Our first week in Khorat

It just occurred to a few of us last night that we only have 1 more week left of our short term mission trip with the team. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone, and it's after realisations like that that i'm really glad that i'm staying on for the year. Once again, i'm just starting to feel like i'm getting more of a handle on the language and being able to form even better relationships with some of the Thai people here and i'm having soooooo much fun it almost doesn't seem quite right that moving countries can be quite this easy. Of course i need to remember that right now isn't quite reality with the team around and all the organised activities we're doing, but hey, at least it's a great way to start.

So I finally got round to making a short summary video of just a couple things that we've been up to while in Khorat - in going to church and teaching at one of the schools. you can check it out here.

We've also done heaps of other stuff too which i couldn't include in the last vid - going to other schools, visiting a world vision project, going caroling at night with members of the Suebsiri church til 1am (i think we probably went to about 10 houses to sing carols, pray for the families at the houses and eat lots of food!!), we've visited Pi Mai - an old ruins place, we've managed to have a day off, ange and i gatecrashed the music rehearsal from the church and had a great jam session with the music team, we almost got to see some of the SEA games tacraw semi finals - until officials realised after they had announced the 2 teams playing that 3 teams in fact had finished on equal points so they were trying to work out who should get to play. So we ended up sitting around for 2 1/2 hrs learning Thai cheers, participating in 'Mexican Waves', eating a variety of 'surprise' foods and chatting with one of the teachers from the english camp who we happened to bump into (which was really cool!). It's been awesome so far!

Today, we're heading to church and then i'm going to attempt to help Tong (one of the Thai guys we've been working with here) try and make a video for his church christmas service next week. He's hoping to use the video to introduce the talk on getting people think about what the greatest gift we can ever receive is - leading into the fact that Jesus is the best gift we could receive. Due to the time constraints of making the video, i figured doing a vox pop would be easiest and quickest - only i know somehow it's going to take longer then usual since i'm not going to be able to understand what the respondents are going to say, so editing could be..... well, interesting. Might be a great way to learn thai tho :) hehe

For those who are praying:
- thank God for a great trip so far and the ways that God has been opening doors for the local thai churches here in Korat
- for the great relationships i've been able to form with Thai people here so far
- for the thai christians here - for their amazing love and trust of God, and that they'll continue to grow in their knowledge, love and understanding of God
- for the millions of other Thai's who don't yet know God, that they will