Kwaam yin-dii pra-ohng...

The intern team - CM 08!

Equipping time
Leah and I riding an elephant!

We are getting settled back into a routine, which is nice after a busy week with the Aggies. We sent them off in fine fashion last weekend, floating down a river in bamboo rafts, staying in a small Christian village and watching their tribal dances, riding elephants, and swimming at a waterfall. What a blessing of fellowship! I was lucky enough to ride on the raft with the college minister, Kelly, and his wife Sara from the A&M group. He grew up in Thailand, and then they came back as missionaries for 18 years. I felt incredibly lucky to have hours upon end to listen and learn from them. They had so many stories and wisdom to share, everything from their own approach and struggles in ministry to a mini-lecture on Buddhism and the Thai culture. How often do you have an entire day and a half with nowhere to go, nothing to do, but talk, laugh, share life experiences? How often do you get a day and a half with nowhere to go, nothing to do but learn from mature, Godly people? I feel incredibly blessed to have had that chance.

Our daily schedule begins with "equipping time," which is where we meet for teaching and discussion time. That time together as a team has been really neat. We are all learning a lot from each other's perspectives. We also get to learn from the missionaries who are here, which is really great. Robert and his family left a few days ago for the States for their furlough, but the rest of the team will be in Chiang Mai. We are going to miss Robert and his family so much! He was such a blessing to us and I learned a lot from him. God has really gifted him in several ways.

At lunch time, we go eat on campus at Payap University. We try to talk to people, make new friends, and invite them to the Zone and English classes. We have little flyers we pass out, but they are in Thai. Even though we know the info that is on the flyer, it's funny to us American interns that we can't read what we're passing out! The Thai students are so friendly to us, which is a wonderful quality of their culture. Of course, it still is extremely awkward to try to initiate conversations with complete strangers, especially with the language barrier. We are learning more bits of Thai and most students know their fair share of English, so we get through conversations that way. Please pray for us that the Thai students hearts will be opened, and that we would have the courage to take the step of faith to talk to them! Many of the now-Christians at the Zone were met by interns and apprentices just like us.

The afternoons are for our scheduled English classes. This week has been a little disappointing for me because none of my English students have shown up for their appointments. Hopefully I will have better luck in the rest of the week.

This afternoon, our team of interns decided to put into action one of the spiritual disciplines we studied about: prayer. We wanted to completely cover the Zone, our team, the students, and Thai Christians in prayer. We each signed up for a 30 minute block and prayed for 4.5 hours straight. It was a really neat experience, and I think it challenged and inspired us all to develop a more intimate, close prayer life with the Lord. We challenged each other to pray for students we had met by name. I prayed for a girl named Xin I met last week who was really friendly and open, and she even came to cell group for a while. A few hours later, I saw her through the window, walking right outside the Zone! She came up to the window and said hello, so I went outside to talk to her for a little while. I hope and pray that relationship will continue to develop.

We started taking Thai lessons this week! It is so exciting to being learning. Speaking their language is a way of connecting with Thais that nothing else can quite measure up to. We learn a lot from our friends, who love to help us learn new words, phrases, and correct pronunciation. They usually do have a laugh at us, though...those five tones don't always come out of our mouths correctly!

The American interns are cooking the meal for cell group tomorrow...this should be interesting! We hope the Thais like our food and tastes. :)

Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts. The Lord is changing me every day, and I thank you for being a part of that!