Thanks to Beth

Yesterday the group from Jeff's church, Fargo Baptist Church left. It is always a very strange feeling when you get used to having people around and then all of a sudden, they are just GONE! So today has been very quiet. Beth Skeving spent her last full day here in Thailand in our office teaching all of our staff Photoshop. The things she taught us were so valuable. Thank you, Beth for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us. I know that the things you taught us will be put to use right away and for the future also.

While the group was here, passing out tracts, our office staff worked our regular publishing jobs. We usually had the evening meal together and sometimes breakfast too. The group worked very hard and never complained. They distributed over 100,000 tracts while they were here. We appreciate their sacrifice of time and finances to come over here and do what they could to get the Gospel out.

Our staff has been very busy this week getting the Arabic translation of the the book "Good and Evil" ready to go to press. It was the most difficult book that we have worked on so far. Because Arabic reads right to left and not left to right, all the artwork had to be swapped backwards. This caused some real problems, and finally, again with Beth Skeving's help, we were able to swap all the graphics around and erase all the words that were spelled backwards, etc, etc. The Mongolian translation is hopefully finished. It cost $100 US dollars to mail one DVD to Mongolia, so we really hope that we won't have to send another. Shipping from Thailand to anywhere in the world costs a fortune, but $100 for one DVD really put us into serious shock.

Almost the whole team here has been sick with one thing or another for a couple of weeks. I just got over one thing when something respiratory hit. Carolyn, Tom and I passed that around and we all finally got over it, but in the process, Carolyn and I both missed a whole week of work. That really puts a strain on the ministry here to have 2 people down at the same time, but it wasn't just us. When we went to the medical center for Carolyn, the whole waiting room was literally full of people with the same hacking cough that we had. We are all on the mend now and are back at work.

The cool season in Thailand has finally arrived. It is a real blessing to not have to run the air conditioners all day everyday. For the next 3 months, we will be delivered from the oppressive heat and for that I am very thankful.

I want to thank Anne, Carolyn, and Pookie for allowing 5 ladies to live with them for 2 weeks. It was crowded in their little townhouse and I really appreciate their willingness to share what accommodations they had with the group from Fargo.