On our day off this week, we went to a place I call Monkey Hill, it is a tall hill by the ocean that has thousands of monkeys that everyone comes to feed bananas and peanuts. Anthony was able to feed all of the monkeys some bananas, including one that looks like his father. Back in our home state of Kentucky, people worry about hitting a deer in the road. Here, we pass elephants walking along the road almost every week.
On our days off, we enjoy going down to the oceanfront and enjoying the beauty of the Thailand coast. The pictures we take with Anthony's camera phone cannot capture the majesty of this area.This has been a very slow week because most people at church are on holiday. New Years Week is the most popular time of the year for Thai people to go on vacation or take time to visit family. Cell group meetings have been cancelled for the week. We did not have language study classes this week, because our tutor is on vacation and our language school teacher had to cancel (she was away from Bangkok, visiting her parents, and she could not get a flight home because they were all being cancelled because of bomb threats.) We used our time this week to catch up on our Thai language studies and to take care of correspondence and paperwork that had accumulated around Christmastime. We praise God having a week where life slowed down a bit!
We have a Rev. Randy Day, the General Secretary of GBGM. We are honored that he would take time out of his busy schedule to be with us. We will also be meeting with Dr. David Wu, who has "retired" (we think he is as busy as ever) from GBGM but is serving on a special commission. We, and all UM missionaries in southeast Asia are deeply indebted to Dr. David Wu for his fruitful ministry that has empowered missions in this region.
One of our neighbors was over the house when a couple from our church came over. Soon, the couple, Mr. Man and Mrs. Mim, started to witness to our neighbor. We were pleased at Man & Mim's eagerness to witness and we believe this couple is one of several at the church that is called to ministry and would do well as pastors. They led our neighbor through the Scriptures and then our neighbor prayed to ask Jesus into her heart. After she prayed, we all held hands and prayed together with her and gave her a Bible with instructions to read the gospels. We don't know how much she actually understood, but we do know that a seed has been planted, not only with her but with her whole family. We do believe that our neighbor and her mother will probably read the Bible and we pray that God will continue to nurture her. Please pray for our neighbors. They are wonderful people and we want to share Jesus with them.
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