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!