November 2022

Hi everyone, hope you are doing well. This month has been a bit different, but good. Thankyou for reading our newsletter, praying for us, and supporting us, it really means a lot to us. 

Family

Calvin and Fang have been very sick for the past week, yesterday we had to go to the hospital and get him some oxygen. He was super energetic after that, up until that point he had been struggling to breath on and off for the whole night. Fang is doing fine though, i had a migraine for 3 days, but whats new? Migraines come and go like that for me once a month or so. Calvin can pronounce most of the sounds of the alphabet, with the exception of his k sound, g sound, and j sound, but he seems to get x, so not sure whats up with that, x is a cluster ks sound, but as soon as i pull the k sound, he moves my hand to the next card like he wont even try lol. He did say knock knock last night and knocked the door, which surprised us, why are tickle and knock knock his first words? Perhaps this is a hint to the kind of words he will be willing to learn first… maybe ill try animal sounds. Oh, and he did say "yai" which is grandmother (on the mothers side) in thai. She was really happy about that. 

Tracts

If you remember, i have been working on the parable cards, and they have been taking a long time to finish. Ive put so much time into it but it still is dragging on. Part of the reason is i decided it was more efficient to create a new method for organizing the cards which would allow me to print 10 per sheet rather than 8. The 8 card method was easy enough but the 10 card method is really squeezed and frustrating to get right, but i think ive finally got it today, so we'll see. There were about 7 parables that i had to paraphrase to fit on the back of the card, the rest are direct quotes which is nice, and i decided to go ahead and do them in thai too, so now that i have a system working, should only take a couple days to finish those up. Also, as frustrating and difficult as this project has been, because i used other peoples artwork for the front, i won't be giving these away on my website, rather, i will use them as a kind of idea template for actually illustrating my own pictures. So there will be a version 2 with pictures i drew myself, but im not setting a deadline for myself there, rather, ill just use some evening free time to try to sketch those, and when they are done, they are done.  At that point, i will make them available for download on my website in both languages. I will probably make other card sets available in the future, and link a card punch that i used, so that folks can make their own. 

Ministry

I've had several good engagements this month, one with a lady who is a new believer, she is going to another church we know in the city, if i understand right, her sister married a believer who is is part of a multi generational christian family, and thats how she came to believe. From talking with her for only a bit, she said her sister became a believer because of her husband, and asked fang if that why she became a believer, and 2  interesting things happened here, first my mother in law piped in and said "no fangs been interested in christianity since she was a little girl" which she said with some ounce of pride, which i thought odd, she doesn't seem openminded to listen to me when i share, but maybe thats changing. And second, fang replied "no mom, i became a believer not because i was interested or because of Kaison, but because i believed" which instantly brought a smile to my face and God's too, i love the ring of truth in a room full of confusion. Its the simple truth that this lady needed to hear, and my mother in law, that there is nothing she did but rather it was the moment she believed that happened when God gave her new life. And also teen came by again, its been a while, but we had a good 3 hour discussion to catch up, and it quickly went into deep theological and biblical discussion, and in the end we agreed on the essentials as we usually do, and to my supprise, he remembers with clarity our previous discussion and is now convinced of its truth, so i guess my influence is slow due to lack of frequency, but not void. He is married now and has inherited a house on a small piece of land, which brings me joy because he has worked so hard to give most of his money to pay for his families debts, that he has no ability to do ministry full time anytime soon. Please pray for an opportunity here. I had several other conversations with thais and foreigners alike, but these 2 were the most notable so i thought id share. The pool table is very useful with having conversations with men. I am glad i built it. 

Building

I haven't done much in the way of building this month, just some fixing up stuff around the house. I did saw up a couple logs into boards, which was difficult to learn to do, but now i can use them to make the workbench on the side of the house like ive been planning for a long time. I would like this particular workbench to be 3 inches thick, which is the challenge, but i have a plan i think will work with a bunch of those logs i kept from that old mango tree. 

Conclusion

Its been a bit different than months before, learning to do something a bit new, but since my tracts shelf is absolutely filled, and i am having trouble thinking of new topics for now, i plan on slowing down with the tracts, and trying to learn other kinds of media like game creation and video making. So in the future, im sure you will see more of these as well. I also want to make some of my tracts more interactive and fancy on my website, so i might do that this coming month. I go through phases and its been a while since ive done a lot of web work, but when i get into it, ill probably stay there for a while. When i get obsessed ill step back and move on to something else. Thankyou for your prayer and continued support, we are thankful for those who stand with us as we reach out to people in southern Thailand with the good news.