August 31st, 2022

Plenty to be thankful for this month, lots of work done, disciples made, seeds planted, tracts composed, life celebrated and most importantly God glorified. 

Family

Calvins birthday was yesterday, the first birthday he is old enough to actually understand to some extent. He is 2 years old now and is finally starting to speak, we think he is starting to say the following phrases, though not clearly: please, sing songs, hi, bye, in english, and in thai he says "bi nai" in thai which is where are you going… and "shai" yes, and "mai shai" which is no. We celebrated with gifts which my parents sent a couple months ago. I bought him some books as well, and made him a walking bicycle out of wood only that converts into a scooter. It was a challenging project but good, i learned a lot, and will hopefully use some of the methods i used in furnature production in the future. 

Tracts

I finished up the 2 tracts from last month, and they are printed but not uploaded yet. I also started and finished 1 of 2 more tracts, one on anger which covers the righteous wrath of God, the unrighteous anger of man, and a couple verses about the rare righteous anger of man. It was good for me to work through this as well, when i am making these tracts, i am not trying to stand above and talk down to the pagens who honestly have some seriously twisted sense of morality, but i am preaching first to myself, because i am just an punk who God chose simply because my imperfection and rough edges paint a good picture of how Gods grace actually works. An old friend of my mother inlaw called fang one day, and after she hung up the phone, fang and i laughed at how crazy she is… and my mother in law piped in too, affirming shes nuts. Im sure God was laughing at us fools too, because the next day she came in, picked out a giant stack of tracts and sat down and had a serious conversation about theology and the nature of God and salvation. The jws keep trying to convert her, and i had written a tract on the topic so now finally this hard work is paying off maybe. I assured her that salvation is a gift from God, when God calls us, and gives us new life, and faith follows immediately. She affirmed she has faith, and had stopped bowing to idols completely. Now you know me, i don't like to rush to conclutions, but i think the crazy lady might have had a conversion experience already, and if so the Spirit of God has prevented her from going with the cult. I pray that i would be humble enough to admit im nuts too, and perhaps i shall be the apostle to the lunatics so to speak. I suppose we are all fools in the worlds eyes anyway. Please pray that she does come around, she did affirm that she wanted to do a bible study with us, so this would be a great opportunity to get it started again, and start inviting others. 

Work

Im going to talk about different projects ive been working on in general here. In the morning for devotions ive been trying to memorize chapters of scripture again, i have the memory cards that i made before, and have up on my site. I just grab the card and start memorizing and memorize a few verses more each day, almost done memorizing romans 8 in thai. I think this is stratigic because my speed at reading is not great, and though i practice reading with my wife in the evenings, i still am too slow to preach. Reading in english isn't great either, so theres that, but i figure if i am familiar enough because ive memorized the most important chunks of scripture, those chucks that come out in most sermons, then i should be more prepared to preach. I pity the thai listener who has to listen to me fumble about, so i really want to get my fluency down. I also have been skinning logs in between other jobs, and sanding them down. They actually look very nice when sanded down. The draw knife i got from the states makes quick work of debarking. I also added a ball catcher to the pool table, it drops the balls into baskets on the inside of the legs which are also storage. It was a challenging build, trying to figure out how to work around the doors which are already on the corner, and avoid sticking out too far, so on. I did it for pretty cheap, and now its ready for paint. I also blisted my fingers dehydrating 2 kg of garlic to make garlic powder for my wife, and did the same thing with dill that my mother inlaws friend planted, that should last us a year or so. I did a bit more outlining teaching materials for both english education and evangelism, its tricky and id love your prayers, right now i think the safest path is focusing on vocab and letting conversation naturally come, and also the parables of Jesus. I have ideas for a wordless picture bible that goes far beyond stories. Please pray for that too. The more i finish up, the more i can do, so i know it looks like a lot, but almost everything is one time in nature, so i always am getting new time to do the next tract, card set, or project. Please pray that i balance everything correctly, and don't spend too much time on ministry and overlook my family, or too much time on other projects and overlook my ministry, the ballance is a challenge but i hope that if i am aware, then God will give me wisdom. 

Thankyou for your continued prayers and support, don't forget to check out the pictures too.