Happy Birthday Denise

One of the great things about being over here is being with family and being able to celebrate 'milestones' with them. This week was a big birthday for Denise as she starts another decade. I figured a big birthday meant a special celebration, so the plan was for a surprise party for her with some of her close friends. Plan was for everyone to get there between 6.30-6.45 with Denise arriving at 7pm. Well, the big surprise ended up being that Denise arrived smack on 7, with only 5 of us (3 adults and 2 kids) to 'surprise' her! Funniest part was that everyone else literally arrived within 3 mins of Denise arriving, so it ended up being a nice surprise after all. Here are a few pics of the night, including the attempted croquembouche that really didn't work, although it didn't taste too bad :)

the attempted 'croquembouche'

Denise with Mimi & Charis

Happy Birthday Denise!

presents included lots of gardening and kitchen equipment

and finally one present that wasn't

Feb highlights

Despite good intentions to be posting more regularly, time just keeps on disappearing. The past month has been a great time of getting into God's word as I am prepping studies on 1 Peter, the Sermon on the Mount and Acts. There have been a couple weeks where I've had to not only prep 4 studies in one week, but I also had the chance to meet up with Boom to help train her in how to read the Bible and write a bible study from scratch, as well as Maggie to help her prep studies for her cell group. I was just thinking back 6 months when I first came over. It would take me the better part of 2 weeks to write a study and then prep it to be able to teach in Thai. Not that my Thai is anywhere close to being fully down pat, but it's nice to sometimes see how language has progressed and that I am starting to get somewhere so that I can be writing, prepping and teaching multiple studies in a week. Needless to say, it's kept me busy and generally out of mischief.

Even in the busyness of prepping studies,  I also had a chance to get a taste of what it's like to be a single parent as I looked after my friend's 2 kids for a week while they were in Singapore for work. It was actually a really fun week, despite being pretty tired by the end. I do have a whole new appreciation for all you parents out there who work full time, raise kids, help them with their homework, cook dinner, clean the house, do the ironing, plus manage a social life. How people manage to keep on FB in the midst of all that, I have no idea, but you guys really are amazing!! After my week of babysitting, I did get to go away up the mountains with my cell group for a night. Was awesome to check out the Sakura trees and go strawberry picking!!! Sweetest strawberries I've ever had!! Only 200bht  (approx $6.50) per kg of strawberries!! Oh yeah!!! Was a great weekend away, great fellowship, bonding time, I got to do some 4WD, and got to lead a study in Acts. Here are a few happy snaps from the trip.

Trip to Khun Chang Kian

Sakura trees in full bloom

Boom, Kim and Daa

1/2 the strawberries I picked

1 box = 2 kgs!! not to mention all the strawbs we ate in the field

Cell group on the mountain

Breakky of instant noodles

with Mary, Kim and P'Fon

imaginary playing the kim (a thai instrument) while trying to grill 'balls'

hanging with the girls

awesome views

course some jump shots were needed

and other crazy shots

the gals

Random highlights from January in pics

So here are a few random shots from January.

my Fat Lady had a baby

cooking for a combined housewarming and birthday party

Tennis with the family

the serve that hit Mayz

Family Tennis

Mini burgers

Seanies star pizzas

Mimi's pizza

John's birthday celebrations without him

John's birthday celebrations without him

Skyping into trivia night with old friends

Trip to Pai

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to head up to a Lisu village just out of Pai, about 3hrs drive from Chiang Mai. Whilst it was a fun weekend to get away with friends, it was also an opportunity to check out some other ministries happening around the area as well as check out possible hill tribe villages that we can take a short term team to at the end of this year. It was a great eye opener to see other ministries happening over here, the needs in those villages, and to see just how remote some of the villages we went to were. To get to 2 of the villages, we had to take 4WD's, otherwise there was no chance that we'd get there. It was the highest hilltribe village that I think I have ever been to! Whilst it was exciting to see that there were churches there, there are still lots of needs there. There is a real lack of pastors who are willing to work in the villages, and who can speak their tribal dialect. There are also very few men who go to the churches, most are women with young children. We got to help run a one off sunday school program for the kids the day we were there, however even we soon discovered the limitations of not having their language and very few of them being able to speak Thai.

In any case, we had a great weekend away with friends. We all got to sleep in the church hall (the boys decided to sleep in the tent outside), go swimming in a hot spring, smoke dry my jeans over the camp fire, have a weekend of great fun and fellowship with friends.

Here are a few pics

with Pi Fon

John & A. Narin

The hot spring we swam in

keeping warm (and smoky) around the fire

roasting sweet potatoes over the fire

teaching SS

the church building

Lisu people waiting for church to start

Amazing views on our way to the 2nd & 3rd villages

Christmas Presentation 2012

For the Grace Church Christmas celebrations, we got to put on a special christmas performance with the kids from the Sunday School as well as a few other older people to help. We were really keen to get everyone to be thinking not about the manger or the cross, but about the person who lay in the manger and the person who died upon the cross. The kids did an awesome job. If you want to check out the action, you can click below and view it on Youtube.

Click here to watch Christmas Presentation 2012

The final part of the presentation was a song item of O Holy Night (where everyone ended up joining in anyway). Not sure how it happened exactly, but we had 2 foreigners trying to sing Thai and one Thai friend trying to sing in tune :) Scary part for me was having to kick off the song with a solo in Thai, admittedly I got first pick of which lines I wanted to sing - so I picked the easiest, which ended up being the first two lines. All in all, I think it went well. Was awesome to be able to sing with Denise and my good friend P'Fon.

Click here to watch O Holy Night

Christmas 2012

I had all good intentions of posting up during December with all the details of Christmas activities, but in the busyness of life and getting everything sorted for all the various Christmas presentations, parties, outreach events, carolling etc, time just totally vanished and now...it's post Christmas. But I figure at least now it means I have some pics to put up about what has happened. 

So not surprisingly, December was a pretty busy month. It was really nice that mum and dad arrived early December, just in time to celebrate Dad's birthday together. 

Dad's Birthday Dinner

We also had our cell group Christmas party, where we had a 3 non christian friends come along. We tried to run the night in a casual, 'normal' cell group style way - with extra food to celebrate. Even though it was a bit quiet to begin with, by the end of the night no one wanted to go home. 

The week after we had our church carolling night. We started at the hospital in the wards, before visiting 5 other houses. Was awesome fun jamming with John, Em, Mayz & Biem throughout the night.

The muso's at the hospital

carolling at the hospital

On the 23rd, we got to celebrate Christmas with the kids in the morning SS, before the evening church xmas celebrations where the kids got to do a big presentation that included puppets, songs, them as mary, joseph, shepherds, and animals. We were keen to present Christmas in a slightly different way where we used the manger and the cross as the 2 common things that we think of when it comes to Jesus. However, rather than focus on the manger or the cross, we wanted to challenge everyone to think not about the manger or cross, rather WHO it was that lay in the manger, and hung on the cross. What we wanted to them to see by the end was that Jesus is King, Saviour and God. 

The SS team

Kids in action with the puppets

Kids in action

Em & Joseph as the centurion and soldier

Time to freak out, first Thai song item of O Holy Night with solo to begin!

Given that we had only really got the script ready for the presentation 2 weeks before, we decided it best to record the whole show and get the kids to lip sync. Meant a bit of extra work for me to record and edit the whole thing, but I think it went really well overall. Here are a few pics of the kids in action 

Pretending to know what i'm doing

Then on Christmas Day, we had another family cell group christmas party. Was a great night with over 50 people there. Apart from games for the kids, lots of food - mainly meat and token cabbage and corn for our greens, we were keen to use the night to challenge everyone to think about what it means for Jesus to be their wonderful counsellor, merciful saviour, everlasting father, prince of peace. I made up a thai version of 'The News' video and we played that to challenge people to be thinking about their need for a counsellor, saviour and prince of peace. I hope and pray that many were challenged that night to be thinking deeper about Jesus. 

P'Daang helping with the games for kids

Getting ready for the present exchange

So after all the Christmas events, I've been pretty whacked. Lots of sleeping in and catching up on rest amidst spending time with the family. Lots to be giving thanks to God for, especially in all that he's been teaching me through this time.