the past week

It's been a pretty full on past week, which has kept me out of mischief. Last week, i had lunch with Daa and Ajarn Jazz from church. It was an awesome time to get to know Ajarn Jazz in particular, a lot better. She's an awesome lady who's the head of the History Department of Chiang Mai Uni. She became a christian about 3 years ago after reading through history books and realised that Jesus was someone that she had to make a decision in her life as to whether to follow him as her Lord or not. Since then, she's just been on fire for God and takes every opportunity to share the gospel. She's one of those older ladies that everyone just loves! She's so down to earth, so 'real' and so loving and caring. It's amazing to see the way that so many of the uni students look up to her and love her to death. During the Uni summer holidays (ie loooong holidays), she's coming down to Baan Tawai to help us with our english classes and outreach. It's been invaluable having her come down to Baan Tawai with us. In just a couple weeks of going, she's been able to help with so much, personal issues with people down there, being generous with giving flash drives to a student there, helped explain the Bible, prayed for those down there, she goes around and invites all these people around the shop to the english class too and uses that time to evangelise...it's just amazing to see her in action and such a big encouragement!

I also (reluctantly) went along to a 'book club' at church, which i thought was pretty amusing seeing how much i love reading english books, so what chance do i have of reading a thai book?!?! Felt kinda stupid going to this book club seeing as i didn't have a copy of the book let alone even open or read a single page of the book! But my friend kim was one of the people leading it, and she really wanted me to go to support her, so that's why i went.

Last saturday, we had a school 'field trip' where we went bamboo rafting. It was tops fun, even if it was crazily dangerous at times. for those who have been before, it actually had small rapids, which don't seem that bad until you're the person who's 'steering' the raft and you realise how hard it is to turn the raft so you don't crash into the rocks. Let's just say that after one massive pile up of rafts, and a few decent crashes into rocks, i'm really surprised our raft was still holding together by the end. Every time we hit another rock, i was sure that was going to be it for the raft. But thank God, it held together! Heaps of fun tho, and a great time to spend more time with teachers and other students from school. I also got to ride a chopper back from the rafting which was awesome fun. First time i've ridden a 'real' motorbike since being here. So despite breaking every rule that Ange and Rich ever taught me about riding - ie wear proper protective clothing, footwear etc. i ended up riding back through the mountains in shorts, t-shirt, thongs, no gloves and a helmet that didn't fit me!! Only in thailand. But it was heaps fun!! Here are a few pics from the day

the crash


chilling out at the end


typical 'deb' shot


me trying to take Aor out


Aor


On the way there - how many people can you fit into the back of a Ute?!?!?


At lunch


Khruu Nan & Khruu Ang

Then there were the usual church activities on Sunday, school and baan tawai on monday, team meeting and bible study prep with Kim on tuesday, then school and catching up with my friend Buu tonight. Starting this weekend and all next week is our 'Area Retreat' - basically all the Pioneers misso's who work in the mainland south east asia area will be coming together. Should be a good time to get to know lots of the other misso's heaps better, get fed with some bible teaching in ENGLISH, and have some much needed time out. for those that are praying, please pray that this time will be a good time away of encouragement, feeding and rest.

The week after that, i'll actually be heading over to Singapore for a few days to meet up with some friends from Oz. i'm really excited to be able to catch up with Tan, Matt, Kristen, Nick and all the kids over there. It'll be my first time out of thailand since arriving, so it actually feels kinda weird, but really looking forward to seeing some old friends. Gotta thank God that we could find days in common and that it's the week that school has a break too, as it's songkran week that week, and that there were really cheap airfares over there too. I got return tickets for all of $270AUD!! not bad eh?

so for those praying, please be praying for the conference, for Ajarn Jazz, for Baan Tawai, and for safe travels over the next couple weeks. I'll try to put up a few posts over the next couple weeks, but i'm really not sure how much net access i'll have, so we'll see how we go :)