Think about this for a sec

fun in the sun

 Greetings one and all!

Olympics are here and in full swing. And let me tell you they are a big deal here in Asia. People love watching them even if their country isn't directly involved in the specific sport. We were sitting in a mall yesterday waiting for our bus ride to Chiang Mai and there was an Olympic "football" match between Brazil and Cameroon live on the big screen. There were quite a few Thais sitting around watching it with a goodly amount of interest. Didn't know Cameroon even had enough people for a soccer team. Its been really special to watch the American swimming phenom Michael Phelps knock down world record after world record, while attaining his record eight gold medals. Some people are saying that he may just be the greatest Olympic athlete of all time. Its been fun watching the games from this side of the world and watching the Thais react in their own way. Unfortunately Thailand has only one medal so far, and that was in women's weight lifting. She totally blew the doors off the old record though. 24-year-old small mountain village girl named, Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon. Yeah not sure what her nick name is, but pretty sure she has to have one. J I love the Olympics. It makes for a really easy conversation starter over here, when people find out that your American.

Anyway our semester break is upon us here. Its actually half gone already. But I think that's a good thing. We are prepping for 23 students in a week, as compared to 9 from last semester. It will be a good change (for the most part) though, its exciting to see the interest in making the big jump to come over here. I was so blessed by this last semester personally. The student body was amazing. They were the most fun, and yet deep group of young people. They were so patient with me as their ministry trip guy. And they showed a team spirit that cannot be taught or just explained. Praise the Lord for each one of them. I love them all. They'll always be special in my mind.

This is one of our last mornings when we all went out to breakfast. (not a normal occurance) 

Last Tuesday was the Queen’s birthday, which is also Mothers day here in Thailand. So we decided to get a bunch of flowers and give them to Amphon (Pastor Kiats wife) who is our cook….we call her Mother Amphon…I forget how to say it in Thai at the moment. This is the girls (ok, just Becky) arraigning the flowers into a bouquet.

And Tyler and yours truly trying to look interested...

 Vientiane, Laos

Tyler, Orlondo, and I just got back this morning on the overnight bus from Udon Thani, which is about a 12 hours ride from Chiang Mai. Our final destination for the weekend was actually across the border, into the Laos capital city of Vientiane.

Udon Thani is just across the border on the Thai side. We wanted to go to a new place…cheaply. And going to Vientiane fit the docket. It was well worth it, too! We got to climb to the top of a 200ft. Chinese-funded monument commemorating the political connections between the China and Laos. We got to have lunch with a GTO M couple based there, who we're going to be sending two teams this fall. And we even got into throwing around a few sandbags, because the city was in the middle of building an emergency dike to keep out the rising Mekong river waters. There has been an over abundance of rainfall in southern China and they (China) had tried to slow down the flow by using their massive damming system. But the rain kept coming and they were eventually forced to let a few dams wide open to relieve the system. And being that Vientiane is down the river from all this, it meant a very rapid rising of the river through the city. So that's what the dike was all about. This is a pic of the sandbagging process...a tab primative, but alot got done in a short time.

Well I am very happy to say that I will be returning home for about a week in September for Nate and Sarah's wedding. I know…it's only been like five months, but I am really bummed to be missing the best time of year in Minnesota….fall. So glad I can get in on a little of it. God just made some places weather to be better then others at certain times of the year….and right now, Minnesota is got to be one of the good ones. (grass is always greener on the other side, Ben)

Don't stop praying for IGo. Right now brothers Raymond and Val are in Bhutan at a conference teaching church leaders. Dru and Lisl Lattin arrived here last week to begin their work with Pastor Kiats church in discipleship. So remember them as well as they continue to settle into their new home here.

Greetings and salutations from Koolpunt Ville 5!
 
Off and away…that is what the students are up to right now. Five to Siem Reap, Cambodia and four to Kunming, China. Yesterday I got three emails from Cambodia and one from China. Sounds like both teams made it to their first destinations nicely and are "digging in" already. Our Cambodia team is privileged to help out at an orphanage, and China is involved in prayer walking and some photography for M's use. Its going to be fun to hear their stories when they get back in week or so.
 
The weather here is great right now. I'm guessing its somewhere around 82-83F and the humidity is fairly low. The rainfall has dipped significantly in the last few weeks. We usually will get a few showers, and the occasional short downpour…but no sustained rain for days on end, unlike earlier this year. This year has been great as far as pleasant temps, but we're told that this is a complete opposite of last summer. Witnesses from last year (although they can't seem to agree among themselves) claim that there was really no rain to speak off until almost the end of July. And if there is no rain, the temp will not even think of coming down. So thank you Lord for cool weather!
 
Can't believe that our last term of first semester is almost upon us. Time has really flown, in some regards. In others it seems like I've been here a long time. I guess when you're in a new place for awhile, you sort of tune out the old way of life and focus on present life. That makes it seem longer then it actually is.
 
This weekend was extremely busy, which is not usually the norm here. Our Saturdays and Sundays are usually pretty low key….but not this time around. It started out by Colliers inviting me to go along with them on Saturday morning to a restaurant that served a very mean American breakfast. It was amazing…real bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, fresh squeezed juice, awesome fried potatoes, and toast! Wowsers, that was some good eatin'. After breakfast, us three guys (Josh, Eric and myself) took of for GTO in an attempt to borrow their hammer drill for an ongoing project at the school. Theirs was broken, so we went over and found one at the English Center where Kris and Katrina do a lot of their work. Then came the fun stuff.
 
We had been seeing this "Chiang Mai Honda Racing Fest" advertised all over town, but nobody (that could speak English) seemed to know much about it. Anyway we decided that we would just drive around and see if we could scare it up. It ended up being held on about five miles from the school here. It's a racing circuit that has six separate rounds at different locations around Thailand, and the teams are awarded points much like the NASCAR point system back in the States. Anyway, the Chiang Mai races were round 2. They all race Hondas…Civics, Accords, and Jazz. And they don't race on a normal designated raceway. Here in town they transformed a huge flower garden with lots of twisty roads into their track. It made the races into road course race with a few straight a ways. It took about a minute and a half to do a lap.

This dude is going around "the corner" where they had to slow way down. It was like more then a 90 degree corner and they were squealing all four the whole time. If they were really hauling and did the corner right, the passengers side (thai style) rear tire would always be an inch or two off the ground.
 
Only in Thailand can you stand five feet away from a car that is sliding around a 90 degree corner at 50 mph. They had a temporary concrete barrier, but I don't know if it would have held the car back. We always sat right at the 90 degree corner, thinking that if someone was going to mess up and slid into the wall that this was the place it was going to happen. No such luck. There were some close calls but no one ever totally lost control when we were there. Eeww…aren't we sick? There were two cars that were more or less totaled during the weekend though…we didn't get to see it happen. L
 
Oh yeah and here is another funny thing. The Thai people for the most part are very afraid of getting direct sunlight on their skin. (and in all honesty, I'm sure they are a lot smarter then we are in regards to UV protection) Well when we were sitting down next to the track there were like hundreds of people couped up underneath any little tree within miles, to get out of the sun. If someone couldn't get under a tree, they would use their cute little umbrellas to shade themselves. Anyway here we were sitting out in the sun, right next to the track and no Thai people would get that close because there were no trees. To make a long story short, we were the main source of amusement when there was a lapse in the races. We even had the TV cameras on us and the guys running them laughing. Finally one tough Thai dude came down and joined us with his girlfriend. (she had an umbrella)
 
Yesterday we had our first "English Activities Day" here at the school. It's put on by our TESOL group and is designed to get to know the community here while making them comfortable with IGo. In the future they would like to start English classes, so the EAD is a way of starting relationships in the area. I think there were somewhere around forty people who showed up. A lot were kids and younger people, so that's cool. The TESOL group had some English language games and snacks for people. Then Val and Pastor Kiat gave a little speech welcoming people and explaining IGo a little. I think they were fairly pleased with the results. They hope to have this thing at least once a month.
 
This last month has been a weird one for me. I feel like I'm learning so much about who God really is, but I have such a hard time actually seeing His hand in my life. My head is so full of stuff that is so good, and yet I struggle to live from it. It hasn't been all bad. Kinda a long story. But each one of the faculty here have been so open and honest when I come to them with questions…thank God for each of them! Each one has something different to offer, some different area of strengths, each one their own insight into life's questions.

Hope this finds you all doing well! Cheerio!

(some of this is old news, I wrote it a week ago and never got around to actually posting it)

Diseased People