Our Thanksgiving celebration went off without a hitch! This is Lance writing this time around.

​I know many folks in the States weren’t able to celebrate Thanksgiving as usual, but since there have been so few Covid cases here in Chiang Mai we’re not on lock-down now. We were able to have a group of single missionaries to our house who would not otherwise have had a “family” to gather with. Actually, it was a varied group including a Ch_nese friend and her son who was born in the States, and one of the missionaries was from New Zealand, but she happily joined us for our American holiday anyway.

An imported turkey would have been $80 to $100, so we went with three small chickens instead, but we were able to pull off legitimate cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, Ruth made homemade noodles, and even had a Ch_nese eggplant dish to boot! One gentleman came prepared with games and ended by reading the proclamation by Abraham Lincoln from when he first instituted Thanksgiving as a holiday, which I had never heard before. Before the meal we sang a hymn requested by one guest, and then another requested by me that I grew up singing with my family. After the meal we each shared what we were specially thankful for this year. 

We know from experience that it’s very difficult to not be with family on a holiday, especially when no one in the culture around you sees the day as out of the ordinary and just goes on with business as usual. This group of singles were blessed to have a group to celebrate with I think. One guy’s eyes really lit up when he went in the kitchen and saw homemade noodles boiling. And one lady pulled us aside as she left and said, “You have good people,” while thanking us for inviting her. We agree. I think the biggest hit of the night may have been when Ruth pulled out the “to-go” boxes she bought, and had each person pack themselves a leftover box full of food to take home.

We’re taking mental notes of what blessed people the most, and what we can do more of in the future. We’re still making plans for what/how to do Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, and we’ll let you know how those go as well. If you’d like to contribute specifically towards that, you can give directly from our Support Us page.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support. We hope you have a merry Christmas season too
– Lance, for the Baker family.

Hurray for the holidays! I love planning to celebrate, well, anything really, so I get excited for all the plans this time of year. These coming holidays are intrinsically family-centered and family is hugely important to me. I was raised with a strong heritage of family togetherness, and I can’t imagine not having any family around to share holidays or birthdays. Being single on the mission field is hard during the holidays. While my family can’t replace theirs, we hope we can be an extended family to those on the field who need one, especially during critical times such as holidays and other celebrations.

We are hosting a Thanksgiving meal for the single missionaries we know and one Ch_nese mom and son, and so far we have 8 adults coming and 4 kids including ours. The extra child is Alex’s age and was born in the States but whose parents are of Ch_nese nationality. As a third-culture kid, growing up in Thailand with Ch_nese parents but only interested in American culture because of his dad’s influence, we hope coming to our celebration will help him and his mom with his third-culture struggles. Beyond that, we also have a single missionary from New Zealand celebrating with us who’s excited to join us just for fun. Multi-national US thanksgiving celebration is now a thing at our house.

​As mentioned in our last post, we have a connection to the Ch_nese community here in Chiang Mai and we hope to further that relationship during the Christmas season. Our friend from Thanksgiving knows a group of single moms living in Chiang Mai who each have one child, and they’ll all be invited to a Christmas celebration here through her. I only know one of their stories, but in Ch_nese culture it is most common for the one child in the family to be raised by the grandparents who live in a city with the best school system they can afford and the child can get into, while the parents live in other cities where they can get the best paying job, often also apart from each other. So, I’m assuming that these moms (like the mom I know) are here raising their kids in Thailand for the international education while their husbands are working elsewhere. 

I was planning to have one huge Christmas Eve Eve celebration including the single missionaries, Ch_nese families, and hopefully a Thai friend who is a single mom and her family is too far away for her to visit. However, as I started to type this out right now and think about those logistics, I’m not sure that’s going to be possible space-wise. Hmmm. Ok, so clearly this needs thought through a little further. Stay tuned for November’s post to see what the plans are then…! I was hoping to have everyone together since some of the missionaries have previously worked in a country where they’ll relate to the moms coming, so I thought they’d be a mutual blessing to each other. I’ll figure it out…

Anyway, this brings us to explaining how you can help if you’re interested. We would love to make this an extra special time with gift bags for the kids, Western food for the missionaries and even small gifts if possible. If your family, church, Sunday school, small group or whatever would be interested in helping us with any of these costs, we’ve set up a convenient/quick way to do so on our site. Go to our “Support Us” page to access our two categories, “Missionary Christmas Celebration” or “Other Holidays”. Also, under the “More” tab in the menu bar, you can access each category directly there. There are multiple options to help with under both categories and you can read a description about each option if you click on them to go to their specific page. The descriptions will give you a few more details about each option you can support. 

Here’s the details about these options. While it’s a quick and easy way to give us a financial gift, you won’t get a tax-deductible receipt by giving through our site. If you need one for your personal or group records, please donate through our organization CMC (Christian Missionary Clearinghouse). They process our donations and will send you a tax-deductible receipt at the end of the year for all of your donations to our ministry. You can also set up monthly or reoccurring donations and mail checks through them. Scroll to the bottom of our “Support Us” page for this option. Either way you give, the money will be used towards these events. 

Thank you for reading through the details to the end! Hopefully they were understandable but concise. If you want more information or clarification email us, or if you’d rather talk to someone in person in the States, check our “Contact Us” page for the number (bottom left). 

Happy Holidays’ planning!
– Ruth, for the Baker family.

​Whew! Like the rest of the year has, September just flew by for us. Lots of things are happening though so that’s good, and bad. Good that they’re happening, bad since there’s so much we could be doing that we can’t physically (mentally, emotionally…) choose to do it all. We are actively reminding ourselves it is responsible and appropriate to make sure we take the time we need for our own family’s emotional, mental, physical, spiritual health and not just focus on other’s needs in those areas. There will always be another need in this world, no matter how many we can help, so we need to give ourselves grace to not try to meet them all and lean on God for wisdom to know which He wants us to meet. The harder trick is to only schedule 80% of our time/resources to leave room for the inevitable 20% last minute/emergency help someone might need so we don’t end up continually committed at 120%. (That’s a little sermon to myself that you can listen in on if you’d like.)

​Update on Amanda’s status: [Reminder – Amanda was planning on coming over to help us with the kids’ homeschool so we could focus on language learning. She was supposed to come a few weeks after us but then the borders closed (Covid) the weekend after we got here, and we haven’t found a way for her to join us since then.] A month or so ago we thought we had a solution for her to come (including a lot of acrobatics and paperwork) but that fell through as the only new student visas they’re currently issuing are for full-time university students living on campus. Lance learned last week from a fellow soccer player that there may be another way to get her here through a volunteer visa. This would be such an answer to prayer. He contacted the lady in charge this week and she is going to look into it (and the accompanying acrobatics and paperwork) for us. Apparently this is a really new option (just starting last week) so she doesn’t know the details of how it works yet. We are often the guinea pigs of never-done-it-before-but-lets-try-it, and sometimes it even works out (our current visas) so we’ll see what happens and keep you updated. I’m praying that she can be here by January. ​

We are in the planning stages of a Thanksgiving celebration for the single missionaries we know and a huge Christmas Eve celebration for the singles and a group of single Ch_nese christian moms living here in Chiang Mai. Being a single missionary is super hard, and their unique needs are often overlooked or unrecognized. Obviously I can’t relate personally, but this is definitely an area of missionary support that’s on my heart and I hope to write more about in the future. If in no other way, I hope our family will be able to be family for the singles we know, especially during the holidays that are traditional family times.

We also keep getting opportunities to be involved with the large Ch_nese community here in Chiang Mai. We knew they were here, but before we came, we didn’t know if we’d have a way to be involved with this group. However, we knew God may have plans to use our unique background of knowing their language and our family knowing their culture to minister to these people here. We hope to get together with some of them before the holidays but our “big event” will be hosting a Christmas Eve celebration. Please pray for these interactions and relationships as they start to develop. (I’m still not typing our last country’s name because, since we are involved with missionaries in closed countries, we don’t want both words searchable on our site. This is also the reason we won’t post the names of the guest houses and organizations we work with to help protect anonymity.)

​And last, but definitely not least, THANK YOU SO MUCH for those of you who were able to send us money to help us with the upfront costs we have for our ministry. Not only were we blessed to be able to start to move forward, but we felt loved with each connection made (and I was glad to know my posts don’t go out into the void of digital nothingness!). 

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

Apparently, we’ve noticed, that palm trees grow a lot of other random things besides coconuts. Who knew?

We have found a church to call home here! As public places start to open again, churches are starting to meet in person. We were prepared for a time of searching, but by God’s grace, He directed us to a local fellowship right away. We are so excited to have a group of people to meet with, who have their own ministries they’re involved in yet are committed to nurturing a church family for their families’ spiritual growth as well. 

Through this church family, multiple ministry opportunities have already opened up for us. Lance has joined a soccer group that meets twice a week led by men who have a soccer ministry with students and juvenile delinquents in the city. As the group is mostly Thai, this also gives him an opportunity to practice language and develop relationships with some locals here. We have also met many families who have had to leave the country we were working in previously because of the rise in persecution there and have resettled here like we did. Whether God led them away before the government told them to leave like He did us, or they were forcibly made to leave, we can relate to their stories and they appreciate having someone to share them with. There are also many families we’ve met who are living here temporarily, waiting until the country they minister in opens up again for them to be able return. Some have been here as long as six months, but came expecting to be here two weeks. Talk about a change of plans and needing to be flexible!  

Our original plan for this year was to intensely focus on language while we had someone help us homeschool our kids. After that we’d start to add in ministry while we continued language learning, increasing one as the other was less needed. As usual with our plans (and most missionaries’ plans), nothing is going to plan of course. In this case, it’s not a bad thing, just a different thing. As you know from previous posts, our homeschool helper couldn’t come over when Thailand closed it’s borders. We’re still hoping she can eventually come, but as we’ve had to readjust our homeschool plans and haven’t been able to have an intensive language learning time yet (both from time constraints and classes being canceled) we have also been able to add in ministry a lot faster than we anticipated or even foresaw as possible. This is super exciting for us to be already doing the work God has burdened us to do. In this, as we see more and more avenues to encourage and strengthen missionaries on the field here or waiting to return, we have already started to identify ways to be more effective and able to do this.

• This is where you come in – we need your help! One of the main ways we’ve started to encourage other missionaries is by having them to our home for the evening. This gives them a night of fellowship, a safe place to share uninterrupted and, if they have kids, a break while their kids play with ours. For singles we love giving them a night with family and have already made plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations with some of the singles we’ve met, so they have someone to celebrate with the day or morning of. We have quickly realized our house, while the perfect set-up layout-wise for hosting, is not well equipped in other ways. I won’t go into all the details, but the house came with one burner to make meals on and no oven. It also came with a temperamental microwave that usually works, so I’ve developed a slightly convoluted way of making a few meals for a group with one burner, and reheating most of it in the microwave so the meal is hot when served. It’s working, but it could work better. We’re also limited to the number of people we can have which could be quickly solved by being able to buy a bigger table with more chairs. All that to say, we do not have the funds for these upfront costs so we’d like to ask you for help if you’re able. Please pray about a one-time gift or adding to your monthly giving for a time to help us with these costs. We estimate the need to be around $1750 for the furniture and appliances needed. Thank you so much in advance. 

​
Also if you’re wondering, yes, we are still battling waves of cockroaches in our kitchen. Massive amounts of mint, planted around our perimeter, is my next plan. Surely something will work to save my sanity and lessen the shrieking. Ants have also moved in (to cupboards without food, how does that make sense?) but as they were expected all along, really they’re just 5 months late. The lizards in the house rarely make their appearance in the kitchen but have developed the unfortunate habit of laying eggs in bags of toys. We are currently in the process of outfitting the whole house with plastic, latched, lidded bins for any and all storage. (If you want to give towards this endeavor, we’d take that too.) These also have the added benefit of lessening the aforementioned cockroach-induced shrieks. As I very thoroughly learned in our last country (which also had cockroaches), there’s nothing worse than rummaging around in a lid-less bin of school supplies and seeing a cockroach run away from your hand. I want to shriek again just thinking about it.

Thank you for your prayers and considering helping us with these new ministry costs,
– Ruth, for the Baker family.

What in the world happened to May? Last I knew I was still somewhere in the vicinity of May and now I’m at the end of July. How in the world did that happen? Nonetheless, obviously it did. July has been so full of activity apparently I didn’t even have time to register it was here before it was gone. 

​We have started something of a routine of having a different missionary group/family/individual over every week for a meal and games or visiting. We’ve really enjoyed these evenings and the range of people we’ve been able to have over. The fellowship has been thoroughly refreshing. One evening we offered to watch someone’s kids so they could go on a date, rather than having their family over for supper, and found out afterwards that it was close to their anniversary – I love when God works out things like that. The music ministry we started doing at the missionary guest house has been suspended while they aren’t having new guests due to the pandemic for this month and possibly the next few, so this time of fellowship has given us a needed way to interact with and serve others. The boys have clamored to do it more often, but since their involvement is more in the food, fun, and fellowship areas rather than the preparation and cleanup, we’ve kept it firmly to once a week for now. We also still like to go to the guest house every few weeks with dessert to visit and let the boys swim and see their friends while they’re still there. 

​It seems Amanda, who is coming to help homeschool our boys, is now able to start moving forward with the specific logistics of how soon she can come. Thailand has recently opened its borders to people with student visas (she’s coming here on a student language visa) but there’s a complex process involved with entering the country that we’re still sorting out. Besides that, there are also a myriad of details to figure out with her school again. Please, keep all these things to be solved in your prayers and for God’s guidance.  

Please also pray for our language teacher. She has been suffering from a variety of health issues over the past few months and often has to cancel class. She feels bad for canceling and we feel bad for all of her struggles. Please pray God will strengthen her and heal her in every way and that we’ll be given the opportunity to make up all the cancelled classes. Our hope is that once Amanda gets here we’ll be allowed to add more class time to our schedule to make up for them.

This is a rather disjointed blog post. You’ve been forewarned. I hope you don’t mind.

We got our visas renewed! Apparently, we were the first people from our school to need their student visas renewed since the American consulate closed. We have no idea what they did, but when we went to the immigration office there were no problems and all went through fine. In fact, it went through more than fine as we were supposed to have a Thai language test to prove we were actually doing what our visa said we were doing, but all they did was take our pictures and hand us our new visas. Considering how many classes we’ve missed between Covid-19 and random cancellations, this was indubitably a good thing.

My kitchen has had an invasion of cockroaches. Unfortunately I’m not surprised, though each day we didn’t find them inside made me cautiously hopeful we wouldn’t. Nonetheless, it is still a terrible and terrifying state of affairs. Geckos in my house are inevitable; I’m not sure why cockroaches exist. Just thought this petrifying situation could be a side note in your prayers for us. 

Great advances have been made in sorting out our homeschool/language school/studying/daily-running-of-the-house schedule. I wouldn’t say everything runs smoothly all the time (please tell me if you’ve figured this out in any situation) but we’re mitigating stress daily (well, maybe weekly).

There was a local lady and her family from our city in our last country that we were able to minister to during a very stressful and turbulent time in their lives. Needing a solution to the problem of not being able to stay in their home country, they moved to Chiang Mai after pursuing multiple unsuccessful options. Since their move, she has continually asked us to move here as well. I always responded that we would love to, but God hadn’t moved us in that direction. She told us she would keep praying that we would move to Chiang Mai. In this light, it is uncanny that we actually came here and now live approximately 10 minutes from her house. We are so excited to renew this friendship and be in their lives again. It seems Lance will especially have an important influence with her youngest son who is eight. As she has continually struggled with finding friends in this city, I am glad to be able to fill that gap. We recently got together with them for supper and a game night and hope to do so weekly. Please pray for us as we renew this relationship that we can again encourage her family. 

Also, in an interesting twist of events, my friend from the last paragraph recently introduced me to the lady who will be Amanda’s roommate once she’s able to come. (Amanda plans to be our homeschool helper.) The lady is wonderful and I was glad to meet her and see what she is like. I was tentative about this situation not knowing anything about who she was, but am thrilled now that I’ve met her. She is something of a mentor to my friend, and I was thankful to hear about this relationship as well.

– Ruth, for the Baker family.

​While most in the developed world didn’t get to gather with others for Easter, we were uniquely and deeply blessed to be able to physically worship with other believers at the guest house. Singing about what God has done for us on the cross and the whole redemption story has always mad me cry at Easter, and this year was no exception. We sang, shared how God has touched us through Easter, sang a few more songs, shared and prayed some more, then ended with a closing song. It was a great Easter service. Even just walking into the room with “He is Risen, Celebrate the Savior” projected on the wall and feeling the hushed reverence of a sanctuary, despite the conference room setting, gave a feeling of joy and wonder that settled deep. It was all the more precious for knowing how unusual it was this year.

Along with worship, the kids were able to have an easter egg hunt in the obstacle course area and an easter basket for each family. A few days before Easter I “just happened” to unpack the box with my plastic easter eggs. Those, along with brown paper bags and some candy I had brought from the States, gave us a way to bless the kids in a way that couldn’t’ve happened otherwise. One family had only been on the field for 6 months before they had to evacuate from India to Thailand, so their kids were definitely used to a US-style celebration of Easter, so it was great to be able to give that to them. We finished the morning with a special lunch sitting altogether at one long table. One of the kids commented, “This reminds me of Thanksgiving!” which was a good way to describe the day spent with family in Christ.

Amanda, our homeschool teacher, hasn’t yet been able to come obviously. Also, the Thai government won’t extend her entry visa so possibly she’ll have to reapply along with all the fees, documents and hassle that goes with that. We were surprised at that since the Thai government has indefinitely extended all the visas of any type for expats already here in Thailand. Hopefully with many things starting to open up in Thailand she’ll be able to come at some point this year. Thailand has plans to open its borders for some countries but not the States yet because of their high number of cases of the virus.

Also, our Thai language classes have not yet started for various random reasons. They were supposed to start the 20th but first we didn’t have internet, then our teacher didn’t have internet, then her electricity went out, then – well, you get the picture. So, we’re hopeful our next class will indeed commence tomorrow. Next week we’re supposed to be able to start meeting in person, so barring the building arbitrarily exploding, I’m assuming we’ll at least be able to start by next week.

We are still so loving the green. (see my P.S. from last month’s post…)

– Ruth, for the Baker family.

​Speaking of buying a car…we bought a car! Can I tell you how excited I am to have a trunk for my groceries instead of trying to balance all of them on the scooter in front of me?!! I so had trunk-envy in our last country. (Yes, it’s a thing. I had it.) That is the best benefit by far. However it’s also nice that the rain won’t change our plans to go somewhere now or make us miserable if we’re out, and we won’t run out of electricity because there’s no gauge and have to push it the rest of the way home either. So excited. ​

​Not being able to open a bank account was unfortunate, but our school allowed us to pay our tuition in cash since we had no other option. Our classes have been suspended as well until April 20th. We’re supposed to check back with the bank in April to see if the government has made another announcement about opening new accounts. Until then, we are extremely grateful that this country is so tourist oriented and we can often use our visa card here. In our last country that was definitely never an option; you could only use a card from one of their national banks. ​

Anyway, tons of random details but these are the things filling our brains and days right now. Being able to stay at the missionary guest house has been beyond a blessing. There are 3 other families here with boys who are our boys’ ages providing community for our kids while we readjust to Asian culture. Beyond that, there are two young families and 3 singles all stranded here from their countries of service. Some came planning to stay until their country was stable again and some were stranded while they were here for other reasons. With the church services and fellowships being canceled, the directors have been organizing a mid-week fellowship and a church service on Sunday. Lance and I have been doing the music, him playing and me singing, and it has been a great way to be encouraged in prayer and worship through everyone’s various circumstances. (Unbelievably, our situation is one of the least unsettled, I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to claim that on this blog before!) We’re revitalized by having this outlet to serve, and the managers here are so excited we’re filling this role. They have been praying for a way to have a worship evening on the grounds and now that we’ll be living in the city we’ve offered to do it weekly once the social ban is lifted and we’ve settled into our routine. God has given us a way to start ministering to missionaries before we’ve even started our Thai lessons – so awesome.

Let me know if I didn’t cover something you’re wondering about. There’s so much going on and changing daily I just covered what’s floating around in my brain at the moment. 

Thank you for your continued prayers. We’re praying for you as well.
– Ruth, for the Baker family.

P.S. You know what else is a blessing?! That I’m sitting here typing while hearing crickets and (loud) lizards chirping outside (and inside) our room. Nature and wildlife were not a thing in our last country. We are soaking it up. (Told you…whatever’s floating around in my brain at the moment.)

​Well, we just figured out that all flights out of S. Korea have been cancelled for the foreseeable future. Since the airlines we booked with only goes through S. Korea to get to Thailand, we now have no tickets. The only reason we know this now is because Lance has been working all morning to find out any information about the flights and realized from Korean Air’s website that, starting tomorrow, Thailand won’t be letting any flights in coming from S. Korea. When he called to see what our options were from our booking company, they didn’t even have that information yet but, after awhile on hold, confirmed that was the case. Thankfully, our money will be reimbursed… seven weeks from now.

So, since our Thailand visas expire if we don’t arrive within one month, and we have other meetings and reservations made that won’t be reimbursed if we don’t show up, we are now looking up alternate routes and flight options in an effort to keep our original plans. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Thanks!