Heading home!!!

Hey, everyone! We are headed home; actually we are sitting in the Hong Kong airport as we speak. We will arrive back in Little Rock on Friday morning around eight and then we will drive home to Fayetteville. Please continue to pray for our safety and rest as we make the long journey home. We are excited to get to post pictures and talk to people face to face about what we experienced. Love to all of you!

Thailand Update

We have finally gotten used to things here in Thailand just in time to come home on Thursday ;) We love the work we have gotten to do here mostly because it's so like what we do in Fayetteville but instead we are working with Thai students instead of Americans. During the week, our team goes to the university to meet students and to teach English. We stay on campus from 10 to around 4 and then invite students to come to dinner with us or do some sort of activity with us that night. Friday nights are spent at the Baptist Students Center where we have an hour and a half of activities for college students and then join and larger group of people (all ages) for a program called Friday Night Live. They have worship, a game, and then a short devotional from one of the English teachers who work there. Not only to people get to hear and practice their English, but they also hear the gospel. Saturdays are reserved for more touristy activities. This weekend Cole and I went with a Thai believer to The Grand Palace while our team got some extra rest Saturday morning. It was like something out of "The King and I." When we get back and post pictures you will be able to see the detail and beauty of this palace, both of which, by the way, are very important in Thai culture. We got to see artifacts from the royal family and the system of money from past to present. We then rode and boat taxi and a tuk-tuk (I'll show you pics later of this...kind of hard to explain) to get to where our team would meet us. We got lunch and then went to the largest weekend market in all of Asia!!! Everything from snakes to thai silk was sold there and for awesome prices if you consider that we get 32 American dollars for one baht. We spent an hour and a half there....not nearly long enough! It was my favorite place to go so far. And the students that were with us were so helpful to bargain with merchants and to tell us what was good quality and what wasn't. Cole got to speak at the afternoon service at church and I got to sing with the worship band. It was amazing to get to see how Thais worship....even without Christ Thais are so much more giving and willing to serve than many other people....but with Christ their heart is transformed into something so much closer to the image of Christ...much closer than I am. We fly out Thursday afternoon and will arrive Friday morning back in Little Rock. Please pray for energy for our final days here...that we will not ease up on our ministry. Pray for safe travels as we fly home and pray that we will recover quickly from jet lag upon return. Thank you for all your prayers and support....pictures and more detailed posts soon to follow!!!!! Love, Love!

Thailand, so far!

Hey, everyone! This is going to be a short post about what our trip has been like so far. We got into Bangkok Friday morning around 10:30 Bangkok time. We are staying in a small furnished apartment. It is very hot and humid here and we have to drown ourselves with water to not get dehydrated. We walk a lot of the time and sweat the rest....but it's not that bad. Our apartment has air conditioning and so do the malls, where, just like in America, college students hang out. Culture shock hasn't been horrible b/c there are lots of western things here (McDonalds, Starbucks, Peanut Butter). That will make the trip easier on the team that we are leaving behind to work when we come home on the 19th. We went to church today at the Thai Baptist Church here and it was really cool! We got to hear the Thai believers sing the same songs we do in their language, and we sang in ours....but we all serve the same God! Amazing isn't it! We went to the park after church and played ultimate frisbee and then went to the mall to eat dinner. Tomorrow is our first day on campus. Be praying for us to have boldness to reach out to Thai students who want to learn English and to take it even farther by eventually sharing the gospel. Our team is doing great and they are going to do a fantastic job this summer! The food here is awesome...obviously lots of rice and noodles. We have already learned how to say not spicy in Thai to save our taste buds! I'm excited to get to do this with Cole and to get outside of my comfort zone for a while. I don't want to be a spoiled American who takes what God has blessed me with for granted. I also want my heart to be broken for someone other than myself. God is continually showing me how selfish and me-centered I am. I know that all this is to make me more into the image of Christ and less like me. I'm updating this from an internet cafe, so it may be a couple of days until I get to do this again....until then!