Till next time

Tomorrow James and I go for a week to Dunedin and Central Otago, we are visiting places James has fond memories of from his childhood; we leave behind the cat and her feeders.

We will be back by for next Sunday when South City Christian Centre is having a service centered around our Thailand trip with their Youth Pastor and young people. If you do not have a Church to be at then you are very welcome to come to SCCC at 10am and hear all about it. Afterwards family and friends are welcome to come to a Thai restaurant with us, though you must pay for yourself ~ we are 'missionaries' after all! If you come after reading this please don't leave without at least saying "Hi."
Meantime I am really interested to follow on from Matt's comment regarding funny signs in other countries, if you have time please tell me what you have seen.

Now where is my sun hat........

Randomly Thailand (take 2)

A dog with any status wore a t-shirt when it was cold ~ below about 15 degrees.

Next time I may approach HIV-Aids impact.
Out door shower anyone?
We shared a room at lopburi for about 4 nights!
Thai babies are given names which mean something, I saw Blessing, Pray, Gift, Cheeks, Supreme, Surprise (born after 18 years of childless marriage) Beautiful lady, and Noelle.
Christmas Dinner: rice, curried pork, spring rolls and water melon

Near Chiang Mai, North Thailand

Randomly Thailand

Kiwi fruit for sale in Bangkok One of 2 Thai sons-in-the-faith
(the shirt was our uniform) God taught me a life lesson that day as I 'mothered' this lovely young man

Flooding in South Thailand
Bridge partially washed away and power lines down










The team introducing New Zealand culture
Singing:
Aroha nui
Ki te atua
Ko ihu te o Ranga
Mo te Au
(Love is the key
To everything we do
Jesus is the source of it all)


Sign on some taxis
I love foreigners
We can speak English

Sawadee kha

Thank you to Amy, Matt and Andrew for the welcome back. I want to tell you about the month in Thailand but where to begin has been the problem!

I got to a computer twice, maybe three times, but though I wrote long letters home, for some reason they didn't send, except for the one to Chrissy, my Granddaughter. She txted me once just as I was leaving the OMF Bangkok 'oasis' to buy some lunch, Jo put it on my blog for you so, though it is much longer than I had realised at the time, if you wade through that you will pick up some thoughts and street scenes in Thailand. It is all true.

It was a great experience with a talented, responsive and willing young team.

Last summer Ginette and I said we should never take another team, as that team was the best team one could possibly have. However when God is in control that is not the point to consider and these, mostly younger people, were appealing, hungry for God and eager to experiment with food, mixing with Thai people, performing anywhere whenever asked and bargaining in Thai when shopping, the unity amongst us was wonderful. We had fun.

We went to numerous places; in the month I had only 2 free days, the day of Chrissy's blog and another one when Ginette and I had a latte by the river.















I will need to take time to share places we went to and people we met. I get a shocking, hollow feeling inside when I think of the scenes at the Buddhist Aids Hospital and somehow those scenes never loose their impact. Please NEVER place yourself in a position to catch aids!

We went to a women's prison where we were well received and the surroundings were far better than I had anticipated. I took time to notice the 3 doors in and out again, each one locked behind us before the next one opened! At the end the approximately 200 raised hands indicating an interest in at least knowing more of the Christian life has left the young lady Pastor with a lot of follow-up work this year!

A day with Ginette & I teaching and praying at a healing Seminar in Bangkok, The International Justice Mission reaching into several surrounding countries, the other different ministries going over the border into Myanmar, seeing the evidence of the flooding in South Thailand, the Christian lecturers in Buddhist Universities or Teachers College, the struggling isolated churches, welcomed into schools, street kids who need to be rescued from the streets within 2 days of reaching the city or they will be returned home sexually scarred........
There is so much. What would you like to know about?

I had a marvellous trip with fresh experiences of God, His love, His kindness and I have also seen the price some people pay to serve Him.
I painfully learnt though that I am not physically 'custom built' for Thailand, but that is for another day.

No rice today, thank you

It was 30 hours from when I showered and dressed in Chiang Mai until I showered and fell into bed in Christchurch. More of the story another day, but today I can truly say "we were not sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves BUT our sufficiency was of God!" We had a great and blessed time.
Tomorrow I shall read your blogs :-)