These are our neighbors on a platform leading to the water about to float candles & incense to celebrate the Loi Kratong holiday.
Happy American Thanksgiving Month! We are still settling into being here. Getting our visas in order after reentry, our vehicle registration/insurance valid again, and taking paperwork to various offices that need them all take hours and hours (read, days and days) of organization, communication and waiting at the government buildings. Often only to have to start the process again because someone decided you need another form of ID that you’ve never seen or heard of before, but they’re sure you know what they’re talking about because they’re showing you the Google translation of the Thai list of official documents that you need… this happened at the latest attempt (of several) to get me (Ruth) a Thai bank account. We continue to run into problems (after multiple attempts at multiple banks), and this last one had us stymied. I needed some sort of ID paper stating my nationality, but apparently my passport didn’t count since that was also on the list. Such is life overseas. Silly me, I forgot about all this and expected things to just go smoothly and communication to be effective since we’ve been living in Asia for years now. Just that much more encouragement to learn to speak more Thai!
Anyway, beyond all that, we are very glad to be back and reconnecting with everyone here and meeting the new neighbors who’ve moved in since we’ve been gone. The boys are slowly connecting with their friends from the neighborhood again, though some of them have still been elusive. Pray that these things will sort themselves out with time.
Super cute neighbor girl posing with her candle/incense ready to be lit.
Last post I promised to write more about the connections God made for us to join with new partners in the States. So exciting. Before we left for the States, we sent out a request asking those on our mailing list if they had any group/church/organization to whom they could commend us, to help us raise more monthly support. My sister forwarded the information about our financial need and the homeschool helper internship (Inspire) to be included in her homeschool co-op (Heart’s) newsletter. A lady who read the newsletter printed it out because of our need but wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then in a meeting at her church she heard that they were looking for a new missionary family to support. Turns out, this church in Olmsted, OH also currently supports a couple who live down the road from us here in Chiang Mai. This church “just happens” to have a heart for homeschool families and missionaries, and the couple down the road are nearing the end of more than 30 years on the field, and told that church they should give their support to us! They invited us to Olmsted to speak one Sunday, and are now supporting us monthly. While we do feel we need to make our needs known, we’ve also found that after that, relying on prayer is the best (although sometimes also the hardest) way for us to raise support. When things get difficult on the field it is such a comfort knowing that God moved in unique ways to get us here, and we can feel confident that we’re right where He wants us to be.
Two other churches that we connected with each have an interesting story of how God moved as well. One senior pastor reached out to us because of our interactions with him three years earlier before he even was a pastor. In fact he and his family had served in missions for years in Thailand, so we have a wonderful connection with them. The second church had asked my brother, Luke, to fill in for the pastor for two weekends. They wanted his messages to center around missions, and he offered to do one better by having us come and speak one weekend. Through that they decided to start supporting us, and again it was obviously the handiwork of God, not us.
The floating lights are beautiful, but also sad because it’s a Buddhist worship ceremony whose roots trace back to the Indian goddess Vishnu.
In other more recent news, shortly after returning, we found out that Josiah may needed another follow-up surgical procedure, and the appointment determining that was scheduled for just a couple days before Thanksgiving. We were blindsided because while we knew he may have to go in annually for check-ups and possibly out-patient procedures as he grew, we thought he was healed from his most recent surgery and was in the clear until next year. In light of this timing, we decided not to have a large group to our house for Thanksgiving since we weren’t sure if we’d be in the hospital for that week, and instead had a family day of celebration. Thankfully, Josiah didn’t end up needing an immediate procedure, but he does now have another follow up appointment in January, so please pray that he’ll continue to heal.
Since he’s in the clear for the upcoming holiday season, we’ve scheduled a neighborhood football (soccer) match and BBQ for Boxing Day (Dec. 26th), and we’re going to attempt our first ever open house invitation to all of our neighbors on New Year’s Eve. Our house isn’t large, but we’re going to give it a shot anyway.
– For the Baker family, Ruth and Lance