Am I That Dedicated?

I am trying to revive our blog. It's harder to keep the postings current than I thought it would be. Once we got into Myanmar (October) and were urged to be very careful about our communications (so as not to put our friends and fellow-workers at risk), the wind went out of my sails and I've had a hard time getting back into the flow of communicating via the blog.

It feels similar to a project I took on a few years back. I decided to write a personal Christmas letter to each of our kids, their spouses, and the grandkids each year. I was building a new family tradition...... Yippee!!! Well, I did alright for a few years. I looked forward with great excitment to writing those letters every Christmas. But then, sure enough, one year I got behind on the project and knew I couldn't get them all done in time. I forged ahead, however, even though I knew some would arrive late that year.

I was disappointed with myself. I had started out with such good intentions. But in the process of that next year I became discouraged concerning the whole idea. My zeal began to wane, putting my start date for the following Christmas even farther behind than before. I tried to encourage myself, saying that if I couldn't get them done for Christmas, it was okay, I would just turn them into New Year's letters. But something happens psychologically, at least for me, when I start slipping on the job, and especially if I get feeling too far behind. I end up telling myself that the letters didn't matter to anyone anyway, so why was I even trying to make it a yearly tradition. I convinced myself that it was okay to bag the idea.

That's kind of how I've felt about this whole blogging thing. I don't like letting people down, even myself. None of the kids have ever asked why the letters stopped, or quizzed me about what happened to their Christmas letter. No one is beating me up about it. Except me. If I could make a long-term committment out of some of the great ideas I've had, I think I'd be amazed at the fruit God would produce in my life.

I'm not sure I want to rekindle the blog if I can't be faithful to keeping it current and interesting. Like I said, it's much harder to keep up with than I thought it would be. Faithful blogging takes dedication and determination. Am I up for that, over the long-haul, I wonder?

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.