Thanksgiving

Halloween is now over. I was able to give out candy and gospel tracts to about 50 kids. The kids were impressed by our "library." One little kid said "Wow! They must have at least a hundred books!" Actually, we have a couple thousand, but to a small child a hundred might as well be a thousand. It was interesting to me that they would notice. I guess that books are not a big part of 21st century life. Anyway, it impressed them.

Now I am looking forward to Thanksgiving. It is sad to see Thanksgiving skipped over and mostly ignored today. In the stores this time home, I noticed that Halloween and Christmas stuff were up and for sale at the same time. Not one mention of anything to do with Thanksgiving. Sad that people are unthankful, uncaring, and unholy. No wonder our country is in the shape that it is in.

I have had to fast forward to Christmas myself though. We have to ship stuff to Lithuania and it has to leave ASAP. Our son-in-law and daughter are missionaries there for the last 11+ years. The grandkids are getting older and the price of their "toys" is getting higher, but our goal is to buy stuff while our money is still worth something! Our grandkids appreciate our financial goals to help keep the economy moving. By this time next year, they may each get a greeting card and a pencil set.

Tom's October meetings went very well and now he is home. I dusted off the stove and started cooking again. He does not seem to appreciate popcorn for supper like I do. Cheese and crackers doesn't work for him either. And they say women are complicated creatures. I wonder where they get these weird ideas.

We are both finally living on US time again. We are sleeping at night and waking up in the morning. It took me a lot longer this time home to get situated. There was something about waking up at 3AM and not being able to get up and vacuum the bedroom that messed me up. I usually couldn't go back to sleep, but come about 2PM I had to take a 3 or 4 hour nap. But I think I am OK now. I am as OK as I get anyway. For some people my version of OK and their version of OK is 2 different things. There are some who say that I am not OK. What's with them?
My Dad always used to tell my Mom, "You and I are the only sane people left in the world, and sometimes I wonder about you." I am beginning to understand that more now that I am getting older.

At any rate, I and I alone am fine. The rest of you need some work. And right now I need to get to work. Rest period is over. I love you all, even though you are all a little off kilter. Pray for us as we pray for you. Let us hear how you are doing and most importantly remember that life is uncertain, eat dessert first.

Been Home for Almost a Month

I am finally over jet lag and rested. It seemed to take a very long time and the older I get the longer it takes to recover. I am feeling almost normal now. However, one must remember that "normal" is an ambiguous term. Normal for me is being able to get up in the morning and sleep at night, which is the hardest thing to do coming from the exact opposite time zone on the planet. I was on the verge of collapse during the daylight hours for 2 solid weeks and simply could not stay awake. Then I would be awake at 3:00 AM ready for the day to begin. I am much better now. I still want to go to sleep around 5:00 PM for the night, but I push past that and seem to be pretty much back on track.

To all you who have been asking, yes I have been to Wal-Mart. Several times. In the past 3 weeks I have eaten Cheetos, drank Dr. Pepper, and been to the local Thrift Store. We have been wined and dined by many. Well, not wined, but to say we were Dr. Peppered and dined wouldn't rhyme.

I am really enjoying the cool temperatures. The perpetual heat of Thailand is very draining for me. I am even enjoying the rain. Actually, I am enjoying everything about being home. The thing I miss the most being away from home is hearing my own Pastor preach and being around my church family. I miss them very much. The mission field would be much easier if I could take them all back with me. How I thank the Lord for instant messaging, blogs, e-mail, Skype and Facebook.

No matter where you are, you always miss someone. Right now I miss Pook, Noah, Nakon and Bunga. They are holding the fort in Bangkok while we are here. We really are blessed to have a good staff. They work hard and have many struggles in a land where 2 of them are the only Christians in their whole family. Please pray for them. Pook is the office manager, Noah is the Burmese Project Manager and he handles all things Burmese, Nakon is translating the Bible Curriculum from Oak Harbor into Thai, and Bunga is working on the Good and Evil Project. They are busy and they have heavy responsibilities to carry.

Tom leaves in 2 days for a group of meetings and will be gone for 2 weeks. There are several things to be done here before he leaves and not much time to do them. So what else is new? This all falls under the heading, "normal." He has recovered from the fall down the stairs that he had in Thailand right before we left, but he is still very tired and not recovered from the trip.

He will be doing a lot of driving during this trip, so please pray for his safety on the roads. Pray for Carolyn and me as we get back to work. There is work to be done and we do it wherever we are, whether in Thailand or Texas.

Many thanks to all of you who have prayed and have given to see this ministry go forward. We appreciate it very much.

Home Again

I know it has been a long time since I posted on this blog. We were very busy in Thailand, tying up loose ends and preparing for travel to the US. Many things were accomplished at the last minute before we left. Hundreds of boxes of literature were shipped into neighboring countries and made it safely to their destination. We want to thank each and every one of you who prayed for the last shipment. You made the difference and everything arrived safely.

Tom is still recovering from his fall, but is doing well. We are all still dealing with varying degrees of exhaustion and jet lag, but things are improving slowly but surely. It certainly was wonderful to be back in our home church. This was the most important and blessed thing. Hearing our pastor preach (in English) and be with friends that have stayed by the stuff on our behalf. I want to thank you all for your prayers and help. Special thanks go to Judy McKinnie, who handles our finances. Without her we would be in a mess for sure. I will miss dog-sitting Tootsie while I am home this time. Tootsie was Judy's Boston Terrier who passed away while we were on the field this time.

We have already picked up a new supporting church and we are so thankful for that. Tom has meetings planned in many different places. Sunday he will be kicking off our annual Missions Conference here at Metropolitan. This is the first Missions Conference that we have been home for in several years and we are really looking forward to it. Mostly I will be looking forward to it. Tom will be traveling some of the month and will not be here for all of it.

Many changes are evident during our absence. Since we were home last time, several of our young people have gotten married, several children have been born, and several of our older members have gone home to glory. We will miss them, but not for long. There are new faces that we don't recognize and haven't had time to meet yet, but look forward to that.

All in all and the end of the matter is this: we are very glad to be home in Texas for awhile.

Loose Ends

These last few weeks before we leave for furlough have been very busy and there is no sign of letting up. Right now we have 2 videos in progress and we just received a 40 foot container full of literature that has been delivered to the Thai/Burmese border. Tom and various members of the staff have made 2 trips up to the border in the last month. We will need to make at least one more trip up there before we head back to the States.

We are all very tired and are all still battling different sicknesses. It seems that none of us can remain well for very long and for months now, none of us have all been well at the same time. One week one of us is sick and the next week it is someone else. Tom is really tired and we are all really looking forward to going home for a rest.

Today was Mother's Day here in Thailand. Mother's Day is celebrated on the Queen's birthday and Father's Day is on the King's birthday. The Thai church services were dedicated totally to the celebration of our mothers. Thai culture is very much dedicated to the veneration of parents. There is no Social Security system, so the children are expected to care for the parents in their old age.

It is funny that where my daughter lives in Lithuania, (eastern Europe), Mother's Day is on one date and it is different in Thailand, and yet again different in America. Every country that celebrates Mother's Day has it on a different day of the year. Depending on where I happen to be and where my daughter happens to be at the time, I get Mother's Day greetings at really odd times. Anyway, today I was Pookie's mother and we had a good day at Lat Phrao Baptist Church.

Anyway, to all you mothers out there, no matter where you are or what day it is celebrated in your particular country, Happy Mother's Day.

All of the Americans here on our team are really looking forward to coming home for a much needed rest. Carolyn will be staying with us in Fort Worth for a couple of weeks rest before heading home to Tennessee. Anne will be heading home to Pennsylvania and will be looking for a job. Please pray with us about this. Anne worked for a year and saved all the money that she could in order to come to Thailand and work with us for a year. She will need to find a job in order to support herself upon her return and as of yet she has no leads.

Carolyn's church in Tennessee is without a pastor. It is very unsettling to be in a foreign country without a pastor at the helm of your church. This leaves her not knowing if she will be able to come back to Thailand with us when we return. We certainly need her and are very much hoping that she will be able to return with us. All of these things need prayer, so please continue to pray for us as things are unsettled for all of us right now. We have quite a few loose ends to tie up so that the office will run smoothly while we are away. We are looking forward to seeing many of you when we return.

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.

Romance and Glamor -- We got it all !!!!

Yes, life on the mission field is very romantic and glamorous, or at least that's what many people seem to think. YEAH, RIGHT!?!?!? There is nothing quite as romantic as the sound of rats squealing on the roof of an Asian "dirty" kitchen while you cook or as glamorous as killing a snake in the kitchen by throwing boiling water on it from a distance. The tricky part of that one was keeping an eye on it so it didn't slither off somewhere and hide while the water in the water pot boiled and I filled three huge glasses so that I could stand across the room and pitch the water from about 6 feet away. I hit it all three times. Now there is a snake skeleton stuck between two water pipes next to the washing machine. I was going to have Tom get it out, but by the next morning millions of ants had reduced it to just the skeleton. I thought that was very good of them to do that, since bones don't stink. Anyway, the ants are gone and the skeleton is still there, lodged between the pipes. Romantic. Glamorous. Weird. You ask "Why don't you move it." The answer, "Perhaps when his friends come by they will become fearful and leave before I boil them too." People who notice it say, "Do you know you have a snake skeleton over there in the corner?" And I say, "Yep." I'm not one of those 10,000 words a day women. Let 'em wonder. I like to watch the looks on their face.

Another really glamorous thing is going on right now. It's rainy season here in Thailand. Every time it rains something happens in the electricity. If you try to turn on the lights on either end of the house it blows the breaker. We have to wait till the rain stops and things dry out a few hours before we can use the switches. If the electricity is on it will usually stay on, but you can't turn it on if it is off, unless it dries out a little. So we have a choice. If we see it getting dark outside like it is going to rain, we have to turn on all the lights we will need for the next several hours and leave them on while it rains. Thomas Edison could probably explain this, but he's dead.

And for the "coup de grace," for the last three weeks most of the team has been sharing a rather nasty viral infection. Six of us have passed it back and forth more than once and Carolyn and Pook have both had to visit the local resort, better known as Bumrungrad Hospital. Gary Karle and I know where every bathroom in the largest mall in Bangkok is located, and Tom has taken enough Imodium to last a year. As of today, none of us are over it completely and Tom and Gary had to go to Nepal. I hope they stay well enough to get the printing done that they went there to finalize.

Romance and glamor. Ya just gotta have it!!!

Back in Bangkok

Tom and arrived back in Bangkok on Friday afternoon. The time we spent with our family in Lithuania was wonderful. We have a new grandson, Levi Thomas, who was born in February. This was a much needed respite from the heat of Thailand. Spring is just now breaking out in Lithuania and all the fruit trees are blooming and the flowers are beautiful. Tom wore his jacket the whole time we were there, even inside the house. I was very comfortable wearing a fleece jacket also. I guess our blood has either thickened or thinned, or whatever they say it does when you live in a hot climate. 50 F. does seem really cold when you haven't been that cold in several years.

Our grandchildren are doing well and the two oldest are now fluent in the Lithuanian language. Maybe too fluent. There are words that they do not know the English equivalent for. My granddaughter wanted permission to go to "Lithuanian word." I asked her what it was in English and she couldn't tell me. You know, the place where the animals live. The "zoo." Ah, yes, the Zoo. At summer camp in Latvia last year, the counselors did not believe that they were Americans, when they asked them where they were from. They speak Lithuanian without an accent. They speak English at home and Lisa is homeschooling them in English language, spelling and American History. The 2 older kids both go to Lithuanian school and the third one starts in the Fall. Brian and Lisa have been in Lithuania for 11 years.

When we arrived, Brian asked me what we wanted to see and what we wanted to do. I told him "I don't want to go anywhere and I don't want to do anything. I want to do absolutely nothing for the whole month." That is exactly what we did. We stayed at home and did absolutely nothing and I loved it. Both Tom and I needed the break more than we realized. This was the first time in several years that we really rested. There were several days when Tom and Brian didn't even get dressed. Lisa and I got dressed, because we went to the store almost every day. They have a store called Maxima that is the equivalent to a small super-Walmart, where they have clothes, food, housewares, etc. Utena is a small town, so driving to Maxima every day was just enough work for one who is "on vacation." Wow, Europe is veeeery expensive!! Food and clothing are outrageous.

If there is a downside to our ministry, it is for me, only getting to see my grandchildren once every year or two. In the life of a small child, a year makes a big difference. The oldest three knew who we were, but of course, the baby will not remember us when we see him again. By the time the month was over, we had barely had time to reconnect and then it was time to leave. I am really thankful for the ability to talk on skype and at least see them and let them see us on camera when we talk to them. Modern technology has made things so much easier for us in the 21st century.

While we were gone, things ran well here in the office. We have a good staff of people with us now and they kept things moving. We are very thankful for Anne, Carolyn, and Pookie. Without them here to hold the ropes, there would have been no way we could have been gone for a month. Thanks, guys.