Thai ’09 Journal 2

It was a good trip over: Portland to San Francisco; 11 hours from SF to Japan, and 6 hours from Japan to Bangkok – Actually 24 hours from I left Portland till I arrived and cleared Customs in Thailand at nearly midnight on Thursday! But I got about 6 hours of sleep on the flights. Howard Vandermark and his lovely Thai, petite wife were there to meet me, and host me overnight at their Bangkok home. After breakfast at a lovely little café that had free wireless, I spent some time at Howard’s coffee shop (called “white man sells coffee”) and then caught the flight to Chiang Mai. I’m staying with David and Annabelle Bell and their lovely daughter, Raene. He is the Administrator at Chiang Mai Adventist Academy, and they are wonderful hosts.

Within hours of arriving I spoke for the evening Vespers Service. Spoke on the man who was resurrected when his body touched the bones of Elisha! For church I used the parable of the Good Samaritan as jumping off point of a focus on the unexpected and loving the undeserving – yes, Jesus was the Good Samaritan!

It was good to see our sponsoree, Supaporn, and Lorraine’s, Komchan. They are doing well. When we came here in 2005, a number of the team members adopted some students to sponsor through school. My wife and I are delighted with the young lady who we are sponsoring. I had the privilege of baptizing her in 2005. She along with her brother joined us for lunch today. I also had a surprise at lunch: Annabelle made me a birthday cake (with 22 candles, and surrounded with mangoes)! We had a wonderful time, with non-Adventist visiting guests from California, and former WWC students, Rick and Judy Hernandez, who are spending the year here as missionaries. Rick is supervising the construction of Jesus for Asia TV studio (on the property of another Asian ministry outreach – EOP).

David Bell has done an awesome job of developing the campus. Since we were here for the Mission Trip in 2005, they have completed the Elementary School dorm, the Admin and High School buildings, including an extension last year; and they just did an extension to the girl’s dormitory. All the walk-ways are paved. There is no more muddy way to even the Bell’s home. We spent time talking about what another Mission Trip by a WWU team would look like. They are still talking about the very, very successful continuing education workshop led by Mark Haynal. They would love our School of Education and Psychology to again lead out in a similar endeavor. They are very interested in having our students conduct an English Camp similar to what we are doing in Muak Lek. So I’ll be talking with Dr. Melgosa regarding such a project, possibly for next year.

To see photos of my time here: http://www.wallawalla.edu/campus-life/spiritual-life/gallery/thailand_2009

Here is my Thai cell phone # 011-66-878063034