Remember the Time!!

We love it when folks call us from the USA. Especially now that we have a vonage internet phone line. People who have never lived overseas or those who do not travel don't think of the time difference from the US to Thailand. Thailand is 12 hours ahead of Texas time. That is the Central Time Zone. So when it is 3 o'clock in the afternoon in Texas, it is 3 o"clock in the MORNING here. We have had so many folks call us in the middle of our night, that we now turn off our vonage line when we go to bed. So, remember, your day is our night. If we do not answer our vonage phone it is either because we are not home or the phone is turned off because we are asleep. If it is an emergency, call our cell phones. We have missionary friends in Samoa and I never call them because I can never sort out what time it is there. If I see them online, then I can call them or Instant Message them and tell them that i am going to call them. Tom and I always turn our computers off at night, so if you do not see us online, we probably aren't awake or we are traveling.

Also some things folks are asking about. MAIL. Mail is a problem. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don't. Rachel Hammett sent Pookie a box 6 months ago and we still don't have it and probably never will see it. If it had pop tarts or candy in it, we really don't want to see it now. We have had to cancel 2 sets of credit cards, because they didn't make it here. The third set is on the way along with our absentee voting papers. If we don't get that mail, just know that we are voting for McCain/Palin. I personally am voting for Palin and McCain is just the guy who comes with her. I am praying for the election. It is heartbreaking to see my country, America, going down the road to destruction.

The easiest way to communicate with me is via e-mail. I don't ever write on paper with a pen or pencil. I donated them to the Smithsonian, and now I just type and send. Pushing buttons is my life. Almost everything I do here on the field is on the computer: video editing, bookkeeping, all communication, banking, etc. I even read and do my Bible study on the computer. A few months back, the electricity went off and I was in the middle of my Bible reading. My old computer had a fried battery and had to be plugged in to work. I promise that this is true. I sat there staring at my blank screen and said, "Lord, how am I going to read my Bible?" I glanced around the room and my eyes fell on my leather Bible that I take to church and I thought, "Woe, I am spending waaaay too much time at the computer." Still, I really love Sword Searcher. I think of the early missionaries who, when they left for the field, were leaving forever, shipping all their worldly goods over in the coffins that they would be buried in. Letters took months to reach home and by the time they got there sometimes the one who had sent it had been dead for months. We have it so easy now. Telephones, e-mail, instant messaging and air travel have made our lives so easy and yet we still complain. God forgive us.