Saying Goodbye

"We will miss you."

We heard this in various forms from various people over the last month or so. It was especially concentrated this last week as we participated in the last of our usual activities, my last run with Sandy, my last lunch with Retha, our last Gideon camp meeting and prayer meeting, our last church service and fellowship. Some of the expressions weren’t in words; instead they were in tearful hugs. We had many of those hugs the last few days.

Gary had the camera ready to capture some of those, but he missed them. He will have a few more chances this week as we say goodbye to our family.

I am thankful for these expressions from people. We all want to be remembered.

Not all of our partings were this way. They ranged from cheerful good wishes, through promises to visit, to the tearful ones. Stronger reactions came from people we had shared with more deeply in the time of our acquaintance. I know that the people I remember most in my life have been the ones who listened and cared about me, not the ones who impressed me with their greatness or accomplishments.

The hardest partings for me now are from the people who have shown they care about me.

The Lord has been working for years on my ability to share my heart with other people and to be more caring toward them. These tears from others at our parting show me that He has had some success in that area in my life. For that reason, I am thankful for all these tears.

Repacking

50 lbs?! We weighed our largest suitcase after a trial packing on Saturday and it weighed 61 lbs. Korean Air, our carrier to Thailand, allows only 50 per suitcase. I used the scale to weigh things as I took them out of the case, hoping to get past 11 lbs at least. Since I had to fill the space again, the amount I took out had to be more than the 11 lbs. After a couple of repackings and reweighings, it became clear that the books were going to have to go in the carry on sized checked bag and clothes and other light things were going to have to go in the big suitcase. More things would be staying as well. Now I know my clarinet will be staying. I did get a recorder in, though. Do I want to take my Amplified Bible (heavy) or a book on how to make kites and a couple of children's books? The Bible won. I think I will need that more.

Things continue to turn up around the house that I once thought we would take. Gary told me some things could go in his medium sized suitcase. As he packs the case, though, he is starting to qualify that promise. It is back to priorities again, both in making the time to pack and in choosing what goes. I am thankful for the prayer support we have as we make these choices. With that, I am more certain that what we end up with will be what we need. Of course, He has promised to go with us (Matthew 28:20) and with Him we do have all we need.

:J

Perspective

I made my daughter cry on Thanksgiving. The permanence of our planned stay in Thailand became clear to her during our evening phone call. It made me sad to upset Amanda so much.

This was still on my mind Friday after I got the turkey cooking in Jennifer’s oven for our Thanksgiving dinner. It was a beautiful day so my husband suggested I take my run for the day. (Yes, he does make good suggestions sometimes) I decided to take an opposite route from the way I usually go from Jennifer’s and headed up to the left in conversation with God. Running along one straight, flat street I was praying about Amanda’s tears at our leaving and asking if we are really doing what He wants. Then I turned a corner to see the blue expanse of the sound under a blue sky with puffy clouds.
(Notice how the road disappears right after the white van)

I had never seen this view before, though I have run on that road several times. The view is at the top of a kind of hill I, as a runner, haven't learned to be thankful for yet. I still think of it as

tough to get through, or over. I rarely look back when I run, so I would always have remembered the hardness of that road rather than the beautiful view if I hadn’t gone that other way.

God used this to speak to my heart about His perspective on this coming sadness. Yes, this Leaving Time is hard, but He can see beauty in it from His viewpoint. Zech’s comment about “God is good” in their blog came back to me (reallifeontheedge.blogspot.com). He reminded me that God is good, all the time and everything He does is good, whether it seems that way to us or not. There is still the question of whether we are doing what God wants, but I see God leading us to Thailand as much as I have understood His leading at any other time in my life. That beautiful view at the right moment gave me reassurance and hope that His Good will come through this time of tears.

Two Presentations

We did two presentations this week! One was at Three Rivers Christian school and the other at East Kelso Baptist Church. It meant most of time I was home this week I was working on Power Point or our script. We are thankful that they both were well received.

Thursday afternoon, the children at Three Rivers listened and watched well.

They gave a big “Awww” at the picture of the baby panda in the Chiangmai zoo. They counted well with me in Thai, and, when we asked for questions near the end, most of their hands went up. They asked good questions too. We told them they could help in our sowing the work efforts by communicating and sharing events between their school and the schools in Chiangmai. The students and teachers showed some enthusiasm for doing this. I hope we can keep some interest up for that during our four months of language training.

Sunday morning we visited the church our daughter, Amanda, has had so much involvement with, East Kelso Baptist Church. Ken and Karen and their family go there also. We really appreciate their focus on prayer. After our presentation, their prayer coordinator came to me to finish writing down all the prayer requests we gave in our talk. She also wanted to make sure we had her email address so we can send our prayer letters to her for resending to the congregation. We thank God for putting this connection together for us so we might have this prayer support behind us.

Building update

Another potential tenant contacted us about our empty space after the sprinkler decision came down. A small, new, local winery was interested in putting in a wine tasting room to sell their wine and related paraphernalia. The restaurant owner then planned on selling her current bar set up to them. She would sell drinks still, but serve them out of the kitchen.

They also worked out a sharing of the utility costs since the restaurant owner has now taken over paying those. Then Gary checked with the City. They required us to pay an architect $300 and then determined that we must build a firewall completely around the space before they will give us permission to rent it to the winery. Gary estimates the cost for this would be thousands of dollars, well above the return we could get from the rental of the space. So, it appears the area must remain office space. God has a different plan.

Our web site

Most of you know we now have a web site! It is 2sowers.com. Gary is very thankful that Ken, one of our house sitters, has set it up for us. Gary did not want to try to keep up a web site. It is still in the beginning stages, though. We are finding out it involves our time just to get things to Ken to put on it. There are several sections we are slowly getting filled in.

This blog will be on the web site too. Ken said we can use the topic section to put in our prayer requests. That way people looking for our prayer requests will be able to click on that section and see all the prayer requests that we have made over a period of time. We will also be able to put answers in under an answered prayer section. I will be trying to get our prayer requests, and answers, in there soon.

:J

Answer? to prayer

I sent this email to some of our prayer supporters Tuesday morning, 

“A city official has written a report requiring us to put sprinklers in our building before we can

open the wall and let the restaurant use our former office space.  Gary says that would cost about $10 thousand and take quite awhile to get done.  That would be a prohibitive expense and time frame.  The city official is going to meet with Gary tomorrow at 11 am to discuss this.  Gary asked for prayer about this meeting.”

(Gary reminded me later that he said “$100 thousand”.  That’s my lack of number retention for you!)

Gary met with the official, and he did not change his mind.  God answered our prayer with, “No.”  At our church’s day of prayer and fasting last week, Dave Ness said to pray specifically in order to energize your prayer life and see God working.  Another side to specific prayer is that you get clear “no”s sometimes.  I have had several of those lately.

That afternoon, after I laid out the “Sacrifice of Praise” chorus for the worship team folders, it began repeating in my head.  I decided God was telling me to praise Him for these “no” answers as much as the “yes” answers, so I began to do that.

Another speaker I heard recently said we pray not to change God’s mind, but to change ours. When we see clear responses to our prayers, we gain a deeper understanding of who He is. If He gave us all we ask for, we would never be better.  We would make our faulty plans with our puny brains, without His help, and then keep asking Him to fix things when the plans fall apart.  We need His “no”s to begin searching out what He wants of us and to rely on Him as we try to obey the direction we understand from Him.  Also, as one of our prayer supporters reminded me, there may be a bigger issue God is working on and a “yes” answer might not fit in with that plan.

Certainly a “no” answer should drive us to more prayer rather than to less.  God commanded many times in His Word for us to pray and, as said by John Piper this week,  “If prayer did not work such wonders in heaven, ‘Satan would never have such an aching tooth against it as he has.’ Th. Brooks.”  That opposition by Satan is a good indicator that God’s will is accomplished when we pray.  

As to the building situation, if we don’t rent to the restaurant then we will need to rent it to someone else or leave it empty.  Without a renter for that space we won’t recoup the expenses we put out to fix it up.  Gary hasn’t told the restaurant owner yet.  He also plans to get some bids on sprinkler installations next week.  Keep praying with us for God to show His glory in what happens in this situation.

:J

Gary started his investigations into Thai language schools after we returned from Chaingmai, Thailand last June. The OMF missionaries there told him about their language training facility in Lopburi. He applied there, but we ended up second on a waiting list. There is still the possibility that some of those who have signed up for the school won't be able to raise their support in time, so they won't go then. The school starts in early December, so we should know if it is actually full by the time we leave. We won't give up going there until we are in the airport in Bangkok on December 30th. Gary plans on calling them from the airport and if they don't have a space then we would catch a flight up to Chaingmai and start looking for a place to live. (This picture is from www.backpackers-around.com/foto-thailandia-lopburi.php)

The Lopburi school sounds good to us because it is in a small town where little English is around. This is a picture of one of their back streets in a "middle class" neighborhood. This is from a web site called unglamorouslove.com written by someone who is learning Thai there as a part of their preparation for mission work there.

Also, the room and board are part of the price, so we wouldn't have to find our own. We could concentrate on learning Thai with few distractions, except maybe monkeys.

Gary looked at many schools in Bangkok which teach with many different methods, but they are all more costly and living in Bangkok is expensive (and polluted). A couple of schools are also available in Chiangmai and the living expenses are less there than in Bangkok. Gary is concerned we might be too distracted to study well if we were in Chiangmai, though.

These different schools each say they approach the learning of Thai by focusing on a different learning style. Gary hoped he might figure out which school would be best for him if he figured out his learning style. I found a test to determine learning styles in my papers, so Gary took it. He found out all the styles are nearly the same for him, so the approach of whatever school we go to wouldn't matter too much.

House sitters

A family we know well has told us that they have decided to be our house sitters. We met Ken when he moved into the house across the street with some other guys. Then, later, he introduced us to Karen and we went to their wedding. The other guys moved out and Karen moved in. As a young couple, they helped me out by teaching some Sunday school sessions to the youth at our

church on good male – female relationships, even though they were members of a different church.

Our friendship continued as they had their three children. Their two older children sent some presents with us to share with children on our mission trip to Chile. Now, Ken has said he would like to help us set up a website. Overall we have been impressed with their faith and determination to follow God in their lives. We are glad to help support their decision for Karen to remain a stay at home mom and to continue home schooling their children. Living in our house would likely ease their cost of housing.

Also, Ken has worked on fixing up two houses, so he has some expertise in maintenance. They have all had experience raking leaves, although not in a yard quite as big as ours.

When they read our email newsletter about our need for a house sitter, they independently thought of the possibility of their doing it. They were a little surprised when they mentioned it to each other.

Ken then came to speak to Gary and the first of our three dinners together came soon after. We have all been praying about it. Last Friday they brought dinner to our house to tell us they had decided to go ahead with this.

Now I need to write up something for us to work through so we will be clear about what we all have agreed to.

Thank you for your prayers about this already. Please pray now for wisdom for us as we go through this process. Please pray that we would know what we need to write down and that He would protect and increase our friendship as we enter this relationship concerning the house.

Miracles

How often do you go to Board meetings to hear miracles? That’s what we heard at the meeting of This Gracious Work foundation last Thursday. Janis came excited to tell about hers.

“The doctor said the radiation would only stop the growth of my spleen, but now it is only 11 cm, when before it was 18 cm.”

“Wow, about half!” members responded.

“Here is the school license,” stated Bill as he pulled out an official looking document.

The board was praying to get that license after the last meeting. They also set $70 thousand as the amount Bill would need to raise before breaking ground on the new school. He hoped to have that amount within a month so he could take it on his next trip to Thailand. He reported that he had $90 thousand before he left and the school project was started.

He also had a need of a few thousand to pay tuition for the last semester of some of the students they support. The members offered different amounts they had available, and in 5 minutes the need was met.

All this came on the heels of our own meeting with our tenant. The day before we had realized that if the tenant took over all our building space as planned, it’s increase in utility payments would be more than what it’s President told us she could afford. I asked for prayer for guidance in writing a statement to explain that to her and also for preparation for a meeting with her. Our meeting went amazingly well. It was as if we had reached agreement on the problem areas before the meeting started.

The week started with our Pastor’s wife announcing they had bought a house. That was an answer to the prayers of several of us for about 4 years. Sometimes I wondered why they still had to live in the little rental. Now that it has happened, the timing and location make sense.

All this gives me hope that some of the other situations I am praying for will work out as well. Once again it is a matter of remembering the goodness of God and His promise to work out everything for my good as I obey Him. It’s much harder to see a miracle when you are in the middle of it than when it is finished.

“Do they wear uniforms at the school?” asked Jane.

“Do they have pandas there? I like pandas,” said Emily.

The third graders were answering my request for questions for us to answer in our presentation to their school about our going to Thailand. Earlier that week, I was struggling with getting it written.

“What do I put in this that will interest them as well as inform them of how we believe God is leading us, “ I wondered. “And what pictures do I have to go along with it?”

Then the principal called to ask me to substitute in that class on Friday. I gladly took the opportunity and decided to ask those students for questions they might have. Helen and Chloe continued the theme of comparing the Thai school to theirs.

“Do they use slates with slate pencils? Do they have desks like ours?” they asked.

Their questions showed me they are interested in information that relates to their school experience. The pictures I have of the Ban San Faan classrooms should be good for that.

Then I remembered taking pictures of the Ban San Faan children playing a couple of games familiar to students here. Those also might spark interest.

(Here they are playing 4 posts the way children here play 4 corners. Sarah will choose a post number, without looking, and the children at that post will be "out")

The class showed interest in my comments about the Thai language, too. We were correcting run on sentences that day.

“A sentence is even more important in Thai because they don’t put spaces between their words, only between their sentences,” I told them. Then they wanted a demonstration. Later, they paid close attention when I taught them how to count in Thai with Thai numbers. Amy’s request to see some Thai writing related to this interest. Roman tied his language curiosity with his courtesy when he asked for the Thai words for “Thank you”.

Thomas didn’t make a request, but he showed his interest by drawing my head on a dollar bill. It’s an amazing likeness, don’t you think? (I did have my hair up that day and my nose is almost non existent, isn't it?) I will include a little information about the Thai Baht for him. I’m sure he doesn’t know that they only put royalty on Thai money and high government officials on dollars. Then, again, I am a child of the King.

:J

I've come to another kind of packing away this week; this time upon conviction from a passage by C. S. Lewis. It came up in the daily reading for August 31 and it took about a week to strike home. He talks about forgiving others, not just excusing them, which sometimes we take for forgiving. He is discussing people trying to forgive by thinking out a way the person really didn't do the bad thing they want to forgive them for. When they can't quite make those excuses, "They keep on replying, 'But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.' Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart--every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.)"

As C. S. Lewis has done before, he has gotten to the heart of my behavior. Most of the time I have tried to forgive by finding excuses for what someone has done to me rather than forgive the central hurtful action. Also I have found myself wanting to "get back" at people and waiting to have revenge when something doesn't work out right for someone else's plan. I've been hoping that they will see that they shouldn't have pushed my ideas out of the way to start with.

So, this week I realized I have packed away some resentment. I have had to let go of those desires to be proved right and my efforts to do so. I also have become aware of my need to forgive right away after an event rather than dwelling on it for awhile. The only dwelling I should do is on figuring out a boundary to keep me from letting the same person do the same thing to me again. Realizing this is easier than accomplishing it. At least God can help me move in the right direction from here as I pray and you pray for God to do so.

( The C. S. Lewis passage quoted in my devotional is "On Forgiveness" from The Weight of Glory)

Packing

Will I want my jingle bells in Thailand?

I started packing up my sewing things today, putting my fabric, craft tools, and sewing accessories away for perhaps years. Will I ever sew again? I haven’t for a few years, but somehow it seemed like I might when the things were out and ready for use.

Other things have to be packed too. What do we really need for the next couple of months? It seems so final to be putting things away. The house looks empty with bare cupboards and walls.

Gary keeps saying, “Well, I guess that’s the last time we’ll be doing that!” as we participate in some of our regular activities here.

In this process I also found a little book my daughter, Amanda, gave me a few years ago called The Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper. (Finding missing things is one positive to packing up) Rereading it, I am challenged to find delight in the Lord and what He asks me to do. He is telling me to look ahead to what good He is doing in my life, to the adventure He is calling me to. This packing is for the purpose of going somewhere else. I know that staying here, out of His will, would be worse than this packing and leaving my ties here. I need to focus on the opportunities He’s giving us in Thailand. He is also showing His goodness to me through the packing process. We ran out of tubs Tuesday, then Wednesday a friend brought over nine more that she said they were done with. PTL! (and thank you, Pam)

Then, also, it really isn’t as final as it all seems.

I decided to pack away my jingle bells, but I marked the tubs and put them on the storage list. If I realize I could use them after teaching for a year, I can come get them on our home visit.

Today a friend shared a newspaper article she found about 42 people coming to the Lord under the preaching of my great grandfather at some revival meetings in 1904, near Grove City, Pennsylvania. I found that somewhat sobering and somewhat inspiring. It's not that I believe spirituality is inherited, but the story seems to have more effect on me as this was a person I am related to. I know more of the story, too. Eleven years before this Henry didn’t believe the miracles described in the Bible still happened in his time. Then his wife came close to dying. She was beyond the help of doctors and even an evangelist he sent her to didn’t help much. It was finally his heartfelt, tearful prayers that brought her healing. From then on his faith and trust was amazing. He trusted God to take care of all kinds of details in his life. His example of faith then inspired his children, including my grandfather, into ministry and missionary work. The life of my grandfather then inspired my faith. Still, I am not at the level of faith and trust Henry showed in his life. That trust, coming from a former nonbeliever in miracles, being so much greater than mine, is the sobering part.

Now Henry is again inspiring and strengthening faith, this time in his great granddaughter!

It looks like the post of our prayer card proof didn't stay. It was on there yesterday. I guess I will try again.

See if this one stays.

This is getting close to our prayer card to give out to people. I tried emailing the proof to Gary in Alaska, but I don't know if he can see it on our little internet connector. He said he won't communicate today because they are seeing glaciers in an inlet rather than being in a town.

I am trying to balance my time between packing away our things, doing some Bible studies I need to finish for my ACSI teaching certificate, and studying Thai.

The Lord has been demonstrating His faithfulness to me this week. After reading Isaiah 41:10 in my quiet time and then Lamentations 3:22-29 for my Bible in 90 days reading Tuesday morning, I focused on trusting Him to quiet my fears. Several have been coming and going this week. Then, I read Amos and Hosea. Although they show God's anger at His people, they also show the great love He has for them. They show His anger that they have rejected the love He has shown them and His great longing to show them His love again if they will turn back to Him. It made me consider the ways I have failed to appreciate the love He has shown to me and how great His love is. Realizing His love and work in my life will be the source of the trust I need to quiet my fears.

Buttons decided she liked our Thai letters just when I was trying to take a picture of them. Those are the 44 consonants in Thai. The other sheet of 32 vowels plus 4 other markings we haven't cut apart yet.

I found out this week that there is a word in Thai that sounds the same as my name. They write it in English letters as "Jeen". It means a Chinese speaker. I guess I should learn a little more Chinese than Gung Hai Fat Choi (Happy New Year, I think).

I was taking pictures of the Thai letters for our church presentation. That went pretty well (the presentation, that is). We certainly made it within the 20 minutes we were given. It was also the last Sunday our friend and missionary to Ethiopia, Carolyn, would be there. Later in the service Pastor Joe had a time for everyone to pray for the three of us or whatever. I was very encouraged by the prayers of the people at that time.

:J