Happy Independence Day

Sorry We haven't written in so long. It has been a busy month. School started for all the students around June 1, and we have been busy teaching, hanging out, playing games, travelling, and getting to know many people.

The first week of June we were preparing the Lopburi Youth House, decorating and cleaning it, planning events, and going to schools. There are about 12 different high schools, technical schools, and universities in Lopburi. We went to most of them and passed out brochures about the Lopburi Youth House with a gospel tract inside it. We also talked with several teachers about opportunities to come teach at their school. Surprisingly, many teachers invite us to come teach "English" at their school. Many would even say that we can teach about our culture and about what we believe as well.

On June 10, 4 college students from Singapore came to help us until July 15. They are staying with us at the Youth House, sleeping on the floor in 2 extra rooms. It is very crowded here (8 people sleeping here and many others visiting), but it is also fun. We have all been teaching English at 4 different schools. We teach about 1.5 - 3 hours a day, 4 day/week at schools. We teach a little of everything, from english, games, american/singapore culture, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Teaching english at schools has many purposes:
1. we get to know many students, some of whom will regularly come to the Youth House for many different events where we get to share the gospel and share our lives with them.
2. We can share the gospel with them at school, giving them a clearer idea of why Jesus died for us and what that means and how Christianity is different from Buddhism.
3. Build relationships with schools/teachers. Because we have helped these schools, they are willing to help us organize events at their schools. They let us come on campus to meet students.

We have also had many activities at the Youth House. The house is always open for students to come and play games, use the computer, and play music. Thai students are very musically talented. It seems like 50% of the students can play guitar or keyboard. We also teach english at the house for 1 hr/day. We have had a few Bible Studies in I Peter on Thursday nights. We had two Open House days where we each shared something from our culture (Ashley was a country girl and taught a line dance, Jonathan sang a rap song and taught Hip-Hop culture/language).

It has been a good month at the Youth House. There are about 8 christian students who come here regularly (1-5 times/week) and 15 other non-christian students who come here often.
Off, Peung, and Tam (our fellow staff at the Youth House) have gotten many opportunities to disciple the Christian students and to share the gospel with students. There are some students who are very interested in learning more.

From June 23-29 we went to the yearly OMF Conference. The conference is for all the OMF missionaries in Thailand to come together, connect with each other and learn what everyone else is doing in Thailand. There were about 150 missionaries and 67 kids. We went to look after the teenage kids of the missionaries. Johnny McClean led us both as we spent 2 days preparing Bible Studies, games, and activities for the kids. Then we had Thursday - Sunday to hang out with them. We had a Bible study and craft activity for 3 hours each morning, played sports for 1.5 hours each afternoon, and then we had another Bible Study time at night. It was a good time for us to get to talk in English and share with these kids. Sometimes their knowledge of the Bible was better than ours, but we still found that we had valuable life lessons to share with them. They seemed to enjoy their time and we did too. Except that we were exhausted.

Be sure to keep us in your prayers and check out our pictures as well. God Bless You.