This is our “Year in Review” post giving a summary of 2024. If you’d like to do some back-reading, at the bottom-right of this page you can find our previous year in review posts (though 2015-2018 are password protected due to our previous location). Contact us directly if you’d like the password.

​2024 started out with some time spent in the States where I was able to speak at a number of gap-year type discipleship training organizations. I presented our Inspire homeschool helper program, and it was well received.

In February, back in Thailand, our boys got to go to their first-ever SEA MK Camp (South East Asia Missionary Kid Camp). That ministry is a great blessing to our family because it has really helped our kids have a community of other MK’s who are in a similar life circumstance. Following that we were informed the visa we’ve had for years here was going to have to be changed, and we went across the border to Cambodia to get that done, where we were given this new employment visa that we have currently. It’s turned out to be a real hassle, and also expensive, so when it expires this March, we’re going to take a trip across the border for yet another new type of visa for this upcoming year. You can keep us in prayer in March for that.

Ruth, Josiah and I started full-time language class in May and have been slowly developing our ability to converse in the Thai language. The boys are all taking Muay Thai martial arts class together, and they’ve been doing really well. They also play with an ultimate frisbee group twice a week.

2024 saw a number of interesting opportunities unfold ministry-wise. We served meals to over 400 kids from orphanages/group homes around the city on Children’s Day. I’ve continued volunteering at the Police Station English Corner as well as teaching English at a temple school for low-income kids across town. We’ve become much more involved in service at our church here. Most attendees have full time ministries among Thai or other people groups, and so there are quite a few needs at the church that we’ve been able to fill to help keep it a strong place of support/fellowship for international workers. About 250 attend on a normal Sunday with visitors from all over Asia as well as Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. We lead a worship team, Ruth is on the Fellowship Committee as well as the Women’s Ministry Committee, Josiah is on the youth leadership team, and we hosted a small group weekly in our home for about four months this year. I’ve been able to meet with multiple missionaries who need support due to the trauma or difficulties they’ve faced (or are currently facing). We’ve hosted holiday gatherings for missionaries (since holidays can be a particularly difficult time on the field). We’ve helped a national friend here design a logo and launch a small food delivery business to support her family. I’ve done quite a bit of research into starting our own small business as well actually because that would be one avenue of us getting a better type of Thai visa. I had a duel-motive because we know quite a few families here who are having the same visa problems we are, and having a business with multiple “branches” could be a viable way for us to help multiple families get visas.

One of our major ministry focuses this year has been to get our Inspire homeschool helper program off the ground. We’ve got a page of our site devoted to it (see above), and we’ve had our first full-term helper arrive in September! Her name is Faith, and she’s adapted faster than we could have anticipated, and has been a GREAT blessing to both families in whose homes she teaches. One of the reasons we moved to a new house in 2023 is because it has a homeschool room/guest room attached, and Faith was able to stay there for her first month in-country as we had planned, and it all went swimmingly well. 

The month of October was spent doing a lot of flood/mud cleanup after some of the worst flooding Chiang Mai has seen in 40 years. See our two most recent blog entries for more on that. Also, my parents were able to come visit in October – we’re thankful that the flooding didn’t prevent their plane from landing or anything! In December we put on a Christmas pageant for about 300 people downtown, led worship at the Juniper Tree missionary guest house, caroled at one of the larger hospitals, and were involved with other seasonal events.

​And in other random news, you’ll be happy to know that the terrible raw sewage smell we’ve had in the bathroom attached to our bedroom all year was finally resolved! After servicing the septic system, treating the pipes in the house, etc., the third service company we tried finally was able to fix it.

All in all, it’s been an eventful year, and we have many blessings to be thankful for.

In Christ,
 -Lance, for the Baker family

Well, Chiang Mai has been battling mud and repairing flood damage for the past month. The worst flood wave hit on Oct. 3rd when the Ping River reached all time highs, and the various flood zones were all breached. No one knew quite where the water would go after that, and it wasn’t good. Thankfully, our side of the city didn’t flood, so we had no personal destruction to deal with, which enabled us to be of service helping those who did. We had to wait a few days for the water to subside before cleanup efforts could get underway.

​I started by joining a group of volunteers who were coordinating relief efforts, and on Oct. 9th a small group of us went to where the flood level was the highest – about 7 feet, so it destroyed everything on the first level of people’s homes. Those who only have one-level homes lost basically everything to the water and mud. The houses themselves stood strong though because everything is built out of cement here. Some of the streets were piled with debris and garbage such that you could even drive a motorcycle down them, so we worked to create a path wide enough for a pickup to navigate, and then made a path to each family’s door so they could enter without walking across the garbage piles. The city municipality has taken weeks to follow up to clear streets because they just can’t keep up with all the needs simultaneously.

Our church building was flooded about waist-deep on the lowest level. The Juniper Tree missionary guest house was flooded about chest-deep. As a family we were able to spend  some days helping those locations with cleanup as well.

​Within our church, I’ve been heading up an organized group connecting members with cleanup needs with volunteers within the church who could help. We also looked outside our membership and made cleanup volunteers available to the neighborhoods in which we live.

One benefit to this kind of destruction is that I saw it pull people together across racial lines, income levels, and also believers and non-believers working together towards a common goal. We’ve been able to use some of the funds we’ve been blessed with to donate to relief efforts – we’ve purchased mattresses and cooking stoves for people who’ve lost theirs. We also bought food and bottled water which were then delivered by boat during the time right after the floods when there were people trapped in their neighborhoods and couldn’t leave to get supplies.

On a more personal note, my parents came to visit in October, and it was a great blessing to have grandma and grandpa with us! Also, Faith (Inspire homeschool helper) has moved into her own place and has already been a great blessing to the two families she’s serving, and to us as well. I can talk more about that in a future post though.

Until next time,
-Lance, for the Baker family

Greetings!

​We’ve got good news to share – Faith (Inspire homeschool helper) arrived from California in early September! She is transitioning really well, helped in part, I suspect, by the fact that she grew up in a neighboring southeast Asian country. She has begun working with two homeschooling missionary families here in Chiang Mai, and I think she’s going to be a great blessing to them and everyone she comes across this year! Currently she’s staying with us in our homeschool/guest room as we get her acclimated to life here, but soon we’ll help her get set up in her own space for the year.

A prayer request for all of us living in this part of the world:
The rainy season here is about 3 months long and comprises most of the summer months. This year it has seen much more rain that most, and now in September we’re also dealing with the after effects of Typhoon Yagi which hit Vietnam recently. There has been bad flooding in Myanmar and northern Thailand, and it has now hit our city (which is in Northern Thailand). The police station where I volunteer each Wednesday is currently flooded about 3ft deep on the first floor, and our church on the east side of town has flood water reaching the front steps, but hasn’t entered the building yet. We’ve been able to donate money to help with relief efforts in the city of Chiang Rai (north of us), and to help the family of a local man in our neighborhood whose family lost everything in the flood and whose father is bed ridden. There might be an opportunity for us to help with sand bags and cleanup efforts downtown in the coming days; I’m hoping to get more information about it soon. Please keep us all in your prayers.

We’d also like to say another great big thank you to the individuals and church bodies who have contributed extra funds to help us meet our recent unexpected needs over the past couple months, the most recent of which was Reach BBQ event at Lakeside Church in Akron – what a blessing!

-Lance, for the Baker family

Hi all,

​I’d like to follow up on our last blog post, as well as give you some new updates. A number of people gave an extra contribution last month – and it covered a majority of the costs we’ve had so far! Thank you all SO much! We have gone ahead and bought the Hyundai van from our fellow missionary friend here. It has four rows of removable bench seating, so we can transport people/luggage/etc. in large capacity. It’s currently in the shop getting some minor issues taken care of. We’ve never actually yet purchased a computer in Asia, so I’m still looking into where/how to best do that. It’s more complicated that I expected (as most things end up being). 

Our visa situation is an ever-evolving thing, so I’m not sure what/how to update about it. It’s still up in the air whether we will have to do a border run in June, but we won’t know for certain until the time actually arrives and we see if we’re granted a renewal. If we can’t renew, then we’ll have to do another border run and react to the situation as it unfolds (we’ll probably get a 2 or 3 day warning). So pray with us that the renewal goes smoothly!

On another subject, we have one serious candidate lined up for coming to serve as a homeschool helper starting in September. Her name is Faith (welcome Faith!). She was put in contact with us via one of our speaking arrangements in January during our brief time in the States. We were able to speak with individuals, churches, and also at a number of gap-year training facilities including Miracle Mountain Ranch in PA, LeTourneau Christian Center in NY, and Planted Gap Year in PA. We are still hoping/praying that there will be more who come this year. If you know of someone who you think would be a good fit, please direct them to the brand new Inspire page (see below) on our site. It can be a gap year student, a retirement age couple, or anyone in between who has a heart for children and for missions (min. age 18). Even if you don’t have anyone in mind, please check out our new Inspire page and let us know what you think!

www.lanceandruth.com/inspire

Blessings,
-Lance, for the Baker family

We wanted to give you a quick update on our current situation and needs. We’ve had sort of a perfect storm of expenses come up quite unexpectedly. Three weeks ago we had to take that emergency trip to Cambodia for 10 days, which wasn’t in our budget. And we’ve now been told to expect to be required to do another visa run to a neighboring country after 90 days.

At the same time, the car we’ve been driving for four years is showing it’s age, our boys have outgrown the backseat and we find it difficult to fit our family in for trips. We’ve been looking around for other options with the idea of upgrading to a minivan or a van so we can better transport others along with our own family. We just found out one of our good friends who is a missionary here is selling their Hyundai van; it’s perfect for us, and buying from a trusted source is really important.

Thirdly, the computer we use for homeschool is now fully 10 years old, which is not a bad run! Unfortunately, it’s reached the point where we can’t upgrade most of the software, and the battery has to be recharged almost constantly, so it’s really time to get a new one.

Anyway, while we do maintain an emergency fund, all this together is more of a hit than can readily be absorbed. In March, two people gave an extra one-time amount, and we hadn’t even made these needs known yet! Praise God. We’d like to put the request out there though, to ask that if you feel led to do so, could you consider giving an additional amount this month? There is a special link below that can be used, or an additional amount could be sent straight to the Central Missionary Clearinghouse (where all of our support funds go) in order to get a tax-deductible receipt. Just click the “Support Us” tab above to go that route.

​Thank you for your prayers and support,
 -Lance, for the Baker family

We got visas! Not the ones we requested, unfortunately, but better than being tourists. We received a combination of “employment” and “volunteer dependent” visas, which is a strange combination and might cause us some trouble in the future, so probably not a tenable long term solution. However, it gives us 90 days to think and pray before we have to renew them. We’ve felt since this started that God had some major change in store for us, and apparently the timing of that change is now.

We ended up being in Cambodia for a total of 10 days, which is crazy since a week before that we had no intention of going anywhere, more less a brand new country which we know nothing about. It was an anxiety inducing situation due to the visa unknowns, but also because of the uncomfortableness of being in a brand new country where we don’t know how to solve basic life stuff like transportation and shopping, nor did we know the potential danger points we needed to watch out for. We are incredibly thankful for the one family that we knew in the city. We had met them briefly seven years ago at the Juniper Tree guest house in Thailand, and then “accidentally” ended up reconnecting with them a week before this trip. Turns out, they live 15 minutes from the airport in Phnom Penh, which is 15 minutes from the Thai embassy, and they informed us about the C&MA guest house nearby where we were able to stay for the duration of our time there. We struggled with sickness throughout the trip, but were able to venture out of the guest house to get the kids to an English-speaking youth group, play ultimate frisbee, and visit an international church. We also took “homeschool field trips” to the Museum of Cambodia and toured the Royal Palace.

We got home in Chiang Mai Thursday night – praise God!

​-Lance, for the Baker family

Hello! This is Ruth! We’ve devised a system of projecting the computer onto the wall (which is a continuous light source), so I can use a computer again despite my brain injury. It’s awkward, but we desperately needed to get this update out, so it’s good enough!

We have so much news to tell you – about our Stateside trip, the SEA (Southeast Asia) Missionary Kid Retreat our boys just attended, the status of Inspire (our homeschool helper program) – however, we are now in crisis mode this past week and need to update you about that, so you can join us in prayer for the current situation.

First, a quick recap so you know briefly where we are in life. We were in the States from mid-December through the end of January celebrating the holidays with family and traveling to gap-year discipleship programs to present the Inspire missions opportunity. (future blog post to come) Two weeks after we returned to Thailand we drove our boys, two days driving south of Bangkok, to a retreat specifically designed for missionary kids. (so awesome – future blog post to come) Then, the day we returned (this past Monday) Lance received a call from the foundation we have our visas through to let us know that our visa renewal was denied for this upcoming year. Thus, we’ve spent the rest of this past week in crisis-mode trying to figure out what now.

Last year, many, many families on our visa type had huge problems when trying to renew their visas and are still trying to figure out long-term solutions even now. We (praise God) had no trouble and since this is our fourth year on the same visa, we assumed we wouldn’t have trouble. Also, we had already passed the yearly interview at City Hall showing all the volunteer work we do, had gone through all the other check points and were just waiting on our approval letter from the governor’s office which you (usually) automatically receive once all your other paperwork and interviews are finished. Except in our case this year apparently, so this took us completely by surprise.

 – Ok, this is Lance now. The projector is better for Ruth, but not a good enough solution for extended computer use. Anyway, our annual visa expiration/renewal is March 7th, so this situation has left us with little to no time to plan and get everything booked for a visa run/border run to a Thai embassy in a nearby country. The places other missionaries have gone include Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore. The lady from my Foundation called Laos, and they said they won’t issue our type of visas, so we’ve settled on giving Cambodia a try. The odds of success are low, so it’s probable that we’ll have to return on 60-day tourist visas, and then figure out a better long term solution. One of the most viable options seems to be to start a business here in the city, and then we’d get permanent visas through that (future blog post to come). But for now, we head to Bangkok tomorrow, and then depart for Cambodia on Monday morning.

An interesting God thing – last week at the youth event in Prachuap KhiriKhan we reconnected with a family we met six years ago, and they’re now serving in Cambodia, and they happen to live 20 minutes from the airport, and they’ve offered to pick us up and help us secure housing and transportation, such a blessing!

We’ll be staying at missionary guest housing, and we’ll even have access to a kitchen. We don’t know how long it will take to work the visa situation out, but we’ve been told anywhere from 3-10 days. So we’re bringing homeschool books, and I guess we’ll get a crash course on how daily life in Cambodia works… (or doesn’t work, as the case may be).
​
​Please pray with/for us as we travel, and that God would go before us to prepare whatever visa solution He wants us to have. 

​-Lance & Ruth, for the Baker family

Hi! It’s been quite a while since we’ve posted an update, so we have a number of things to fill you in on. 

First, I wanted to follow up on our health concerns that I had mentioned previously. Alex is doing much better, and has been able to return to his normal activities like school and youth activities at church, so we’re super thankful for that. Ruth, on the other hand, is still in the process of slowly recovering from her head injury. She is working through post-concussion syndrome and still struggles with nerve-pain and daily headaches, which we’re told can take upwards to a year (or more) to heal from. They’ve prescribed her a medication to reduce pain caused by nerve inflammation, and that has been helping a lot with the pressure and headaches. She’s able to drive on short trips now, and do most regular activities, but certain things still cause an immediate headache and new things are still hard for her. TV and computer screens still give her headaches and too much sequential thinking causes problems, though she has been doing some specific cognitive exercises (which are sequential thinking), and she’s steadily improving in that regard.
Some of you may have heard that Josiah had a bit of a health scare as well, but as best the doctors can figure out, his diagnosis is “classic migraine,” which is causing headaches and vision problems. They’ve also ordered a follow-up MRI in 3-6 months to monitor an abnormal vein cluster they found in his brain, just to rule out any other issues, but will hopefully prove to be just a birth defect without any adverse health repercussions.

​On another subject, we’d like to share our upcoming travel plans. We will be making a brief trip (six weeks) to the US for the holidays in December, then staying through the end of January. We’ll be holding meetings and doing some presentations at Christian discipleship training programs. The goal is to increase awareness and interest among graduates in coming to Thailand as homeschool helpers. We have families here who are contacting us in need of homeschool assistance, but the two potential young folks we had lined up to arrive for this school year were not able to come. One thing we’re passionate about is doing what we can to help keep families on the field long term and addressing homeschooling needs can be a huge part of that. Just last week a missionary family who recently welcomed their seventh baby called me to inquire about getting a homeschool helper to just do science experiments with their older kids. By the time I got finished explaining what we hope to offer, they were asking what they had to do to qualify and how to get to the top of the waiting list!

​Despite the quick planning time, the trip details are coming together pretty well already. Last time our friend, Khun Lek and her daughter, stayed in our house while we were in the States. This time a single missionary named Greg will house sit for us. It’s not generally a good idea to leave a house sit vacant here due to possible insect/small animal infestations and mold growth. On the US side, Lily Shurance has offered to lend her minivan to us for the duration of our time, so that’s a huge answer to prayer! We won’t have time to visit and update our churches on this trip due to the holidays/special services, the short length of the trip, and because our focus will be meeting and speaking with people and organizations about bringing young folks over to Thailand for a year for Inspire. So if we don’t get to catch up with you during this trip, we’ll make it a point to do so on our next trip to the States.

We hosted our July 4th celebration with some missionaries from the States that we’ve invested in here in Chiang Mai. We had a group of singles, and one larger family, 18 people in total. (I won’t post photos for their privacy). We special ordered legit hot dogs and had them delivered frozen, so we had hot dogs, baked beans, corn, jalapeño poppers, ice cream and apple pie! A not-too-shabby American-style meal. It was a great time of fellowship, and we were able to make great use of our hangout/game area, as well as our grill and food hosting set up. The parents wrote afterwards and said how much their children were blessed and were already asking to come back again.

In other news, I’ve been volunteering each Wednesday at Police Station zone 5 here in town. They have an “English club” of sorts, and they ask all kinds of questions about communication, but most of our time is actually spent helping them prepare different community involvement events. This past Sunday the police force rented a section on the 1st floor of the mall and had “Driver’s Safety” displays set up, educational materials, giveaways, complete with music and various styles of dance (in typical Thai fashion). The deputy governor of Chiang Mai showed up to give a speech. It was quite the experience.

-Lance, for the Baker family

I’d like to follow up on our request for prayers for health and recovery. We really appreciate your prayers in this area. Ruth is improving incrementally each day, though definitely not yet 100%. She still has trouble with sequential thinking which gives her a headache, and with car trips which make her dizzy and nauseous. Since there are still signs of improvement, we’re just waiting and praying that she continues to heal, as we’ve been advised. We’ve been greatly blessed by some of the folks around us who have brought us meals and supported us through a difficult time.

​Alex is also improving over time, and has more energy than he did previously, but again, not back to 100% unfortunately.

Despite the struggles, we’ve got homeschool back up and running, and have been able to get most of our boxes unpacked and the house mostly set up. The “youth hang out” area is complete with ping pong and pool table. We even had our first group over, which was a birthday party for Josiah who just turned sixteen! Four neighborhood teens, one missionary family, and an older couple came (17 people in all). The driving age for cars in Thailand is 18, but it’s only 15 for motorcycles, so we decided to send Josiah to a motorcycle safety driving course, and he passed the written and driving tests to get his motorcycle license – growing up!

We took another trip to the orphanage in May. This time, among other activities, the girls all decorated their own cookies with icing and sprinkles (then ate them of course!). They all have their school uniforms, and two of them are going to be able to move on and start college this fall. It’s uplifting to us each time we go visit, and I hope/pray that it is just as much or more so for all the girls.

-Lance, for the Baker family