GREAT NEWS!
Hey everybody, Chris here!!! The past month and a half since our last blog entry has been an interesting one. Dora and I have been substitute teaching almost every day. Well, actually, Dora has been called every day for jobs, since she is a certified teacher in Fayette County, while I have been teaching saxophone 2 ½ days a week and looking on jealously! J In addition to teaching, we have been running around to several more churches to share God’s story in Thailand and to raise the remaining funds, and we have some amazing news to report…through the generous giving of so many of you, we now have 91% of our required funding pledged or received in order to depart for Thailand!!! Praise God and thank you all so very much. That leap of faith, mentioned in the last blog entry, of needing 80% of our funds by the beginning of November in order to attend our Colorado training was exceeded dramatically by the beginning of October. We learn more about trusting God’s promises every day!
Where we go from here:
That all means that we can attend our training from November 9th-December 18th. We’re also now in the process of confirming our funds and preparing to take another leap of faith to buy our tickets to Thailand for early January. We need to reach 100% in donations and pledges in order to hop on that plane, but we believe that God intends for us to be in Bangkok before January 14th so we can start language school at the beginning of their spring term. We really must begin in January if we stand any chance of being prepared to move into our new home in the Roi Et province for the beginning of their school year in May. However, through our Brazil training, we have come to grasp the fact that if we have any hopes of being effective communicators in the Northeast, we have to spend the time for language training in Bangkok. So, we will stay in Bangkok longer than 4 months if necessary to have a functional grasp on the Thai language. If you have felt lead to partner with us in this ministry in Thailand and have been postponing joining us for any reason, we would humbly ask you to please consider doing so before the end of 2009 so we will have the funds necessary to depart on time.
Global Impact Celebrations!
We promise that we will write about the specifics of our final training in Colorado as the training commences next month, but currently, I am writing you all from Washington State, where Dora and I have been flown in by Woodinville Community United Methodist Church (in the city of Woodinville near Seattle) to attend their Global Impact Celebration. While we are here we are getting a chance to reconnect with an amazing church in the Tri-cities area of eastern Washington that is partnering with us, and to see some dear friends in the Portland area. These GIC events are like ‘Mission Conferences on Steroids’ to quote Dick McClain the Mission Society’s new president. GIC’s are 5 days of meeting with different members and groups within the church to discuss the church’s vision for missions and to help all the members get involved with it. It also gives us the opportunity to personally share our vision for ministry in Thailand with lots of people in small group settings, so that many members of the church are involved in the process of discerning the possibility of a partnership between the church and our ministry. We had such an amazing time in February at the GIC at Central United Protestant church in Richland, Washington, that we seized the opportunity to travel back from Seattle to see our new friends in eastern Washington before returning to Woodinville Community Church for their GIC.
The difficulty of goodbyes:
We will share more about this experience out in Washington and Oregon next month, but I wanted to finish this entry by sharing what’s been on my heart so heavily recently. We have begun the process of saying many of our goodbyes, realizing now that with such limited time in the states (and even more limited time in Kentucky and North Carolina) we can’t always say, “We will see you next time!” because that ‘next time’ may be years away. Dora and I have always been crazy travelers, and neither of us have had a difficult time leaving home before, but this is a whole new situation, and is stirring very new and difficult emotions for us both. I just taught my last saxophone lessons to each of my students this past week, and it was so much more difficult than I expected it to be. I really don’t feel like I know how to say goodbye to friends (and that includes my students) when I know we can stay in touch, but I very well may not see them for years. I know there isn’t an easy answer to this struggle, but please pray for both of us as we work through this together. This opportunity is so bitter sweet!!!
We love you all so dearly. Thank you for your support. Stay tuned since Dora is going to write the blog this next month!
