Welcome to PlaaPlaaPlaa!

So you may be wondering why PlaaPlaaPlaa? What are those strange fish symbols above? What is ปลา and what does it mean? In short, this is a blog site, so surely there's going to be plenty of rambling. Unfortunately BlahBlahBlah was already taken, so I had to settle for the 'Plaa'. But there's actually more to it then just ramblings. The first fish symbol is actually a Christian symbol meaning ICTHUS - a greek acronymn which means "Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour". The other strange letters you see in the last fish is actually the thai word for fish which funnily enough is pronounced "Plaa". So when you put it all together, this site is going to be my ramblings in telling people about how Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour in Thailand (with plenty of good stories about food in between). Happy reading.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Family Holiday

It really has been a while since my last post. It's not that nothing has been happening, just haven't had a chance to post anything up recently. It was a real privilege to be able to go on a massive family holiday recently. Despite bad sea sickness, the 17 days on the cruise was an amazing opportunity to be able to visit all sorts of places I'd never been to, spend time with the family, eat amazing food, and even visit friends in various ports that we dropped into. Although it was a great time away, I was more than ready to come back home and get back into life and ministry back here. Lots to be praising God for.

Here are a few happy snaps from our recent trip.





























Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Training and Trips

If I had to sum up March in 2 words, it would be 'Training and Trips'. In many ways the past month has been a good taster for what I'm hoping to be doing a lot more of in the future. Since arriving, whilst still getting involved in various ministries here, I have tried to keep a bit of a lower profile while I tried to get a much better grasp of language and culture. But as the year has gone on, ministry opportunities slowly presented themselves, so last month in particular, I had the privilege of being able to write a series of 4 studies on 1 Peter that we taught to the SS teachers in order to teach the kids. It was a great opportunity to get back into writing studies, but i soon discovered that writing and prepping studies in English can have several limitations when trying to translate the questions directly and into Thai. Often questions had to be completely rearranged in order to help my Thai friends understand the passage better. Needless to say, it's a good reminder that even while language is improving, I still have a long way to go. But it also was a good reminder of God's power and grace in enabling me and allowing me to be able to teach. The Joshua cell group is still working it's way through Acts, so I had to lead a few of those studies this month too, as well as helping Maggie prep studies on the Sermon on the Mount for her own Bible study group. All these great opportunities to teach meant that I was writing or prepping 3-4 studies a week. Definitely a good way to stretch my brain. There were some weeks I felt like I was back at college with all the reading I had to do. But I loved it all (despite a few headaches from staring at a computer screen for too long).

What often added to the challenge of prepping so many studies was the fact that every week I've pretty much gone away, anything from a day trip to a 3 day/2 night trip away. Despite adding a bit of extra pressure in prepping studies, i was awesome to be able to see parts of Thailand I'd never been to, and especially be able to spend time with various friends and be able to continue building relationships with people over here. It's become a bit of a running joke here that my new 'work' is to go away. It's a tough life, but someone's gotta do it. 














Thursday, February 28, 2013

Fun with the new S110

After my poor S95 was fatefully dropped into the toilet, it's been a frustrating few weeks having only the camera on my mobile phone to use. But praise God I've now got a new toy to play with. Really appreciated it on my recent trip up to Doi Internon with the Timothy cell group. Photos aside, it was also great couple days away getting to know a few friends from church better, whilst also getting to appreciate and wonder at God's amazing creation even more. Here are a few pics from the trip.