Just when you think you’ve got a pretty good handle on culture, you learn something new that surprises you, but then makes you say, “Oh, so that’s why people do that! That makes so much sense now!”

Yes, we will be students of this culture as long as we live in Isaan.

Last week, we spent our Saturday with Chansamone and his family in Mukdahan, a city about an hour and a half away. Besides five children among the two families, we also had four teenage girls with us, who sat at a nearby separate table at the Vietnamese restaurant where we ate. I glanced over several times, expecting to see the four girls chatting away like teenagers do. But every time I looked, no one was speaking. They just looked around shyly. From my cultural perspective, it looked like they didn’t like each other very much! I asked Chansamone and Pon about it, and they explained that they were trying to figure out the heirarchy between them. As we already knew, every person in Thailand looks at everyone else as either in a higher and lower position than themselves, and you must act according to that level of status. For one of those girls to start the conversation was to assume they were the “pii” (the leader or the one with the highest status). If that person were mistaken, they would be ostracized by the others.

“Wouldn’t it be the oldest girl?” I asked. No, the oldest girl was an “outsider.” Wouldn’t it be the next oldest girl? No, a younger girl than her had Dr. Chansamone for a father! How long would this silence continue, I wondered? Pon relieved the discomfort I was feeling for them by inserting herself (as a higher person on the ladder) into their presence. She went over to ask a few questions, came back and sat with us again, and sure enough, that got the ball rolling on the conversation! It was amazing to see the difference. The rest of the afternoon, the girls chatted as teenage girls do. Now, why did it take us a year and a half to learn this cultural phenomenon?

I promised in my last post that I would write about the two girls living with us…in about two months, since that seems to be my blogging frequency. I am keeping that promise!

Taw and Tiw are two sisters (ages 18 and 16) who became Christians through the ministry of MEM at a young age, but whose family is Buddhist. The fact that they have one believing grandparent made it culturally acceptable for them to choose to follow Christ rather than Buddhism. They were chosen by the leadership, because of their good character and English abilities, to enter our translator program. (To train future translators for the ministry, our family tutors two male Bible students in English and has these two high school girls in our home as “exchange students” of sort.)

Daily interaction with the girls provides lots of English instruction and practice. They quickly adjusted to understanding much of what we spoke directly to them and are building a stronger vocabulary. Our kids love having these “older sisters” in the house, too.

It became apparent to us that more than English teaching was sufficient to train these girls for future ministry service. Certainly, they were witnessing how a Christian family functions and interacts with each other. But I felt they needed biblical instruction from an older woman (Titus 2) so that they can remain pure and learn to be sensible and wise young women in the Lord, especially considering the strong influence of the Thai pop-culture that is leading so many young people to reject the traditional (and wise) customs of purity and marriage. I began to meet with them in the evenings, after our three younger children go to bed, to study the Bible and discuss relevant teenager topics like beauty, modesty, peer pressure, and boys. They have opened up to me, and I have shared the biblical wisdom I have accrued over the years, as purity and modesty are matters close to my heart. I pray the Lord will use me to teach them in matters of life and godliness and that they would learn the lessons the Lord has to prepare them to serve Him with a whole heart.  

10. Superconference: (It’s called that for a reason!) Preparations began in September to host 420 nationals and 25 Americans in October. It was a very busy time for everyone involved, but well worth the efforts to train and encourage national ministry leaders, working alongside the U.S. who brought used their knowledge, gifts, and passions to serve the nationals.

9. Trying to concentrate on learning Thai means “free time” is spent studying.

8. Heidi and Chase, a married couple from Las Vegas, have come to serve at Mercy Christian School. We’ve loved getting to know this great couple and hosted them for a week in our home while showing them “the ropes.” Much shopping to be done, too, to set up their house and get them settled in.

7. Teaching an after-school English program. It’s gobs of fun, but I’m afraid my type-A personality and hands-on teaching style requires me to spend 2 hours of writing lessons plans and prepping materials for every hour teaching! Can’t do anything less than my best (which is why I chose stay-at-home-mommery over continuing to teach in the first place!)

6. Writing family newsletters, ministry newsletters, and editing other people’s newsletters. I’m the editor in chief around here.  

5. Have I ever blogged about housework being much more time intensive here? I’m “this close” to buying a clothes dryer!!! Dishwashers are not available in Thailand, to my knowledge. My dishwasher’s name is “Jadon.” Hee, hee.

4. Currently, we are starting a program to train four people to be the next translators for the ministry. Rather than send them to the States to improve their English, which is a costly endeavor, two Bible students and two MCS students will study with our family to prayerfully, become translators someday. In another blogpost, I will write about the two girls coming to live with us...I’ll get to that in about 2 months. :-)
 
3. Keeping in touch with family back home via Skype are precious moments and make me grateful for modern technology!

2. Trying to be a good wife and support my husband’s endeavors. Keeping a close relationship amidst a busy ministry load is challenging.

1. I homeschool three children- ‘nuf said.

Basically, when we first moved to the mission field, I very much felt like I was living in two worlds. Keeping up with everything back home and communicating to partners sometimes took precedent over the ministry that surrounded me here. Now, as I believe it should be, I have dived full body into ministry (Mike did that right away- it took me a little longer!), so I have to remind myself to communicate about the ministry also. Thanks for being patient and not giving up on reading our blog! I will try to squeeze it in more often. But please know that a lack of blogging probably means a lot of ministry!

Mike has been working on a grant proposal to get funds to implement an effective evangelism/discipleship program for a restricted-access country in which we work. The program has been very successful in China, where around a million people came to know Christ through it, due to its multiplication strategy and God’s grace, of course! The country we hope to use this in is similar in so many ways to China, and we ask that you pray that God’s Word would spread quickly through this closed country and that His Spirit would lead thousands upon thousands to salvation in Christ. 

If there’s one thing I’m learning on the mission field, it’s how to set aside my own agenda and really serve. The national Christians here in Nonprasert are an awesome example to me of humble service the way Christ taught and walked. Of course, one always hopes that positive examples will rub off on your offspring as well, so I was pleased to find Jadon, now eleven, offering to do the dishes of a small team visiting from the U.S. In fact, he wanted to do their dishes after every meal! Then he offered to make breakfast for them one morning- his delicious scrambled eggs and toast. Not only was I thinking what a great opportunity to serve this was, but a great way to try out his cooking skills on someone else besides his own family! 

It’s really so funny, because when Jadon first started doing dishes at home, it was a huge, dreadful chore for him. (You can imagine without an automatic dishwasher!) So, I made it a regular job until he found it no longer difficult. I had no idea that the lack of difficulty would turn into a joy, especially to do for others as well. Isn’t it like that in our Christian lives? God asks us to do something that seems so hard at first. But the more we do it, the easier it becomes. After a while, it’s second nature and easily extended to others. Of course, He doesn’t stop there. He asks us to do things harder still, until we look back on our life and think, “How did I get here? I never thought I’d be able to do this!” Only through baby steps of obedience do we ever get to the point of Him doing great things through us. And I believe that God will continue His work in my life and in the lives of my children. 

“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Phil. 1:6

Please visit the following link to see our latest photo montage. We're following the Lord Jesus as we serve Him in Thailand. We pray you are following Him into hard places in your own part of the world to reach those around you! 
http://animoto.com/play/FYHe8Iw5qHq8jlEWjaMrAw

Funny how things snowball, even here in the tropics of Thailand.... explained in “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie... he will ask for a glass of milk” style...(sort of!)

If there’s a whole new staff of first year English teachers at Mercy Christian School, you will gladly offer to do a weekly training for them. 

When you have your first meeting and  you ask them what they most want to learn this year, they say “methods of teaching English” and “how to make learning English more fun and effective” so you dust off your brain and think back to your ESL classes in college. 

When the term “TPR” pops in your mind, you do an internet search and discover that it’s a great way of teaching English and fulfills every concern the teachers raised. 

So you do lots of research and introduce this strategy to the English teachers. The more you learn about it, the more excited you become and offer to teach a class yourself to the ministry kids after school. (After all, you still homeschool during the school day!) 

So, you start teaching two days a week after school and find it to be effective and fun. When Thai tutoring by one of the new teachers is offered to your family, you think about how great it would be to learn Thai using TPR. 

So your Thai tutor comes to your home two days a week to teach you and your family Thai using this amazing strategy.  

You had previously offered to train the preschool/Kindergarten teachers in classroom management and have one afternoon a week still open, so Pon puts that in the schedule. 

Upon observing each classroom, you notice there are some developmentally-appropriate instructional strategies that could be improved upon for this age group, so you not only teach classroom management strategies, but also introduce how to incorporate gross and fine motor skill activities in the classroom. 

You make many sample tabletop activities and the more you make, the more ideas you get until your house is overflowing with buttons, pipe cleaners, bottlecaps, egg cartons, lacing shapes, and other materials for independent preschool games. 

Upon seeing your house in disarray, you sweep up your mess and refocus on training the teachers, and the thought occurs to you, that next year, there may be several new English teachers. 

And since they’re brand new teachers, you will gladly offer to give a weekly training.... :-)

I have to say that it's quite fun being a learner through TPR (Total Physical Response) as well as a teacher. Using it to learn Thai, words are actually sticking in my brain, because we're using a right-brain approach. It's so much more effective than all the repeating and memorizing strategies we were trying to use before. It's given me hope that we can actually succeed in our language-learning endeavors! Comprehension was by far our weakest area, and this approach focuses on comprehension first (just as when you learn your first language- you understand it before you speak it). I can't count the number of times I asked someone a question in Thai and they answered back, only receiving a blank stare from me, because I had no idea what they said! I really feel God placed this strategy in my mind to not only improve our Thai, but make a huge impact on the English Department of MCS. Learning English is a way out of poverty for young people in the Isaan area, and may it glorify the Creator of all tongues and tribes to have the only Christian school around shine its light through academic excellence!!

No, not our wedding anniversary... Two days ago marked the one-year anniversary of our move to Thailand. We praise God for His faithfulness this year in the life of our family and ministry. He has been so good to us! We've certainly learned and grown a lot and have much for which to be thankful! We are especially grateful to the people who make it possible for us to serve here. Thank you, senders, for sending us into the harvest, and to the Lord of the harvest, to whom we owe our very lives. 

 "For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15) 

Just for fun...