The god-guardians in the Bangkok airport are still wearing masks as are most of the Thai population out of choice.
We had the privilege of speaking at four new churches while we were in the States, two of which plan to have future meetings about supporting us and one has already committed to supporting us long-term. All four came about through God’s arrangement in surprising ways.
The first weekend we were back we attended my dad’s family reunion. As he is one of eight kids, and some of his siblings already have great-grandkids, it is a large event for which they rented a college campus and planned a weekend full of fellowship. My brother was supposed to give the message Sunday morning but ended up loosing his voice, so Lance was asked Saturday night if he’d be able to briefly share what we’ve been doing in Asia the next morning. It was such a blessing to be able to share with my family about the ministries we’ve been involved with here. From that event, we have connected with a few cousins who were interested in supporting us monthly, and someone who may be interested in joining our homeschool helper internship. Also, because of that morning, one of my cousins was able to connect us with her church leadership and we were able to share at their church a month later. I’m not glad my brother had to suffer the weekend with a sore throat, but am so thankful God used it to bless us in multiple ways.
Three other churches near us in PA and Ohio also connected us through God’s arrangements (instead of ours) but this post will be long enough as it is without those stories so I will cover those next month. These three new churches are local country churches near my sister and parents’ houses.
The boys are glad to able to get fresh coconut from the market again.
Thankfully, coming back to the States always results in a net gain for us financially through money given to us from the people and churches we interact with while there. This means, our flights back, travel in the States and other expenses there were more than covered, pulling nothing from our monthly support, and allowing us to save while we were there. Secondly, we were included in a missions fundraising event this year called REACH which will cover the ministry expenses of starting our homeschool helper internship, Inspire, so that also won’t have to come out of our monthly financial budget this year. We are not guaranteed this money every year however, so please continue praying with us that our financial support will increase over this next year so we can continue with the ministries we’ve started.
Thank you so much for your prayers and involvement in this ministry. If you are a supporter and would ever like to come and see our life and the work we’re involved with here, or would like to plan an outreach to support the missionaries we work with, please let us know, and we’ll work together with you to make that happen.
It was so great to connect with those of you we could while we were in the States. This was the first time we’ve had a short stay but with many, many places to visit, so our planning didn’t work out perfectly a few times. Hopefully the next time will be smoother from what we learned this time around. We hope you’ll give us grace where we messed up, and we look forward to spending more time with everyone the next time we’re visiting.
Thank you again for your prayers,
– Ruth, for the Baker family
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