HAPPY BIRTHDAY, USA

Thursday was a different day for all of us.  We slept in a little and prepared for a trip up a mountain.  We drove up that spiral road for a long time.  At the top was a small town and food vendors up and down the street, as well as the usual "madame, you buy?" walking vendors.  It was somewhat disappointing because this was a site-seeing venture and it was raining.  We've had some rain many days, but it is usually between 4 and 7 in the evening.  It may only sprinkle or it may rain for an hour or so.  Today it began raining right after we started driving and it rained for a couple of hours.  When we got out of our "Safari truck" that is open on the sides and the back, covered on the top and has bench seats on each side.  We bought tickets for the tram that took us up the side of the mountain.  It was 306 steps or take the tram.  We had some that did each.  Cathy has some knee problems.   So do I.  I can go up, but have difficulty coming down.  So we settled on  the tram.  We were going to the high place, always the place of worship.  At the top was an entire complex with a Buddha temple, many smaller temple structures, lovely flowers and trees, vendors selling flowers and incense for the temple, construction workers drilling and hammering on one side of the temple, and rows and rows of gaudy gold statues.  There were buddha statues, lady statues sitting up and laying down.  It made me think that is was no wonder that Solomon had difficulty keeping his focus on God if his wives had displays of their idols like this all around him.  It was interesting and once again, sad to see so many people worshipping these pieces of sculptured stone.  Our orphan kids have not only been taken from poverty, but from idolatry.  The Hill Tribe people worship the spirits of their ancestors.  Then if they get to the city, Buddha is waiting for them.  We have such a great opportunity to offer them education, regular food, clothing, and the foundation of the whole abundant life, JESUS!  

Da and Porn took us back to Chiangmai to the oldest temple in Thailand.  It is 600 years old.  There is a newer temple in front of the ruins, but the old one was very interesting.  You can only see it from the outside.  It has been somewhat restored by the Thai government since 1990.  Again, this is an entire complex.  Many young monks were walking around here.  They have shaved heads and wear a bright orange wrapped clothing.  There was a coffee area where you could "talk to a monk" for free.  Ask anything, find out about their lives.  We didn't have much time but a couple of the girls went and talked with one of the young men.  Every man is expected to do a time as a monk - around three months minimum.  Most of them appear to be teenagers.  Then some stay as monks.  Others return to their regular life after they required time.

We went back to the house, ate lunch and prepared our lessons for teaching English at the school.  Today was Scout day so all of the kids were dressed in their scout uniforms.  We've about exhausted our bag of English tricks.  The kids can parrot back some English and play games using some English words, and they love singing, but there really needs to be a strong phonics foundation to make the English teaching valuable.  They would think that our 26 letters and sounds were a breeze.  They have 72 consonants, vowels, and letter combinations.  Maybe we have that many with the sound patterns we use too.

And then we did RED, WHITE, AND NO BOOM!  What fun.  The American Consulate invites all Americans to an Independence Day Party at the Consulate.  So we all grabbed our passports and went to the party.  Everything was decorate in red, white, and blue.  There were food vendors with mostly American foods, beverages, ice cream, etc.  There was a table of red, white, and blue gifts to buy.  There was a pie-eating contest, watermelon seed spitting, and a crazy egg contest.  There was music - nice band.  There was a group of young people that brought in stringed instruments, but we didn't stay to hear them.  There was going to be fireworks later in the evening but we had to get back to the house.  Our missionary family was driving us and they had to go home to get shots.  It was fun to see so many Americans in one place.  While we were waiting to go in, a group of Mennonite people came around the corner and one of the guys was wearing a Buckeye shirt - You know that we didn't miss that opportunity O-H-...they didn't understand us, so we didn't get an I-O.  We talked to them later.  They are from Sugarcreek, Ohio.

We went to the missionary house and watched a good, but very disturbing movie called Vertical Limit, not recommended for the faint of heart!

It is Friday morning.  Cathy and I will take a walk around the neighborhood in a few minutes.  We are baking cupcakes for the big orphanage to celebrate USA's birthday tonight.  Debbie has one 12 cup pan and we have 100 cupcakes to make from scratch.  It will take a while to do this project.  We will teach at the school for the last time today.  The fingerprints should be done this evening at the small orphan home and then devotions, treats, and our goodbyes to the kids as Doi Saket I.  We're tired and we're blessed.  We've also been warned that this is much like a camp experience.  Return home full of what the Lord is doing here, excited about our part, hoping to involve everyone we know, and knowing that you have to experience the culture and the children and the needs here before you can really catch the vision.  The warning is that most of you will be glad to see us and will be excited to see our pictures and hear our stories - for a very short time.  We will try to be patient and spread out our stories and pictures, but we've seen God at work and people here allowing Him to work with and through them.  We've hugged the children, sung with them, played with them and prayed with them.  They are fruits of the labors here. We are blessed and changed and motivated for having been here.  So another prayer of our hearts, be patient with us as we share, catch the vision with us, and ask God not to let the vision fade from our hearts and minds.  And some of us will be praying that God gives you the burden and opportunity to come and see and experience what He is doing here.

We board our plane to come home in the early afternoon tomorrow.

Love to you all.