Hello Everyone, just wanted to show everyone our new Grandson, Daniel, he is two years old and Kim and John are expecting to bring him home in the next year (or so).

Goodbye to Thailand, Hello to X

We've already started saying our good-byes to all the dear Christians we've met in Thailand. We were especially blessed to get to know, and spend time with, Pastor Gampon and his wife Miriam (and their 3 beautiful children). And Nong, the gal who runs the coffee shop and has prepared all our meals; it will be so hard to say good-bye to her. She has been so good to us all, serving us far beyond what was expected.

We will be here at City Gate Church for 3 more days. Tomorrow will be our last Sunday with the people here. They are putting on a big party for us in the afternoon. Nong told us about it this afternoon, but we're not supposed to tell the rest of the team because they want it to be a surprise. After church there will be a special Thai potluck (she named the meal, but I can't remember what it's called). Then there will be traditional Thai dancing before we have an afternoon "coffee time" together. The children from the orphanage called "Home of Joy" will also be in church so our team will be doing "Children's Church" again.

Arthur and I are making our final decisions for packing our suitcase for Myanmar: will we get our clothes laundered or do them again in our own bucket; what printed material will we throw away (anything that talks about our upcoming plans and arrangements must be tossed for sure); what gifts do we want to buy yet to take home; etc.

We are booked into the Panda Hotel our first night in Rangoon. Online it looks and sounds very luxurious (remember we are "tourists"). After that we cannot say as yet where we will be. One thing I do know, if we have never yet learned how to be flexible, God is certainly setting up the opportunity to learn it now. It will truly be a life of "giving no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough trouble of its own."

I'm not sure when we will get another opportunity to blog, so let me remind you of our love, of our on-going prayers for all our beloved family and friends, and of the love God has for you. You matter greatly to His kingdom and His eternal purposes. Keep walking in the light. Walk in every bit of light that you have. Remember, God is always at work. Look around, listen to Him speak, and see where you can fit into what He is doing.

May God's grace and peace be with you,
Art & Doris

SO MANY MINISTRY OPPORTUNITIES!!

We are amazed at the wide variety of opportunities are open to our team to minister and serve with our host church here as well as other Christian workers here. The pastor caught a bad cold (I think we passed ours on to him), so he asked to preach again today. I helped in children's church.

This past week I (Doris) was able to do two full days of baking for the Coffee House that the church has recently opened. The pastor's wife normally does all the baking for it, but she was swamped with other obligations, mainly because the church was hosting a two-day pastor's seminar. I introduced cinnomon rolls and they seemed to go over well . A young man on our outreach team recently introduced "cheesecake," that was a very big hit.

Part of our team spent two days this week visiting outlying villages where an incredible revival is taking place, especially among the youth. The Lord stretched our team big time when they had to eat bamboo larvae, mud fish, etc. and sleep on bamboo floors. But they said all the discomfort was worth it, just to see the children worship God, repent, and receive visions from God. Arthur and I were with Pastor Gampon in another city at revival meetings. We truly enjoyed the meetings (praising and dancing and worshiping until midnight each night). God is definitely on the move in Thailand! It's amazing to see faith rising up in the Christians as they see and hear about all God is doing all over the country. Healings and miracles are happening in many places.

This coming week we had planned to work with an orphanage here in Chiang Mai but now it isn't working out to spend the week with the children. Please pray that we will know what He is directing us to do. Each week we've worked helping university students speak/learn English, visited the sick and dying in the children's wards of the hospital, worked on the church (rebuilding restrooms, painting, weeding, cleaning, etc.). On Thursday we will be making a "border run" to get our visa's squared away for the next leg of our outreach phase. Please keep us in prayer that day. It will be a long day of travelling across the border and back. Oh Oh gotta go!! Explain later!

Sorry for the lack of information!!

We truly thought we would have more opportunities to post to this blog, but between the bad connections, loss of power, and our busy ministry responsibilities, we have had very little time/ability to spend blogging. We are sorry about that. Hopefully, you have gotten the emails we sent out along the way.

Today Arthur preached here at the City Gate Church at the request of Pastor Gampon. It was a wonderful service and the people were really blessed, especially, I think, the English speakers that live here (missionaries, YWAMers, etc). I'm amazed at how many non-Thais are connected with this church and it's various ministries.

Pastor Gampon has asked us to join him as he travels to hear an Indian pastor speak the next couple of days in a town about 4-5 hours south of Chiang Mai. We are excited to go along. The preaching will be done in English (Indian English), and Pastor Gampon will be the Thai translater. The rest of our team will visit two villages about an hours drive from here and minister there for 2 days.

The weather here is HOT and with the humitity at 94%, sometimes the heat feels unbearable. Please hold us up in your prayers. We are thankful that every once in a while we are able to be in a spot that has air-conditioning. Our group will be going to a market tonight to buy supplies for ministry in the villages and even though Arthur and I will not be going to the villages, we are going shopping with them--just to get into a air-conditioned store.

We send you all our love and remind you that you are in our prayers. The Lord has blessed us in marvelous ways; with answers to prayer, with healing from ailments that have come upon us, with words to speak of His goodness and greatness, with revelation of how to pray for people when we cannot understand their request (but God gives us understanding and discernment in how to pray and how to bless them).

Please drop us a comment. We'd love to hear how things are going at home. May God bless and keep you, until we connect again. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!!!

With our love,
Art & Doris

Commissioned to GO!!!

Wow, it's amazing! In just 38 hours we will be in the air, flying to Bangkok, Thailand. And from there, traveling by train to our first outreach destination, Chang Mai (in northern Thailand). The base leaders prayed for us the other night and commissioned us (in the name of Jesus) to "GO and make disicples". We received many words of encouragement and support.

We are sorry we have not been able to load the video of us walking the high wire; we need help with this blogging business. But be sure to take another look at the August 17th posting. We've added some snapshots of our week on the ropes course.

Thank you so much for keeping us in your prayers. We especially ask for increased prayer covering throughout September and October while we are overseas, ministering in nations whose languages we do not know and whose governments are not always appreciative of "westerners."

We send our love to you all. May you be blessed during the autumn season. We hope to continue to communicate via email and this blog while we visit Thailand and Myanmar, but we cannot promise that all our postings will get to you. Please keep in touch if you can, we (especially Doris) will need the reassurance that all is well at home.

With love we sign off for now,

Art & Doris

The Ropes Course

Good Morning! Well we promised in our newsletter to have a video of us walking the high wire on the campus ropes course but we are having trouble getting it to down load. We hope to succeed soon so in the mean time you will have to just take our word for it. Doris was amazing!

Here are a few snapshots.

Half way there

Hi everybody. It has been a while since we posted an update, and we're sorry for that. It seems like we have many things that are vying for our time and we find it hard to keep up with the blog. Since we last posted we have had three weeks of school. They call this "lecture phase" but it really involves much more than that. There is lecture time, but along with the lecture there is often significant time allowed for responding and ministry to the application points of the lecture. We also have extended worship time (1 hour) three times a week, we have prayer/intercession twice a week. The class is divided into small groups and each small group meets twice a week. Plus, we have "one on one" times with a staff member once a week--all in order to process what we are learning. Last week we went to the Salem Art Festival and mingled, looking for opportunities to share our faith. That was a stretch for many of us, since cold evangelism is not something any of us are used to, and none of us are really comfortable with.

Each week introduces a new area of teaching. We have had: Hearing God; Kingdom Dynamics; A Lifestyle of Repentance; Plumbline; and Relationships. This week we are talking about "God". Sometimes it is easy to just assume that we know all we need to know about God, but in reality God is so big and awesome that there is really no such thing as knowing Him as well as He wants to be known. We have been challenged already that the real issue is letting God know us. Ever since the fall of man we have been hiding from God whose greatest desire is to be known in all of his goodness, but we hide. One of the highlights of the time here for both of us is a growing awareness of God the Redeemer, the one who can take every area of our life (or any one's life) and redeem it. His passion is to restore our lives, to work in every circumstance, past, present and future, to bring healing. Hallelujah!

If you recieved our newsletter you know that we are headed to Thailand for our "outreach" and we are praying that God will open a way for us to spend some time in Burma (Myanmar) as well. We will be working in the northern part of Thailand out of a city called Chang Mai. This is near the Burmese border so even if we cannot get into Burma we will be working with refugees and immigrants from Burma.

One news note is that William P. Young, author of "The Shack", is speaking on campus today and tomorrow. He is not speaking in our school but we will get to hear him Tuesday evening. If you have not heard of the his book, you need to check it out. The Shack is a novel that will awaken all kinds of things in your heart and mind. We have read it a couple of times and each time it challenges our minds and touches the depths of our hearts.

Getting down to Business with God

Hi Everyone!



Well, we've just finished two weeks at YWAM Salem. The first week was filled with all sorts of activities geared to helping us get to know one another, both staff and fellow-students. Then this past week we buckled down to learning about "Hearing the Voice of God." I was amazed at the various ways God chose to speak to me (Doris) personally. And the others in our class can testify the same--God was speaking to each of us, specifially what we needed to hear. We were encouraged to ask Him specific questions, and I for one, was amazed at His answers.



We do a lot of journaling, small group and one-on-one processing of the material we are studying each week. Another activity we are all involved in is AOS (acts of service); better known by some as work duty. Arthur is on the supper clean-up crew. By the time he is done each evening he looks like one tired dog, but I'll let him tell you more on that, if he wants to. My duty is in the area of hospitality. My job is two-fold: preparing, setting up and cleaning up for the mid-morning snack break for the CDTS students and staff, then also in the afternoons I bake, make up beds and rooms and welcome packs for guests who are staying overnight on campus. This past week I did gobs of baking. Next week I expect to do more bed-making, laundry etc. because all the guest beds on the base will be filled because of a wedding that is taking place here next Saturday.



In just this short time we've already come to love our staff and fellow students. Each one has such a unique story and already made such a wonderful impact on our lives. We still don't know where (to what country) our class will go on "outreach." We have been praying and on Tuesday morning will again spend the morning in intercession, seeking God's will for us.

We have finally arrived! Pretty impressive, eh! Arrived really only means that we are now in Salem, OR and today was the first day of our CDTS. We already have homework and we already got the afternoon off. Wow.

The Salem YWAM Base is on 35 beautiful acres SE of Salem. It is a gorgeous time of year with all the Rhody's in full bloom and everything green and growing. This beauty comes at a price, rain almost every day and my (Art's) allergies are in high gear.

We have been traveling since May 5 and it is good to settle down for awhile. We have a beautiful room and it's much larger than we expected, Praise God! (see pic) We do share a bathroom with a couple who has a 2 year old but it seems to be going well. We eat with all the others on base in cafeteria. It is definitely food designed to keep the young people, who are the majority here, happy.

An update on our travels. We covered around 2500 miles starting with a trip to Alberta, Canada going as far north as a little town called Boyle where Doris' brother and his wife have a small business. We visited family and friends from 35 years ago. Doris was able to enjoy Mother's Day with her mother for the first time in 20+ years. It was a great time. We then were able to spend a few days with our middle son, Steven and our newest grandchild, Noah. who was only two weeks old at the time. That was awesome! We returned to Kellogg for a couple of days to repack for School. Brian Larsen, a fellow CDTS student, brought a couple of boxes for us because our car was stuffed. I (Art) had the privilege of preaching at Lakeview Missionary Church in Moses Lake, the church I grew up in. We enjoyed a great potluck there that was put on because my dad and mom made the trip over from Pinehurst to be with us in Moses Lake, their first visit back in 4+ years. We journeyed on to Seattle where we spent the evening with my sister, Patty, and Dave and Sharon Passey. He was the pastor who married us 36 years ago, June 17. We took a quick trip up to Abbotsford, B.C. to see our oldest son and his family (We were able to see all four of our children and all 7 of our grandchildren in the last month, really cool!). We then made the final leg of our journey traveling to Tacoma, then Eatonville and on to Battleground visiting friends and enjoying their hospitality before arriving in Salem on June 8. A busy and enjoyable month.

Whew! That's Over! Now What?

The "moving sale" was a lot of work, but it really paid off. God blessed our efforts more than we could have imagined. Thank you to any and all of you who helped us out: with setting up, with pricing, with manning the cash table, with buying stuff, with loading stuff into people's vehicles, etc. Because of all your help the "clean up" was very simple. We are profoundly grateful.

Now that we have parted with all the "extras" we had been holding onto, we can get busy packing our belongings into boxes, preparing them for storage. That's where they will sit until we return from our training in Salem, Oregon in mid-December.

May 4th will be our last Sunday at the United Church of Kellogg. They will be "commissioning" us, sending us out, with quite a bit of fanfare, I learned today. We'd like to invite you to come and be a part of that big day. The Sunday morning service will have a special time of prayer and "commissioning." The church is also planning an evening supper and party, starting at 5:30pm. We'd love to have you join us on this special day.

Our plans for May are to go to Alberta and visit Doris' family, and some friends from Bible College. Then, on our way to Oregon we'll swing down through Great Falls, Montana to welcome the newest member of the family. (Steven and Christel are expecting their second baby in May).

Classes begin for us in Salem on June 9th. It feels so strange to read the list of items they recommend students bring with them. It seems so short. How in the world do you narrow your belongings down to 18 items each when we've gotten so used to being surrounded by "the comforts and conveniences" we've grown accustomed to? With God's help, is all I can figure.

Yippee!! We're In!

We've received our "acceptance" packet to CDTS at the Salem, Oregon YWAM base. School begins June 9, 2008. So we've been fine-tuning our schedule for the next few months.

Lord willing, things will go somewhat like this: We will have a "moving sale" the first weekend in May. May 4th is scheduled to be Arthur's last Sunday in the pulpit of the church here in Kellogg. Then, that following week we will get our things into storage and head up to Alberta, where we hope to be at Mom and Dad's in Red Deer by Mother's Day. I'm very excited about that!

Arthur and I are spending much time in prayer and conversation, seeking God, and clarifying in our own hearts and minds this new direction. This is truly a new and awesome journey for us; we've not been down this road before. True, we've been in Christian ministry for many years, but always in the context of "pastoring." This new direction is that of being "missionaries." And WOW, it's stretching us, stretching our trust in our Heavenly Father and His provision, stretching our view of ourselves and who He has called us to be in these present times.

We love God, and we live to partner with Him and fit into His purposes, so the whole thing is exciting beyond words. But I have to admit to a bit of "shaking in my boots" as well. Please pray for us. We want to be, and do, all God has in mind for us.

Regarding the mountain of "stuff" that I've been sorting through: well, I feel like I'm making decent headway. I wish so badly that all the kids could come and look through things and take anything that has meaning to them. Yesterday I came across boxes of school papers, letters and cards the kids had given me years ago (throughout their growing-up years). What a precious (and emotional) time I had with all that stuff. And now I need to get back at it. All around me here in the study are piles of boxes, stacks of photos, and literally hundreds of books and notebooks yet to go through.

One of the mountains facing us these days is the vast amount of "stuff" we have accumulated over the past 35 years. It must be dealt with! And if we understand God's voice clearly, He is saying it's time to downsize our household. Our daughter got me (Doris) started; she's young (32) and motivated and supplied the push I needed to get this daunting project underway. So, today I head for the basement--to sort through boxes and boxes of old papers and magazines, paint, and canning supplies galore (in my younger days I would can dozens of jars of fruits, vegetables, jams, jellies, etc. in any given year). Those days have long been over and it's time to pass this stuff on to a younger woman. Hopefully, there's still someone out there who enjoys providing for her family in this way. Arthur left this morning to a attend a pastor's prayer retreat the next few days, so I hope to buckle down and make some honest-to-goodness progress while he's away. My plan, Lord willing, is to have a yard sale the first weekend of May, using the proceeds to help fund our schooling in Salem. If you have knowledge on how to price antiques and other old things, I'd love to hear from you.

Another Step

Well we've made progress. Our CDTS applications are all sent off and we now awaiting acceptance into the CDTS school in Salem, Oregon. We just sent out our first letter to friends, family and church family telling about the beginnings of this new adventure. The name of our blog has its roots in our early days in the Silver Valley of North Idaho. We called the ministry The Solid Rock. We still have a strong desire to see a church planted in Wallace but if that or any of our plans come to fruition it will be because we are standing on the "Solid Rock".

We spend some time this past week at a board retreat for Rural Shepherds Network the ministry be believe God is leading us to be a part of when we complete our CDTS. You can check them out online at ruralshepherdsnetork.org.

I (Art) am leaving in the morning for a pastor's prayer retreat near Oldtown, Idaho. I am looking forward to what God will do there. If you read this before Feb. 27 please use it as a reminder to pray for God's anointing in our lives.

It Has Begun

Monday, Jan. 21
Two weeks ago Doris and I made a decision to follow the desire of our heart to get more involved in missions and to pursue a ministry of networking and nurturing pastors, churches and people here and abroad. Our first step has been to research Crossroads Discipleship Training Schools. These are schools that introduce people who a "little" older to the values of Youth With A Mission. We believe Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is going to be the primary mission agency we will be working with so we must do one these schools. We looked into many schools online and narrowed our search to five, Salem, OR, Lebanon, PA,, Pune, India, Babaio, Philipines and Fiji. I was really hoping for Fiji but evidently God has other plans as they never responded to ur inquiries. We both have come to feel that Salem, Oregon is the place for us. We have been feeling this for a few days and then tonight, I recieved an email from a acquaintance whom we had consulted who reccomended Salem without knowing that was the way we were leaning. Thank you Jesus. Well this is the start of new adventure, A Solid Rock Adventure, an adventure with Jesus our Solid Rock.