What! It's been a year since I posted!

I am floored that it has actually been a whole year since I posted anything on this blog! Granted it got easier to ignore since I had no real reason to believe that anyone was reading it. Which is evidenced by the fact that no one has mentioned it to me in more than a year.

I spent a little bit thinking about it and made a decision. I decided that I need to keep this up for the silent readers who happen upon the website, get sent to the blog and actually read it. I imagine that they do so without ever telling me they were here, and that I am failing them by not updating this blog so they can be a part of what God is doing in our lives. So for the sake of glorifying Jesus, I need to update a whole years worth of serving Him!

The last blog I posted spoke of returning from our 2009 trip to America so it is easy to start from there. We arrived excited and ready to express the love of God through our actions! We were funded for an amazing project and ready to head to Myanmar for it's completion!

Unfortunately, we had been funded for the actual work, but not for our costs in going there and actually being there while it happened. We simply assumed that if God funded the project for the work to be done, then He would get us the money to go and do it! That is exactly what He did of course, but it was 2 months later than we planned for it to be.

By now it was August of 2009 and we were finally headed to Myanmar to begin the work that we had been believing to be able to do for the whole of 2009 thus far. It was a great feeling to finally be going and getting to start. We don't do the actual construction work ourselves when we do a project like this. In fact, when working in Myanmar we do very little that would have us be seen in the public eye. These projects help not only the homes, but the people who get hired to do the work and we see that as a win - win.

As I said, we keep a low profile because this is not a country where anything else is possible. So we serve God in 2 ways when we work in Myanmar. We work for another organization and we fund our own projects. We spend our weekdays working for a local organization on a volunteer basis, and then while we are doing that the local staff accomplishes great things for Jesus. We love the way that works out, and we have seen it grow as has our ministry because of it. God is so much smarter than we are, and it always pays to do what He says to do when He says to do it.

So here is a picture of the main project! This is a water tower which we built for a very special home that we have come to love and support in every way we can. They used to get all of their water from an old rusty hand pump. We replaced the old hand pump, motorized it as well, built a water tower, got water running to the house, to the out houses, to several staging areas around the house and put in a working kitchen sink! Glory to God! We also built this large cement square tank, which is actually a bathing area.



You can see it better from this picture below. This takes water from the tower, stores it in a second location and allows several children to bathe at once. By Pastors count at least five! This was not an option before. They had a small round cement bowl that was where they got all of their water, did all of their bathing and clothes washing. This was located in front of the house where the whole neighborhood could see. We arrived on one visit to find the pastor fully covered in soap bubbles out in front of the house. He had not competed his bath before we arrived. He had a little wall built out of very thin split bamboo weave, but you walk right past it to get to the front door. Now they can all wash up behind the house for more privacy and certainly more dignity when foreign visitors arrive. Outdoor bathing of this kind is the norm here so that is not such a shock, but I will post the before and after pictures of the old area so you can get an idea what I am talking about here. He is pointing to the spigot which feeds a smaller tank so this water will get warm in the sun which is very nice for skinny little ones who get cold easily.


This is Thiri! She is our Myanmar Director and the apple of God's eye. She runs the show and makes Jesus famous. She makes us look great in the process and we know that God has great plans for this young woman beyond doing that. In the mean time, we are honored that she is working with us. She is standing at another staging area for water. This is where all the dishes for this home are washed. There are at least 28 people being fed from here on a regular basis so dishes pile up and this is a vital area for them to have water available.


Here we have a kitchen sink. This may not get your eyes teary, but trust me when you have never had one before it is a glorious thing. I myself have been without one for 2 years now and do all of my dishes in a very small bathroom sink. Trust me when I tell you this was seed! This is the Pastor and Director of the home and his lovely wife. I am not giving you details about them and that is on purpose. Not that it really matters because they could be found from this alone, but I pray that it never becomes an issue. Please agree with us in prayer for their safety and protection, and in the mean time I will mention no names. Look at that smile though! You would think that he was the one who does the dishes!


Here is the before picture I mentioned above. This was the old hand pump. This is where they all had to do everything that had to do with water. They could pump out a bucket or a tub worth, but it started here and was brought elsewhere. The bathing was done here also.


This picture below is the after picture of the original area. There is a new hand pump as well as a motorized pump but they don't always have electricity so there has to be options. There is a spigot here as well so they can use the water from the tower if they need it. This is now a designated area for washing clothes, but with 18 children needing to get ready for school at the same time it probably still gets used for bathing some.


Another great thing that came with this project is that they now have running water in the outhouses so they can refill the buckets to flush.


Here is a shot of the motorized pump. Like I said it requires power to use it, but the home also has a generator that can be used to power the pump if needed. So there are three ways to get the water out. There is no such thing as counting on one way to do anything in this country.


Last but not least we do try to offer something to the home besides handouts. We purchased a camera for the Pastor which came in very, very handy later so that was clearly a God idea. We did offer some financial assistance for food costs for the home, but we also asked that they get more meat into the diets of the children. Two goats were purchased and here is a rather amusing photo that was taken for us to show us how great they were.


So that was our "Big Project" which took the first half of 2009 to accomplish. It was totally worth it and I would wait every single frustrated minute I waited to do it all over again.

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The rest of our time in Yangon is serving with Myanmar Compassion Project. This is an amazing organization that has us come to their country to work as consultants. Troy does IT work for them and I do Accounting. We train people and perform our own projects for and under their ministry. This is our Monday through Friday and we raise the money we need to live, eat and get around while we live and work for them. Every second is worth it and we consider it an honor.

So MCP is who we work for when we are in Myanmar and this is what they (and we in part) do when we work with them. They are a pharmacy, dental clinic, medical clinic and mobile medical team. They work as a support organization for children all over the country. They do so much more than this, but I have spoken about them before on here so I will just show you a few pictures so you can get a sense of how awesome they are.

Here is the office we go to. This houses the Dental and Medical Clinic and the offices for the organization. We work upstairs in the left side window. The one that is closed of course because foreigners can't do good work without a little cool air. The truck you see in the picture is the one used to send the Mobile medical teams out to hold clinics all over the area. Children are diagnosed and protected through the diligent efforts of these amazing doctors who are all here as missionaries serving Jesus through their skills and talents.


The founder of this great work is Dr. Dal. He is simply a great man who loves God and serves his people in humility and with with great dedication.

Here is a picture of the inside of that building - this is the pharmacy.

Here is the Dental clinic - it is a full on Dentists office.

Here is the Doctors office in action. There is no picture of the operating room, but it is just off to the right from where they are.

Here is the part of the office where all the cool stuff gets done. This is the accounting department!

Auntie Wendy

Nuam

Moon Kyin and Uncle Dal


And here is why I was there and what I trained these amazing ladies to do themselves!

The operations of MCP run hand in hand with an American Ministry known as Asia Heartbeat. It is run by Dr. Bill Greiser and He is the reason we were invited to stay and continue to work in Myanmar back in 2008. Here is a photo Dr. Bill. He and his wife Edhena are another reason that Myanmar will be part of our hearts for always!

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We arrived in Thailand again in October and began preparing for our return to Myanmar at the end of the year. As time passed though it became clear that this was not happening. We prayed and sought God earnestly. He instructed us that what He wanted us to do was to start taking Thai classes, and that learning to speak Thai was a priority for us so we obeyed and wondered what would come of our Christmas plans.

Here we are being diligent at Thai class.

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We had to take a Visa run to Laos to renew our ability to stay in Thailand. We thought that was going to be taken care of by our trip to Myanmar, but since we were clearly not going anytime soon we had to do this instead. We found ourselves in Vientiane, Laos for Thanksgiving 2009. We had our holiday meal on the bank of the Mekong river and ended up buying food for a group of very precocious street children.



We had a great thanksgiving and headed back to Thailand only to discover that the Visa we thought was good for 2 months was, in fact, expired now and we were given only 15 days in Thailand. So we had to come right back to Laos and get a new Visa. That trip was not the happiest one. Troy ended up falling and getting a terrible concussion. After an overnight bus we ended up spending the day in observation of a hospital near the Thai - Laos Border.

It was not my favorite experience here in Southeast Asia, but the nurses loved Troy and they were very, very good to us.

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Since we had obeyed God we were not sure why it seemed like the children would not be getting any Christmas, but God amazed us with His plan! Not only did the children get the best Christmas ever, but He used this as an amazing time of streamlining our vision and directing us.

Our Myanmar Director Thiri was fully funded for our Christmas Project 2009 in just 2 days time through a facebook campaign, and we never stepped foot in Myanmar. She did a way better job than we could have hoped for! There was a Christmas party for the children where every child received a present and fun bag with candy, there was a stove top and gas tank purchased for the kitchen of the home, there was a trip to the zoo and there was a neighborhood outreach for New Years!

It was God all the way! Here are just a few photos - there are so many! We were overjoyed with what God did, and we would have loved to have been there for all the fun. In the end we know it isn't about us. The children were blessed and Jesus was lifted up!

Here are the bags ready to go out. Each child and staff member got a coat.

There was also candy in every bag because it just can't be a party without candy!

Here is Thiri leading the passing out of the gifts at the party.

Here is Pastor and his lovely wife wearing their gifts. This is a man who had eight children of his own and has now taken in 18 children more. It took us 5 visits to the home and I finally asked which children were his biological children because we could never tell. They were all treated the same and that was one of the major reasons we have continued to do all that we can to be a conduit of blessing to this amazing couple.

Here is a series of photos of happy, coat wearing, candy eating children!

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Here is the stove and gas tank that was the Christmas "project" portion of things. Last year they all got school bags and a new (and second) outhouse, but this year it was coats and stove!

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The fun wasn't over for them though. There was also an entire day at the Yangon Zoo! This is a really awesome zoo by all the wrong standards because the animals are close by and you can feed most of them. Things that would be out of the question in other nations seem to be the bright idea of some enterprising chap here in Myanmar (Burma). The good news is that there were plenty of chaperones and no one fell into the open pit of poisonous snakes. So we are thrilled!

Here is what we mean about the snake pits. This is not the one we are talking about because these are Burmese Pythons and we are talking about the one full of Cobras. By the way here we just call them Pythons. (Being this is Burma)

This little guy is questioning the sanity of this place in this shot.

Would you like to pet a Hippo? You can actually feed these which is why they have their mouths open to them like they do.

Here is Thiri in blue being full of the love of God and enjoying what she put together for these little ones.

Thiri organized lunch for everyone and brought drinks and snacks with her to the park to make sure it was a day filled with all the things it should be not just a day the orphans got to do something out of the ordinary.

All in all is was an awesome day!

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The rolled over from 2009 to 2010 and we have had a an amazing start to 2010. I am afraid it is not full of pictures, but there are a few so I will share what I can. We have had such a wonderful time with God these first few months into this year. We have continued in our Thai classes and just now have stopped as we did some traveling and are headed to the United States from April 26th through July 26th 2010 for a big fund raising push!

We have continued to follow each and every leading of the Lord being careful not to allow anything that might be our plan to override His. We are blessed and ready to see some of the things He has spoken to us about coming to pass in our lives.

One opportunity we had to share the love of Jesus early this year was with a young lady who was being abused by her partner. He had already left her for another woman, but would return to rape her and take the money she earned working. He would ambush her outside where she lived. We were aware that she was being beaten, but did not have any means or opportunity to help her. Eventually the door opened after he put her in the hospital and nearly killed her. We were able to get her moved out and into a new place that he did not know. We payed her deposit and first months rent and gave her a chance to begin again.

Here is a picture of some of the injuries after he put her in the hospital. She had a
serious head wound and that is what got her hospitalized. The cut on her hand was
where he tried to cut her throat and the bruises we from being hit and falling.

Here is a picture of her in the new apartment. Her face is protected because she is a more than just a beating victim and this is the proper procedure for rape victims.

This is our Bangkok version of the story of the good Samaritan and there are many more just like it going on all around us every day. We felt lead to get involved here and it was not only a witness to this particular woman, but to many people we live with everyday.

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Since 2010 has come, we have also taken another Visa run. This time to the Thai - Burmese border so we have been able technically to go to Myanmar this year, but it was only for two hours. That was a very good trip for us where we connected with other missionaries and were refreshed and did our own encouraging.

Soon after it was time for the annual meeting of the missions organization we became members of when we arrived in Thailand. These meetings were held in Chiang Mai, Thailand and we spent several weeks there. The group is an Australian based missions group called Christian Outreach Center. This is a God connection for us and these meeting were lead into and finished off with some other meetings that we attended both here in Bangkok and up in Chiang Mai. We spent a solid couple weeks in amazing and anointed meetings and are very ready to head to the United States to share our vision for the things that God spoken to us about.

Here are a few pictures of the meeting in Bangkok, Thailand

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Our only project besides Thai class and traveling for Visa runs and meetings in the start of this year 2010 has been for a young Christian leader from Myanmar. This coming July 2010 she is headed to a combined church conference and missions trip to Manila, Philippines. She needed to raise $1500 to do it and she sent us a letter asking for support. We had nothing to sow at the time so we went to the Lord and asked Him to provide seed to the sower.

He lead us to tell people about Nway Nway and what she was trying to do so we did what He instructed. In two weeks she raised $320 and we raised the rest! She is going to her conference and she is amazed at the love and grace that the Lord has shown her. She is a testimony of faith as she continually steps out to believe God. She refuses to be limited in her life or her walk with Jesus because of where she lives or who her government is. She is an amazing young lady and the fruit of this will reach far and wide.

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This has been an overview of the highlights of the last year and the start of this one. There has been so much more than what I have posted here. There is no way to encompass a year of living with His light shining through us in one single blog post. We have attempted to give you an idea who we are and the types of things we do, but there is no simple picture and witty blurb for the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he reaches out and touches our lives and the lives of the people around us.

God is amazing and a life with Him is full of wonder, joy, peace and grace beyond most of our understanding. We love what we do and where we are going through Him. He is the author and the finisher of anything we try to accomplish out here in Southeast Asia. He is in charge and we simply follow Him. Jesus is everything and those are not just words or we would not be here doing what we love to do.

Thank you for reading through this. If you have gotten this far I am impressed and say thank you for your interest. We appreciate it. We would also appreciate your prayers and if possible your financial support. We can't do any of this without help. God Bless You. Follow Jesus and you will eventually follow your dreams.