continue to pray for our visas.  We had been very anxious about it, but we have found a good lawyer and he thinks it will all get done in time.  Our visas expire Feb 19th. 

Also, continue to pray for our finances.  We had to return the motorbike we were borrowing to our friend when she returned to Chiang Mai last week, so we had to buy one of our own.  We're hoping to get an air conditioner unit for our bedroom this weekend.

Speaking of air conditioning, it has continued to be around 90 every day and poor Winnie has a recurring heat rash that makes her itch and it's hard for her to sleep well.  (Which makes it hard for me to sleep well too!)  On Monday we had our first rainy day since we've been here and it was glorious!  It only got to 78 and with the clouds we could have our windows open and cool air blowing through!  Tuesday it was back to the heat.  It makes me wonder how we will survive when it hits 107 in the summer!

We've had more than the usual amount of ants in our house recently so I was out spraying the perimeter and got attacked by fireants!  Luckily it was just on one foot, but if any of you have experienced this, you know it's not pleasant!  My toes are still itching like crazy.  Cory went out later and finished the task and hopefully got them all so this won't happen again.  (I am glad it was me and not one of the kids though.)

There has been a YWAM team from Oregon helping at the Centre the past few weeks, so Cory has been working extra.  Today he'll be working over 12 hours, but it's the last day.  This is hard on our family, but ministry at the Centre has continued to be fruitful.  3 more students came to accept Jesus recently, including one high school guy named Bird.  There has been a handful of high school students lately and it seems to be spreading by word of mouth.  This is really exciting to reach more young people with the gospel and maybe it can even help prevent some of the dumb mistakes kids tend to make when they first leave for college!

Each week we are feeling more settled.  I've started teaching an arts & crafts class to the 4 & 5 year olds at the homeschool co-op, so that has been really fun for me to plan.  I'm tying it in with Winnie's kindergarten curriculum we already use, so we made bird projects the first week and talked about how God takes good care of us just like a mama bird builds a nest, feeds her babies, etc.  Last week we learned how God has made us wonderful and did thumbprint art and friendship hand wreaths, and this week we made caterpillars and butterflies and talked about how when we accept Jesus we become a new creation.

Here's a couple pictures of the kids swimming, I think they look cute in their swimcaps!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We had a nice relaxing Christmas.  Very different from what we're used to though, as the kids got to ride their new bikes to the park and play in the kiddy pool we got for our yard!  Although we missed seeing all of our family, we didn't miss all the hours of driving around Michigan in bad weather!  The kids were only expecting one gift each, and  we had a lot of fun surprising them with a bunch of presents.  They were very excited to get some new toys after having to sell, give away, or leave behind most of their toys at home.  Cory's desire to bless our kids with a big Christmas reminded me of how our Heavenly Father desires to bless us and give us good gifts, not because of anything we do, just because He loves us.

Christmas isn't widely celebrated here, but New Year's is a big deal!  At midnight there were huge fireworks all over the city.  Cory and I watched them out our window, while the kids amazingly enough slept through all the noise!  There was a carnival too, so we took the kids there on New Year's Eve.

As for the Centre, after hearing the gospel many times, and lastly from his History professor at CMU, a student named Golf accepted Christ.  Pray that he would grow in his new relationship with God and that he would grasp more and more the grace that God has offered us through Jesus.  Cory got a few days off for the holidays and not many students have been around, but Cory has been busy preparing for a short-term team from Oregon who will arrive on Monday.

We are getting settled more and more.  The girls are plugging along in school and will start Thai, gym, and art classes with the homeschool co-op here on Monday.  They've also been playing with Pay-Ping a few days a week when she gets home from school.

A couple weeks ago we had our first incident with the car.  I managed to drive into the craziness of downtown for the first time to a Christmas lunch the Centre was having for the staff.  I made it all the way to the underground parking structure and went to pull into a parking spot and rammed the corner of our car right into a concrete pole!  Sitting on the other side of the car throws off your perspective!  Luckily no other people or cars were involved and amazingly the headlight still works so we will get it fixed whenever we find the time.  (Also, Cory has gotten 2 flat tires on the motorbike, but has made it home safe both times)

Some things to pray for us currently:

-Visas - Before we left we could only get 90 day visas, and were told we would have to apply for an extension when we got here.  So we are trying to figure that out right now, but have heard some real horror stories from other missionaries that have left me feeling really anxious about the whole situation.  So pray that we are able to get an extension processed before our 90 days are up so that we can just make a "border run" to Burma instead of having to pay a lot more to leave the country to Singapore.

-Finances- It's been a little stressful getting our finances situated.  We are still trying to figure out the best way to get money from our bank in the US to our bank here.  We've had a lot of one time expenses as we have been getting all the household items (dishes, pots, oven, cleaning supplies, etc.) we need and are constantly having to judge and prioritize what we can afford to get next.  Added to that we need to buy a motorbike soon, as our friend Jen will be coming back to Chiang Mai in a couple weeks and we will no longer be able to borrow her bike.  Pray we will find a motorbike in the next two weeks for around $500.  (The cheapest we've seen was $900, but God provided us a car in our budget, and we know he can provide us with a motorbike too.)

Thanks for all your prayers, emails, packages, messages, etc!  We appreciate the encouragement!