Happy New Year

For new year's eve, we all went to Mae Ping Nat. Park, to Kao Waterfall and swam. It was fun. I found some bouldering over the water. It was good. It's been 4 months since we have climbed.

On the way there I listened to at song be Mute Math, called You Are Mine. Here are the lyrics.

Everyone has their obsession

Consuming thoughts, Consuming time

They hold high their prized possessions

It defines the meaning of their life

You are Mine, You are Mine, You are Mine, All Mine

There are objects of affection

That can mesmerize the soul

there is always one addiction

that can never be controlled.

You are Mine, You are Mine, You are Mine, All Mine

God created us in His image. Today he was telling me, "I created you, and I am

Obessed with you, you are my prized possession, You consume my thoughts, You are mine, All mine

In addition to that, I was seeing that this is the truth, But satan is busy trying to make us his, by trapping us in sin, addicting us to things of this world that lead to death. He dangles cheap candy in front of us, trying to get us to follow him in to the pit of destruction. But, the truth is, I am His.

This is a beautiful thought to me. God, looking at me, saying, singing, screaming, "You are mine. Everyone has an obsession, you are my obsession. I made this whole world for you."

So, as I swam under a beautiful waterfall and bouldered on a rock over crystal clear water, I head God saying, "I made this for you to enjoy. All this, is for you. There is no limit to what I would do for you. I am so glad you can enjoy my creation the way I want you to.

You are mine. You are mine. You are mine. All Mine."

It was a beautiful picture. Surreal. 12 of us piled into the bed of a truck and drove 60kms through beautiful countryside, and I just sat amazed at God's love for me.

He loves each of us that much.

Happy New 2008.

Li Outreach first 2 weeks

We've been here 2 weeks now. We're staying at the church in Li. We have 3 rooms and 2 bathrooms to split between the 10 of us. Luckily, me and Ashley get our own room. We've spent a lot of time teaching english at 2 schools. It's fun hanging out with kids. Some are very nice.
We had a big CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION at the church. We invited everyone we met to come. About 250 people showed up and ate food, sang songs, and then watched us do a few dramas, dances, and share what God has done in our lives. It was interesting.
We also got to lead the church service this week. The church has about 25 adults and 40 kids (many from an orphanage the pastor runs). Jonathan, Edna, and Jiew taught the adults. Instead of preaching, we asked the members to share their testimony. Surprisingly, people did. It was the first time the pastor had heard their testimonies. It was good to see that even though they don't have much knowledge or background of the Bible, God has still been working in their lives and answering prayers and showing himself to them.
Ashley, Megan, Amima, and Nu taught the youth (10-16 year olds). There was almost 30 of em, and it was hard to keep order. But some of them did want to be there and did listen as Ashley taught about God's Character.
Tim and Em taught the kids. It was a good experience for all of us. We think we will be leading church here for the next 5 weeks.

We've seen that the Christians here are committed, but they know very little. They are only taught on sunday and they don't meet together or talk with each other during the week. Some read teh Bible & pray, but they have trouble knowing how to do this. So, we have a great opportunity to help them grow in their faith and encourage them so that they can themselves reach out to the community.

We also went to a big Buddhist temple. It is weird to drive through a poor village to get to a huge beautiful temple. This place had many different buildings with statues, idols, incense, and monks everywhere. They painted many walls to tell different stories of the buddhist beliefs. They even preserved & displayed the body of a respected monk. To me, it reminds me of Acts 17, when Paul was in Athens. Read it & you'll know how I feel.

We're still in thailand

The last 2 weeks have been pretty typical. We talked about relationships for 1 week. Last week we talked a little about Worldview. We’ve also spent a lot of time getting ready to go on “outreach”. We’ve learned a few new dramas and dances to use as entertainment and tool to share the gospel.
Last Saturday, Jonathan went to Chiang Mai and ate Mexican food with a couple guys. It was good, even though the meal was 10 times as expensive as the typical Thai meal. He had a burrito, plate of nachos, and a lot of salsa. It was a little reminder of home. Meanwhile Ashley went to Kwan’s Lisu village, Chiang Dao. We were able to attend their church service and to share a scripture. Since the village had just celebrated Harvest, we read James 1:17-18 that confirms everything that is good and perfect comes to us from God, who created the heavens and earth. In His goodness He chose to make us His children and choice possession. Ashley played with the local kids at an abandoned school while Kwan and her sister sewed Kwan’s outfit for our dances.

Lamphun Outreach
The school divided up into 3 groups for the final outreach trip. 1 group is going to Phetchabun, 1 to a village in the Chiang Rai province, and our group is going to Lamphun province, just south of Chiang Mai. We will spend most of time in or near the town of Li.
There is a pastor in Li that we are going to help. He says that in that area, there are 5 villages that have churches that were built by a Korean missionary. One of these churches has only 2 families, one has no Christians. So, we are going to go to these villages for the next 7 weeks and try to encourage the Christians in any way we can. I think we will actually be sleeping in the church in Li for most of the time.

We leave this Saturday, December 15 and will come back on February 2. We’ll get one day off per week to get on the internet or make a few phone calls.

More about China

I thought we should describe a little more about what China is like, since we Americans have trouble understanding a Communist country. China is big, and where we were was southern China, so it may be different in different places, but this is how it was where we were.
For the most part, China looked like any other country we’ve been to. The people seem friendly, the transportation systems work well, and the buildings seem to be in good condition. We didn’t see any areas of terrible poverty. We didn’t ever feel threatened by crazy looking locals. It was a nice place to visit (except the public restrooms). But, as we talked to people we realized that it is a little different than most countries.

Religious Freedom: The people are free to believe whatever they want, but not free to worship however they want. It is okay to be a Christian in China. Chinese Bibles are sold at many bookstores. It is okay to have one, but not okay to give out. There are even Christian churches occasionally. But, the pastors of the churches are controlled by the government. They are only allowed to preach on certain subjects, and Christians are not allowed to worship God publicly or talk to their friends about God. Christians are only allowed to meet in these churches on Sundays. Most of these churches do not grow and have become religious ceremonies.
Because of this, many Christians have begun to meet in home churches even though it is illegal to gather without the government’s permission. If the police find a group of Christians meeting in a home, they can arrest the leaders of the meeting. It is okay to tell someone what you believe if they ask you, but it is not okay to “preach” or “witness” to people. Missionaries and missionary organizations are also not allowed in China. Therefore, missionaries either study in school, teach in school, or start businesses. This gives them a reason to be in the country so they can get a visa. We met several businessmen in China who have been there for a long time and enjoy the work they do.
We also met a few Chinese believers who are involved in home church. They had an amazing faith to meet with other Christians for fellowship with the possibility of getting arrested. The areas we were are not too closely watched by the government for illegal meetings, but people were still very guarded about talking about many things. There are stories of "spies" who try to find out where home churches meet and who the leaders are, so people are guarded about what they say. A week later, we still find ourselves looking around before we say anything about Jesus or prayer or church.
The other lack of freedoms we saw was that the Chinese are not allowed to travel as tourists alone. They must be part of a tour group to go outside the country for tourism. The Chinese are only allowed to have 1 child per family. If they have a 2nd, they must pay a big fine that only the rich can afford.

This week
This week was good. We talked about having a clean conscience, before God and man. Basically, it was about the importance of taking responsibility for your mistakes and sins.

Loi Kratthong
Today is the Loi Kratthong festival in Thailand. It is a Buddhist holiday where they send there hopes, dreams, and regrets to god by writing them down and attaching it to a mini hot air balloon. They also float prayers down the river in little floats they make. There will be some parades and also a lot of fireworks shot off. People everywhere are putting up decorations and preparing food for this holiday. I don't really know the origin of it, but we are in Chiang Mai today to see what happens.

We’re home from China!!!

We had a great time in China. We’re not supposed to name the places we went or people we met, so it will be a little hard to describe, but we’ll try. Also, we posted a few pictures on our picasa website.
The school split up into 2 groups. Our group of 16 people flew to southern China and then took a 12 hour night train and then a 4 hour bus ride to a beautiful city of 100,000 people surrounded by limestone karst towers. We stayed in a dirty motel on the outskirts of town. The city is small enough that you can walk all over the city, and that is what we did.
We spent 10 days in this city, which is made up of mostly Zhuang people. The Zhuang people are a minority group in China. Their language has many common words with the Thai language. We took 3 Zhuang language lessons for 2 hours each day so that we could communicate some with the people. This was a great tool to use to meet people. Jonathan practiced it everywhere he went.
#1 High School
We went to one of the high schools a few times. The students range from 16-19 years old and study from 7am-11:30am, 2pm-5:00, 6:30pm-9:30pm every day. It was not hard for us to make friends there. The kids were very excited to meet people from America or Thailand. Jonathan went straight to the basketball courts, which ended up being surrounded by hundreds of students watching. The kids are pretty good at basketball, but Jonathan didn’t have much trouble showing off. It was a fun way to experience the local culture. Ashley met a few girls who spoke good English and went on a tour of the campus. The campus is very much like a small college campus, with dorms, a lake, a mountain, and a temple. It is very nice. Ashley got to meet a few teachers as well.
TV Station Tower
We got up early one morning and hiked up a mountain with a TV Station on top. The path was 1000 concrete steps. The view from on top was beautiful. You could see mountains everywhere. It reminded us of walking up Mt. Sanitas in Boulder.
The Plaza
There are 2 plazas in the city that the people come to at night from 8-10 and dance and hang out. The big plaza will have around 500 people all doing the same dances. The dances are line dances, couples dances, freestyle dances, a little of everything. The small plaza was a little more quiet, and we went there a few times and practiced our zhuang language on the old men. Once they figured out we were speaking there language (as opposed to mandarin, Cantonese, or English) they would get so excited and crowd around each of us. Jonathan learned how to make his limited language turn into a 1 hr conversation. For example, “have you eaten yet? How much did it cost? Good food? What did you eat? I ate this. I ate there. It was this much. How old are you? How old is your dad? How many years did you live in Jingxi?” They enjoyed talking to foreigners and would laugh everytime we mispronounced something.
The Lingxiao family
One night while practicing the language, a lady came up and spoke English to Jonathan. It was so surprising. She then invited us to her hotel next door for coffee and tea. We ended up talking to her and her family until 11:30 that night. The hotel was very nice. Her family is Zhuang, and has lived in the area for a long time. Her dad is an explorer/adventurer. He discovered a big cave nearby and made it into a tourist attraction. He also discovered a 600 ft waterfall and canyon that is now a major tourist attraction in China. The family just started the hotel last month, but it looks like they have very good business principles. We had a very good time talking about our families, business, and cultures.
We went back the next night to invite them to dinner, but they invited us to their grandfather’s 97th birthday party. It was in a banquet room in the hotel. There was maybe 10 tables of 8 people with food everywhere and a big cake at the front of the room. The grandfather was too tired to come, but we had a good time anyway. The food was good. We quickly found out that they like to drink beer, and tried to force us to by raising their glasses in honor of something every minute. We sipped our glasses a few times, and then quickly found a bottle of orange juice to refill it with.
After the party we went downstairs and had more tea with the family. They sang a few traditional songs for us. We got to talk to her about her spiritual beliefs and share ours with her.
Overview
There were many other experiences as well. We walked through the families beautiful cave. As a group we visited a nearby village then broke into pairs and small groups. We were invited to an old man’s home who proceeded to cook us a gourmet meal. We saw lots of dogs being sold at the market alive and ready to eat. Ashley got to make a few dumplings. We ate lots of different foods (some good, some bad). Jonathan got a haircut and a shave for 75 cents. Most of our meals cost 75 cents or less. Jonathan was excited to hear Ashley say that something she wanted to buy for $1.50 was too expensive.
We also got to meet a group of Christian workers who just recently started reaching out to the people in this area. It was very neat to hear about their process of church planting, struggles and successes.
Overall, it was a great experience. There was not as much culture shock as we expected. The worst thing about China was the very dirty bathrooms with no doors and stalls that go up to your waist. Actually, China seemed very friendly to travelers. The food, the people, the scenery, and the spiritual needs of this unreached people made us hope we can come back.

We're going to China!!!

We added a few pictures to the picasa website. You should check them out: http://picasaweb.google.com/jowallac/YWAMDTS02
This week we learned about the true meaning of the Church. The speaker, David Frantz,
was really interesting. Many of the Thai students enjoyed hearing him as well, cause they have seen first hand that many missionaries have brought Christianity to them, and then quickly turned their focus to building a church similar to most traditional churches in America. And, the traditional church in America just doesn't quite fit here.
To build a church means to disciple believers, fellowship together, pray together, and share life together. As a group of believers shares with each other what God is doing in their lives and takes care of each other and discusses their beliefs, Their faith will grow. The focus is not on finding a pastor, or building, or meeting on sunday morning. The focus is on loving God and loving each other.
We feel like we've experienced this in America as well. The Sunday Church services have been good and encouraging, but we've both grown in our faith the most when we have had real relationships with other Christians and have been open with each other about what God is doing in our lives and what we're struggling with.

We leave for China on Nov. 1 and come back on the 15th I think. We won’t be able to use the internet while we’re there, so this will be the last you’ll see from us till we get back. Keep us in your prayers.

It’s so hard to describe what this school is like and what we are learning, but we’ll try to just give a general overview of what’s going on. First off, we found some pictures online of the students: http://www.ywamcmthai.org/idts/student.htm, and http://www.ywamcmthai.org/idts/2007pg_001.htm. We just bought a camera, so in the future we'll have more pictures, but for now, this will have to do. We’ve been taught lots of things, but that’s not the biggest part of the school. The biggest part (so far) is that it is a chance to see God work in your life and grow closer to Him. Everything is centered around that.

The teaching helps us focus on specific areas of our lives. Then, the Holy Spirit works in us individually. It may sound weird, but it really works. The Holy Spirit is given to every Christian, and he has been working in our hearts to help us forgive others who have hurt us, release bitterness, heal emotional wounds we have, show us sinful areas in our lives, and show us that God does love us more than we can imagine. It’s easy to say that God loves us a lot, but He has really been convincing each person here that He loves them and has good plans for their lives.

Last week, we learned about the Father Heart of God and how He cares for us like the perfect father would. This week we learned about Hearing God’s Voice and different types of ministries to the poor.

Kob
I think if we tell you about some of the people here it will give you a better picture of what we’re up to. So, I’ll tell you about Kob. Kob is 32 and from Chayaphum, which is in northeastern Thailand and is the poorest region of Thailand. His family is Christian. His parents have a rice farm. His older sister runs a Christian Orphanage. His older brother is a preacher. His younger sister Raem is staff at this DTS.
Kob speaks as much English as I speak Thai, so I don’t know much about him. He was an electrician before coming here. He made about $130/month. He has built a reputation here as the hardest worker and the class clown. He can fix everything, cook, clean, fish etc. Anytime we’re not sure of the best way to do something during our “worktime”, we ask Kob to do it first and then we copy him. He can make the whole class laugh by doing a dance or singing a song or making a comment.
God has been working in his life too. We’ve seen him cry out loudly as he realized he had held onto some bitterness towards his parents the last few years. Later, he told me “I feel very good, God released me from it”.

Ami
Ami is the leader of the school. She is Thai. When she was 4, she saw her dad kill her mom. She lived in complete poverty with her great grandparents until she was 10 because everyone else in the family thought she was a curse. At 10, because her great grandparents health declined she was put in a Christian orphanage in Chiang Mai. She went to college and studied tourism. Her first job after college was as a translator/tour guide for YWAM teams that came to Thailand. She then “scammed” her way into getting a visa to go to America and went to Colorado Springs for DTS. Since then, she has been through several other schools with YWAM. She has also forgiven her dad for what he did, and they’ve started to have a relationship again.
She has very good English with a Thai accent. She is constantly busy. She translates for all the lectures, leads our Bible Studies and Prayer Times, and leads all of the Staff meetings as well. She is amazing.
Her passion is for business in Thailand. As a business person, she can show God’s love to drivers, translators, tour guides, everyone she does business with. She can use profits to help support Thai ministries. She owns a tour company called Lighthouse Excursion. After this DTS is over, she plans to start a Mountain Bike Tour company and maybe a Coffee Shop. The Mountain Bike Tour company would be focused on Christian bike riders, who she would lead on multi day trips to visit remote villages. At these villages they would help encourage ongoing Christian work. It sounds cool, and she has the ability to make it happen. We might get to help her get started. Yesterday, there was supposed to be a meeting in Australia to discuss whether to donate money for her to start a coffee shop.

Visiting Kwan’s Village
Last weekend, Kwan took a group of us to her home village. As we approached she told us that it was the first time she had ever brought foreigners to her home. It is a Lisu village about 2 hours from here in the mountains near Chiang Dao. It is beautiful there. To celebrate Kwan’s visit and guests her family slaughtered a pig, cleaned it, sliced it open, and separated all the inner parts. They even took the bladder and turned it into a balloon for the kids to play with. While the food was being cooked, we went into their field and picked peanuts to bring back to YWAM. It’s hard to describe everything, but her family gave us the best they had and were really nice to us. We didn’t do much for them except sing a few songs, did a Thai dance and share a few Bible verses. However, this visit was very special for Kwan’s family because she was able to apologize for some things she has done in the past and they forgave her. It was a great and healing time, we were privileged to get to see it.

Scientists speak another language

even though it sounds like english, it's not understood by us. This week the lecturer was a American scientist who spoke about creationism. It was interesting to see his perspective on a lot of things, but, I came away with the feeling that I am glad I am not a scientist and that I can kind of communicate with the majority of english speaking peoples.
We also were visited this week by 2 YWAM dancers from Bangkok, who taught us 3 dances that we will use during our outreach events to attract attention to ourselves. 2 are Thai dances, very graceful with lots of hand movements, and 1 is a hip hop dance. It made for a tough week. At 6:30am, we would dance for 30 mins. at 4:30, we would dance for 1.5 hrs. 2 nights we also danced from 7pm-9pm. I spent all my free time this week washing clothes and taking showers. But, it is kinda fun to know these dances (And I use the word "kinda fun" very liberally).
Last weekend we bought 2 bikes. A Gary Fisher and a Trek, each for $300. They're about the same price as in the US. Today, we rode them from the base here. We rode about 12km up a semi paved road through the mountains and countryside. It was beautiful. There were fields of rice, banana trees, some elephants, cliffs, creeks, fog, and a couple little villages with people who looked very different than us.
We found out that we will go to China on Nov. 4. We're excited to check it out.

DTS Week 3

We added some pictures to our picasa site.
This week a missionary from China was here speaking on the Fear of God. It was very challenging. Everyone here is a little worn out now from the intensity of the week, but we are also very excited at what God is doing in our lives. The fear of God is essentially 2 things: 1. to hate sin like God does and 2. to respect and recognize God as God in every area of our life.

The highlight of the week was when we all were asked to confess our sins to each other in our small groups, believing that confessing them to God in front of people would bring them into light and release us from any shame or guilt. It was a little scary, but it did have a very freeing feeling. It brought each small group closer together. It is a good feeling to know that you can share your darkest secrets with friends and that their opinion of you is not lessened. It was painful, but it allowed a healing and purifying process to take place that was very good. God was faithful to give each of us a renewed sense of forgiveness, and also worked in us to point out some different areas in our lives that we need Him to renew our minds.

We have finalized plans for going on our outreach trip to China now. We will fly to Kunming in southern China on Nov. 4-Nov.18. Then we will split into 2 groups. Some will stay in Kunming and some will go to a different city by bus. We’ll get more details this week.

We finished the smell less pig pen finally. It was hard to communicate with everyone when there was 7 different people in charge and everyone spoke a different language. But, it was fun to build anyway. The pig is named Tinkerbell, and right now it is small and strong. We built the wall of the pen about 2’ high at first, and the pig climbed out of there pretty easily. Today, after an engineering analysis of how many bamboo “dowels” to use, we built the wall 8” higher. We just need to get the pig fat so that he can’t jump any more.

Another highlight was watching the movie Mr. Bean in Thai. It seems that they dubbed the words over into thai, and then translated the thai back into English for the subtitles. The translated subtitles had so many mistakes. “Go he to popcorn ate”, was what it would say for He went to eat popcorn.

DTS, Week 2

The first week was a little long and intense, but now we are used to the schedule and the people and are enjoying it here. This week, a Hmong pastor from Northern Thailand spoke all week about Salvation. It was very good. He has a phenomenal memory. He had no notes and often nearly quoted chapters of the Bible, showing us how many things in the Old Testament point toward Jesus coming as Savior, and how Jesus life, death, and resurection fulfilled all the requirements for our sins to be forgiven and to be seen as holy and blameless before God. All this, to anyone who believes in Him and follows His teaching. He was very interesting because of his humility, humor, and his stories of christian friends in SE Asia and how they have responded to the persecution they have faced.
Also, a missionary couple from the Burma border visited us. They led Bible study and also taught us how to build a smellless pig pen. Jonathan, Kob, and a few other guys work hard about 2 hours per day, digging a 6'x6' x 33" deep pit, filling it with rice husk, salt, and a mixture designed to eat bacteria, building a 2' high block wall, and building a little roof to cover it all. It is actually fun. We should finish by wednesday. The goal is to breed pigs, either to sell (about $20/baby pig), or to grow to eat.
Kob
Kob is jonathan's new friend. He speaks about as much english as we speak thai, so they spend a lot of time pointing at things and repeating the name of it in both languages. It is working well, they are both learning how to communicate and learning each others language. Kob is a hard working man, who amazes everyone with how he can fix things and build things. Kob even took Jonathan hunting, for ciccadas (big grasshopper looking things). At night, they crawl out of there hole and make a loud noise, so we walked around with a flashlight and a hoe and crushed there hole before they could jump back in it. then we'd catch the bug with our hands and put it in a coke can. Kob fried them up later, and we ate them as a snack today. They kinda taste like chicken, seriously. I'm excited to go catch more.
Waterfall
Today, they loaded us all into a sawngthaew (a big truck with seats in the back) and took us to a waterfall. It was cool. It was a creek that runs down the steep hillside, depositing this white mineral that turns in to rock. The rock was very grippy, so you could run up teh waterfall and not be afraid of falling. From top to bottom, it was maybe 300 vertical feet. It was fun. We should be able to steal some pictures from our friends and post them next weekend.
Running
The weather has cooled off lately, and we've gone for several runs. It is pretty out here. This morning we ran up a long hill to a temple, and had a good view of the countryside and the surrounding mountains. Ashley's actually convinced a group of girls to go running tomorrow.
Ping Pong
We have a ping pong table, and we've been having a great time playing each other on it.