Sunday in Thailand

Hey, Everyone!
We've had a great Sunday here in Thailand! We got to enjoy a sweet time of worship and fellowship with the Beulah Church in Chiang Mai, and we were also glad to see our Barefoot Doctor students again. They were at the church service here in town also, and in fact sang two special numbers for everyone. Here's their picture while they were singing.

The worship service lasted for over two hours, partly because there were several groups and individuals who brought special music, including Jon. Jon also preached the morning message, but the translation had to be done both in Thai and Burmese. The message was a simple one, but the translations drew out the length of the message quite a bit. At the end of the service, we enjoyed a nice time of Communion with people from at least four countries present. It was nice to share a slow-paced time of remembering Jesus' love and sacrifice for us.

After church, the whole congregation had a fellowship meal together of traditional Thai foods, then we went back to our hotel to relax for the afternoon. Rick Astone and Dr. Bjorn Nilson arrived from California this afternoon, and we went out to dinner with them at a place along the Mae Ping River called The Good View. They were pretty tired from their 20-hour trip, but we needed to check signals for in the morning when we begin the medical portion of the Barefoot Doctors training schedule. Four other doctors will be helping this week with the teaching: Dr. John Paul, Dr. Cindy Goldameir, Dr. Jonathan McCrea, and Dr. Mark Royer. We are so grateful that each of them is willing to come and join our faculty for several days. The students will be blessed so much by their knowledge and their expertise.

We have a lot more pictures of our walk across the Old City of Chiang Mai yesterday, so we are sending a few more of them along tonight. We hope you enjoy them!

Saturday, February 6

First of all, Jon and Clark would truly like to be home with their families during the very dangerous snow storm hitting the Washington D.C. metro area. We're very concerned and praying for our family's safety.

Today we spent in town and within walking distance of our hotel for a couple of reasons: 1) The people from the mission that shuttle us around and work with us, want to spend the weekend with their own families and 2) There was a parade outside our hotel today; The Parade of Flowers, making it impossible for anyone to pick us up. So......we went out our front door and watched the parade. It's much like our own parades, even the music played by the marching bands was western music. I think one played the theme from Oklahoma and the other played one of the themes from Rocky (1 through 7, I can't remember which one).





Afterward, we walked to Old Town, Chiang Mai which is comprised of several city blocks (about one mile by one mile) with in a perfect square and surrounded by a wall and moat that were built about 500 years ago. We stopped at several "Wats" along the way. Wats are Buddhist temples. We learned something more today about the customs of Thailand, at least Chiang Mai, and that is shorts are not worn by hardly anyone and are not allowed in the Wats (neither are shoes, which we could have taken off without any objection, unlike our shorts). And, if you see someone wearing shorts, you can be pretty sure that they're not from Thailand.



A couple of other observations: No one smokes, therefore there aren't any cigarette butts lying around. There are few people that are overweight, especially compared to the U.S. And finally, they have as many 7-Eleven's as Manassas, Virginia - one on every corner. Okay, we saw one over-weight man from Thailand and he was coming out of a 7-Eleven with a "Big Bite".

Tomorrow, we're headed to church where Jon will be preaching. Our prayers are with all of you.

End of Amazing First Week

It's early Saturday morning here, and we've just finished the first week of the Barefoot Doctors School. The students keep amazing us with their talents, their enthusiasm for learning, and their joy in the Lord. The first picture is them singing up on the mountain Friday morning.
Clark went to the Beulah church to work on the Sewing Room project all day. He had a very tough day installing a new window and door, especially since the opening for the window had to be increased and it is concrete! He spent a lot of time cutting away the concrete and stirring up a bunch of dust. Yes, he had safety glasses on! Both the window and doorway turned out well, so as soon as the room gets painted the Sewing Classes can begin!
Jon went to the Kalnin Learning Center (KLC, for short) and started the day by hiking to the top of the mountain overlooking KLC with the students and Simon, Timothy, and Abraham. From the rock outcropping up there, you can see for kilometers and kilometers! We talked about the day that the leadership of the Israelites passed from Moses to Joshua. God took Moses up on Mt. Nebo to view the Promised Land one last time before he died, just as we were viewing many kilometers into the distance. Meanwhile, the new leader Joshua was facing the daunting task of leading his people into Canaan to dispossess the nations living there. 40 years before, the Israelites had turned back from that task in fear, but now God said in Joshua 1:1-9 that he must Be Strong and Courageous as they went into Canaan. Furthermore, God promised, I will be with you!
Our Barefoot Doctor students are very excited about beginning their medical training on Monday, but they are quite nervous about meeting the doctors and trying to learn things and gain skills in a field they know virtually nothing about. It is quite intimidating, I'm sure. We are encouraging and supporting them every way possible, and they are putting their trust in God to help them accomplish these things. They are each part of a smaller group of five students, and we spent some time Friday afternoon for each group to develop their plan for helping one another with the medical training.
We are hopeful that all of our students will be well by Monday. The first one to get sick is now well, but there are five others who are receiving medicines from Drs. John Paul and Cindy Goldameir. We have been told that this is not a new thing. Every year the students coming from Burma have illnesses we need to treat, since they have had such poor medical treatment until now. Thanks for praying for their speedy recovery so they do not miss any of the teaching. The first few days are very critical, as you can imagine.

Thursday's Update

(This is a picture of Deezi and his two girls. Deezi is the official chauffeur from the airport and hotel(s) to the school.) Clark taught a Bible lesson on persecution this morning and attempted to get some feedback from the students. He was moderately successful. We found out that since Burma is run by a military regime, speaking back in a classroom (i.e. expressing your opinion) is not a very good idea. However, the ice was broken and Simon and Jon made more headway in getting some feedback from the students. (Simon is another minister here from Britain who is teaching some of the Bible lessons.)

Dr. John Paul and his daughter, Dr. Cindy, arrived today. They are missionaries from India who are supported by Antioch Church of Christ. Both are teaching on medical topics next week.

Jon continued to teach in the afternoon while Clark went with Sarep Pung to their church back in Chiang Mai to work on a sewing room. This "room", is actually an existing, free standing, one room building that was a storage building and will now be a room for their sewing program. We're not sure what they sew, but we do know that they sell their projects for a profit to help support the church. Chang Bay, Sarep Pung's wife and head seamstress, will be very glad to get back to sewing. Not to mention that all her equipment is now in the main worship hall of the church. Clark and Chairot (pronounced Chi - rote) bought the remaining material today; a door, a window, and paint, and hope to get it finished by Saturday with Jon's help.

Please pray for the students (and teachers) as there is some type of "bug" making them sick. Dr. John Paul examined a few of them today and sent Deezi to the pharmacy to get some medicine.

Wednesday's Update

We had a great day today. We took a lot time to input all of the student's information into a sort-of data base. We included a picture of each student along with their other vital information. This helped us learn a lot more about each of them. One of the women walked for three weeks to get to an airport to bring her to Chiang Mai! One of the tribe's closest hospital is over 200 miles away. For you folks in Virginia, that's the distance from Manassas to Roanoke; without any interstates or public transportation. Here are some interesting facts:


1. We have two students that are 60 years old. One is a retired teacher.


2. We have two students that are 24 years old.


3. The most popular diseases in their villages are malaria, TB, diarrhea, polio, and small pox.


4. Most accidents are from motor bikes, knifes, and falls from roofs and trees.


5. Only one of the villages has city (treated) water. All others must boil their water.


6. All students speak at least two languages: The language of their own village and all of them speak Burmese, the national language.

7. There are 6 women and 18 men in the class.

8. The smallest village has a population of 80.

9. The largest village has a population of 7,000.

We spent about three hours listening to each student tell the entire class how they came to Christ, how they came to the school, what tribe they're from, what language they speak and their marital status. A few single men and women created a lot giggling when they announced that they were single. The most touching information that several of them shared was the fact that they had been praying for 5, 6 even 7 years to get a chance to come to the Barefoot Doctors School. Most of the villages don't have any medicines and when someone gets sick, their chance of survival is very small. Two students each reported that they had lost one of their children, we suspect there were more. It was a very moving day to say the least. The breaks were spent with one student playing a guitar while the entire rest of the class sang and danced. God is good! Goodnight.

Bible Classes Going Well!

Two days of Bible Classes have already passed! We have a great group of eager students, and we are trying to get them firmly grounded in the Word of God this week so they will be prepared for the rest of their training. Simon Percy from London, England is shown here teaching from Philippians, with Abraham translating. We are also teaching on other Bible topics, including: church leadership, church unity, the leadership of the Apostle Paul, and handling persecution with strength and grace. Our 24 students come from all the major regions of Myanmar/Burma where they are already church leaders who make a difference for Christ. The training they will receive these next six weeks will help them to be used in even greater ways by God in the coming months and years.
On a personal note, we are starting to get clear of the jet lag now, and we are almost back to a normal sleep schedule. After we got back to our hotel this evening, we walked to The Duke's Restaurant and had some good ol' American food. Then we walked over to the world-famous Chiang Mai Night Market to see what was happening there. The place was packed with all kinds of vendors and hundreds of shopping tourists. We'll show you some pictures of the Night Market soon. Tomorrow is another day of Bible studies and orientation exercises. God is good!

First Day in Chiang Mai

We arrived safely in Chiang Mai at 1:15 a.m. and went through Customs without a hitch. We found a taxi driver who agreed to take us to our hotel and then hoped he could actually find it at 2 a.m.! We got checked into our room easily enough and then quickly tried to regain some of our lost sleep. We had been traveling for a little over 30 hours with about 21 of them actually in the air. Wow! After we got up about 9:15, we took showers and then had breakfast on the roof. It was beautiful up there! Then we went to the bank and exchanged our currency and looked around the town a little bit. The picture is from a wat we visited. It's one of many Buddhist temples in Chiang Mai. We'll see many more. We ate lunch at a quaint Thai restaurant near our hotel and then got our ride with Deezi out to the Kalnin Training Center. It was so great to see him again, and several other people Jon knew from his 2008 trip to Thailand. One guy even told him he looked younger than the last time. Bless him!
The Bible teacher we are working with this week, Simon Percy, and Beverley Kalnin were talking to the students when we arrived. Beverley was giving a history of the school and how it began over 15 years ago after they had encountered several situations where people in the villages could not get the care they needed. The program has continued developing year after year. This year we are glad to welcome three more tribes to the Barefoot Doctors, first as the students going through the training and then as tribes that will receive their medical care and the Gospel of Jesus Christ! There are seven different tribes represented in the Class of 2012.
Tomorrow Jon goes back to the Training Center to do more orientation activities and a Bible class, and Clark goes to the Beulah Church building here in Chiang Mai where some construction help is needed on a new room where sewing classes are going to be taught.
Thanks for continuing to pray for us and the students.