Two Months Till TEXAS!!

Tom and I leave Thailand for furlough on or around Sept. 22nd. We will be in the US for a few months. The whole team here is tired and we have all been battling various illnesses for the last 3 months, off and on. It seems that somebody around here is always sick. One gets well and another comes down with something. Like I said it has been a constant battle for 3 straight months. So far, none of us has gotten "swine flu." It was running wild in our province according to the news, but no matter how hard the media is working to keep everybody scared, it is a non-issue. Just don't sneeze or cough on the airplane, or you might get quarantined in some layover country. Don't laugh. Gary Karle saw one guy taken off the plane in Tokyo and hauled off to who knows where. Hope the guy finally made it out of Japan.

Right now we are trying to get a lot of loose ends tied up before leaving for the US. There are several languages of the "Good and Evil" book that are very nearly finished except for a few tweaks. We are waiting for just a few words to be translated here and there in 4 or 5 languages. The Japanese is stalled out for lack of 4 words that the translator hasn't finished. It is very frustrating when people drag their feet toward the end of a project.

We are trying to get a couple of videos published and uploaded to the web before we leave for the US also. Ben Hall from Lehigh Valley Baptist Church is here with us and he is working on that now but as usual, we are having a lot of computer trouble at the moment. The router for the office computers went out and they are trying to replace it even as I write this. The internet at the office is down because of said problem, and several of the computers are off the network and we can't get them back on. Basically, we are still in desperate need of a computer geek to join the team permanently. It will be a full-time job for some individual. What we have been praying for for the last almost 5 years now, is a young couple to come along side us and learn to take over this ministry when the time comes that we are either too old or too dead to carry on. If you are that couple, please get over here and make it soon!!!

We had a water leak at our facility up on the Thai-Burmese border and it flooded the floor where the literature is stored. Several boxes were damaged and we were going to throw them away. But God is good and His word will never return void. We sat the boxes out on the sidewalk to be picked up by the trash collectors, and within a few hours people had passed by and saw them, opened the soggy boxes, and took it all! This is not the best way to do literature distribution, but nevertheless, wet and soggy, the literature got into the hands of the people. These few boxes were all that remained of the Burmese tracts that we had on that boarder. That was last week. We have a 40-foot container that will be here next week sometime and that will be immediately transshipped to restock the facility up there and also to stock another facility that we have rented in another location. Oh yes, and as a wonderful side-note: the family who paid for the rental of the facility for the whole year has already sent the money to pay the rent for this next year and also for the other facility in the other place. Praise God and thanks to these folks. They have been a blessing to us for many years in more ways than one.

There is a lot happening here in Thailand, but much of it can't be reported on in detail because of the instability of the region. While Thailand is free and relatively safe, the countries surrounding us are not. Those of you who know about our ministry understand this. We appreciate your prayers for us and for sending folks our way to help and minister for short terms. We have had many quality people over the years who have come and lent a hand where they were needed and because of them our work has gone forward.