An Anaconda in the house!

Today we found a 10 foot Anaconda in our house! Not a real one thankfully. Evie is studying the Amazon rainforest right now for school. One day the girls spent hours drawing monkeys, jaguars, and all sorts of animals to transform our stairway into a rainforest, so the 10 foot snake made of wire and paper completed the transformation. Last week, the girls and I went to a homeschool conference at the international school here. It was a great week, the only downside was getting up at 6 every morning, and with Cory's schedule the girls didn't get to see him much. Evie took the Iowa Basics Standardized Test in the mornings, and then her and Winnie were in Vacation Bible School type classes while I attended seminars about homeschooling. It was a great time for us to be around other families. There was a "Student Showcase" where kids could enter work into different categories for display. Winnie was too young, but Evie entered a painting and a poster on Germany for "Cultures of the World". We pinned her hair up in braids German-style and even made Apfel Strudel. She was very excited to tell others about her project and very proud of herself. She even won a gold medal! (Though she was the only one in her age group to enter that category!)

The kids each had a little performance at the awards ceremony too.  There's a little video clip at the end of this post.

Other than that, the kids just continue to grow.  Evie lost her second tooth a couple nights ago, and Winnie is learning to read and has read three little books by herself!  

Everything is going well for us right now.  We currently have our visas extended until March 20th and should receive our year long visas before they expire.  My parents our coming for a visit and we're counting down the days, 15 to go!  Thanks for all your prayers!

The little things in life ...

make a BIG difference!  Last weekend we bought thick foam floor mattresses to put on top of our hard beds and it has been wonderful!  Each night I look forward to climbing into our soft bed now, and my body doesn't hurt and ache when I get up in the morning.  Winnie had been saying she missed her soft bed at home so this has helped a little with homesickness for her, but it can't replace the grandparents that she is missing so much!

We also bought a bookshelf for our office/school room.  Being organized gets me excited!  I loved getting our stacks of books up off the floor and onto the shelves.  I was also able to unpack the scrapbook supplies that I brought with me, but haven't had a chance to scrapbook yet.  Hopefully soon, I can hear it calling to me from the shelves!  I want to scrapbook our whole Thailand journey, starting from the first trip Cory and I took here two years ago, so we can remember all the exciting things God has done and will do.

THE BIG THINGS IN LIFE MATTER TOO!

Cory got his work permit last week and our whole family will be heading to immigration in the morning to obtain a new visa.  We've been told they will give us each a one month visa while they are processing the year extension and then we will have to return to get that one.  Thanks for all your prayers, God is working it out for us to stay here.  Please pray that things will go smoothly at immigration tomorrow.

One final note, the kids and I went to cooking night at the Centre last night.  I helped cook mashed potatoes and chicken with a bunch of the Thai students.  The kids were hanging out upstairs and I found them playing magnetic dolls with a bunch of the college students!  Here's a cute pic:

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!

Christmas Program Video

Here's the kids in their Christmas program at church. (It's only  few minutes long)

Feels like Christmas in July

Sunday night was the Christmas program at the church we are attending here.  Winnie dressed up as an angel and sang "Away in a Manger" in English and German.  (Her teacher is German, everything is truly an international affair here.)  Evie performed a jazz dance with the 1st - 6th grade girls. I'm going to try to make another post right after this with a video clip if you'd like to watch.

Winnie and I went to a new friend's house to decorate christmas cookies yesterday too.  She had invited over two friends that she's reaching out to, one from Thailand and one from Australia.  It was really nice to hang out with some other moms!

Thursday night was exciting!  During an evening program at the Centre, Cory along with a few Thai staff were able to share their testimonies about accepting Jesus  and talk about God's love for us.  Two students decided to place their faith in Jesus and begin a relationship with the one 

 true God!  While Cory was at work, the girls and I met our neighbors.  They made a new friend, a little Thai girl named Pay-Ping (Or something that sounds like that).  She's 6 years old and lives just across the street.  It was so neat to see how much fun Evie and Winnie had playing with her even though they couldn't speak the same language!

Cory went up the mountain this week with some students from the Centre and the team that's here from Australia.  Here's some pictures of the temple and what the people here worship:

We've all still been healthy (except I was sick one night, but it only lasted 4 hours), so we are very thankful for that.  Thanks for checking into our lives!

We made it!

We arrived in Chiang Mai 3 weeks ago.  We are fully adjusted to the 12 hour time difference and we're getting settled quickly.  We found a great house and moved in almost 2 weeks ago.  The neighborhood has a nice park for the kids and a great swimming pool!  We managed to lock ourselves out of the house twice in the first week though!  We've been learning from our mistakes and now know exactly where to find a locksmith at the local market when we need one.

We also bought a car, an old 96 Honda Accord.  The bad thing though is that it's a stick shift and we had to add that complication into learning how to drive on the left side of the road.  Cory has had no problem driving around and even tries to blend in with the crazy drivers out there on the road!  I just got up the nerve to drive on the main roads on Saturday.  Not so bad, but my legs were shaking every time I had to stop at a light, afraid I'd stall when the light turned green.  Since Saturday, Cory's been riding our friend's motorbike back and forth to work.  It saves a lot on gas money, but I've been praying a lot for his safety!

Everyday has been a learning experience and we are always exhausted by the time we fall into our rock-hard beds!  It's amazing how many little things are different that you have to figure out on a day to day basis.  We've managed to get most of what we need now though.  In order to start cooking at home, we had to go to the store and buy a small stove/oven to be delivered, then we had to figure out where to get a tank of gas from, then we had to figure out how to turn the oven on (You have to turn the gas on and then actually light the oven), now I'm figuring out how to control the oven flame to keep it around the temperature I want (But the oven is in Celsius!).  (Also, there's no sink in our kitchen, it's in the backyard!)  So, we rejoice in every small victory, like my being able to go grocery shopping by myself on Saturday, and we try not to get too frustrated by our failures, but readily accept God's grace that He has been pouring out on us!

Evie and Winnie started school last Monday.  We bought little school desks for them and it has been exciting to finally get them in a routine again.  They also like the church we're going to, and have met some friends in their Sunday School classes.  This Sunday there will be a Christmas program at church.  Evie's class will be doing a dance, which she is soooo excited about, and Winnie's class will be dressing up as angels and singing a christmas carol.  

It definitely does not feel like Christmas around here though, it's in the upper 80s and without a single fan in our house, we get pretty hot!  (Sorry to all of you who are dealing with snow and ice right now!)

Cory's been working a lot of hours at the Centre, because a short-term team came in from Australia on Saturday and he is helping a lot with them.  Sunday they had baptisms too.  (We've included a short video of two of the students from the Centre getting baptized.)

 

We'll try to update this blog frequently now that we've got it figured out, and we'd love to hear your comments too!