Lithuania Bound

Tom and I are preparing to leave for Lithuania one week from today. We will be out of the office for one month. I hope to be able to post to this blog while we are gone, but that is iffy, considering that I will be playing with my grandchildren and may not have any spare time for blogging:)

I will try to catch you up on things now, so that you will know, at least what I am up to. I am working on getting a prayer letter out. It will be both electronic and paper. (Paper, what is that!) I found out recently that some of our friends actually don't believe in having Internet. Which is kind of like not believing in food because some of it is bad for your health, or clothing because some of it is immodest and revealing. OK, you guys, so go naked and starve. Not Me!! I have Internet!!! I can say this with impunity because of either 1 of 2 things. The people who don't believe in Internet won't be able to read this, or else they are reading it and have gotten over whatever problem they had. Either way, I HAVE INTERNET AND I AM VERY HAPPY!!!!

Oh wow!! I digressed there for a second. Had a little funny party all by myself. The other guys in the office look at you when you are laughing all alone. They want to laugh too, so I tell them what is funny and they just look at me. I don't think they get it. Oh, well. Now I will return you to the regularly scheduled program.

Tom is returning from the Burmese border today having spent a few days up there getting very valuable translating and proofreading done on the Burmese New Testament. It will be ready very, very soon and we are really excited about this. The devil has fought tooth and claw, but victory is in sight. The reprint of the Thai Good and Evil is done, and will be shipped to us from Chiang Mai and will arrive tomorrow. We have a container load of Burmese stuff coming from America. I can't exactly say how much of how many are coming, but there are 400,000 Burmese John/Romans printed and ready, 10,000 New Testaments, and 2000 Bibles. I am not sure of the quantity of each that will be in the container, but we are really excited about this. The John/Romans are printed off of the new, clear negatives and they will be wonderful. The New Testaments and Bibles are printed off the old negatives, until we are finished with the re-typesetting and proof-reading of the New Testament and Bible. It is this New Testament that is in the final stages now. Please pray for Noah and the translating team. They will be staying at the shophouse that we rented on the border while they do this work. They are not safe. Some of the team members are illegals and prayers need to go up they don't have any trouble with the border guards and police. Noah has a passport and he should be OK, but you never know.

We also need prayer about finances to rent 2 more small storage depots on the boarder for this literature when it arrives. We already have the large facility, but the year is almost up. (One individual paid for the whole 1st year in advance.) The other 2 only need to be very small. Just large enough for the literature and room for 2 people (Tom and myself) to stay when we go up. Basically one room and a bathroom. Or maybe just one room and we stay at a hotel. I'm not sure about this yet. The large shophouse has been a great blessing to us. It is being used as guest housing, translation center, literature storage facility, and training center. We really need to be able to keep this one, so please pray for the financing of it as well as the 2 we have yet to rent. By the way, the other two will be in two other unnamed cities on the border. The border is too long to keep everything in only the one location. The folks need to be able to come over the border clandestinely, get the stuff, and get back quickly and without getting caught. They can't travel far. Most people have absolutely no concept of what life is like for these folks. They lay their lives on the line to get the Word of God to their people. How many of us would do the same.

While you are in praying mode, please pray for another van for the team here in Thailand. The one we have is underpowered for the mountains where we travel, falling apart and uncomfortable. When you are old, comfort matters a little more than it did even 10 years ago.

We are also in need of housing for guests; the invited ones. People keep showing up on our doorstep in need of a place to stay and assuming that they can stay with us, without ever bothering to ask ahead of time if we have accommodations. Believe it or not, we have had several people come over here on vacation expecting us to provide housing and taxi/tour services at no cost. These are not the ones we are concerned about. These vacationers can stay at the literature storage building also known as "the Cage." It is really crummy as a place to stay, unless you are a box of literature. But then again, maybe this is a good thing as it will discourage freeloaders from returning.

Who we are concerned about are the legitimate folks who are coming to help and do internships. Both the ladies and men's dorms are full with our semi-permanent staff. We need some kind of divided facilities, or 2 facilities to house single men and women, separately. If there is any way possible, we would like to be able to consolidate and have the publishing office and guest quarters housed in one large facility. As it is now, we are spread up and down the street in 5 separate facilities, but because they are all very small, we still do not have enough room for everybody. At the moment, a young man is sleeping among boxes of "Good and Evil" books on the bottom floor of the boys dorm, which is also doubling as a storage facility. This guy had surgery last week and can't walk up and down stairs. As one can imagine, this is pretty unacceptable and inhospitable, to put a semi-invalid in a storage room. At least I find it most unacceptable, so help me out with this one and really pray that the Lord will open up a larger, affordable facility here on the street so that we can accommodate the folks who really need to be here.

Also pray for the health of the whole team here. We are all experiencing mild to serious health issues. For the three of us who are pushing 60, they are pretty serious. For the others, under 40, they are still ranging from mild to moderate. At least the health care over here is high quality and cheap. We have Bumrungrad International, an excellent hospital and I should know, I've spent time there on 5 separate and miserable occasions, one time lasting a whole month.