FINAL WEEK

FINAL WEEK
One of Gary’s readers, Chu, and her husband took the four of us to the original capitol of Thailand. She wanted us to see it and also the temples where the Buddha are housed. Chu read for 25 hours! Chu asked for and was given a Thai Bible so she could read for herself.


We had our FAREWELL PARTY Friday evening. Several of our readers were there. There were about 80 there. We started with a devotional, ate together, saw pictures of our project, handed out certificates to our readers and then visited with those present.

SUNDAY- Today was the last time we will meet with the Church in Bangkok. It was a sad time as we said our final "Good By's". We have seen many of the members here everyday for the last six weeks. We have made a lot of good friends and hope to keep in touch with e-mails. Pern continues to attend every Sunday for worship. Pern wrote Tom and Helen a card thanking us for the "Friend you have given me, The most valued of my life. " We met with the "Follow Up" team and gave them our reader reports. We know that they will do a good job following up on the work we started. Continue to pray for our readers and the team as they reach out to them.

Our assignment is over in Bangkok. Our team will fly to Phuket tomorrow and go to Krabi for a few days of relaxing on the beach. We heard it was 16 below and snow in Minnesota. We are not ready for that! Thursday we will go to Phuket and stay until Sunday afternoon. The Church in Phuket is meeting together and having a dinner for us. It will be good to see the Christians we met when we were there two years ago. Monday we will fly home.

We feel good about our project. It was a very good experience. A big "ThankYou" to our supporters. We shared the "Good News" with 67 readers.

God Bless- Gary, Joanne, Tom, and Helen

WEEK FIVE

This has been a busy week. We continue to have good reading sessions with our students. Some have dropped out; some have just started. This really makes the parable of the sower real. Many are asking good questions about the Bible, Jesus and His teachings. Pern continues to meet with the Christians here.

Tuesday we had a Valentine party. Gary and Joanne gave some advice on how to remain married for 50 years. Eveyone enjoyed making valentines and eating those little candy hearts with English words on them. We brought those with us.

We were invited to go with Patynia and other Christians to Chiang Mai for the weekend. We flew up Friday morning and came back Sunday evening. Chiang Mai is in the Mountains. Thai's are proud of their mountains. They are very beautiful. The tallest is about 3,000 ft! It was a little cooler there. We met with the Christians for worship. There were 54 present. They fixed dinner for us. We ate pork on a stick (one of our favorites), chitlins, lots of veggies and rice. Desert was chunks of cooked pumpkin and sticky rice.

We are starting our last week in Bangkok. Our readers want to spend time with us, members here want to spend time with us, and we need to catch up on some final reports and plan our Farwell party. We are staying busy!

SPECIAL SUNDAY

Sunday was a special day. Sunday morning attendance was 152. One of Tom's readers, Pern, was there for the second time. It was announced that there was going to be a baptism Sunday afternoon at 3 PM. Pern and her mother came back for the baptismal ceremony. Pern says she is Buddhist, but she is starting to ask questions about becoming a Christian. Pray for Pern. Sunday evening there were many visitors from other congregations in Bangkok. Afterward we had a Thai dinner. There was lots of rice, noodles, with toppings of chicken, pork, and many different kinds of veggies. Desert consisted of all kinds of fresh fruit.

We always enjoy hearing from a friends back home. Thank you for your prayers.

NOT ALL WORK.......

LST workers do take time to experience their new culture and to visit with readers and their new friends. Tom and Helen and Gary and Joanne spent a day touring the Grand Palace and the Buddha Temple Area in Bangkok. What an experience. We have never seen such magnificient gold clad buildings and statuary. This area has been set up to demonstrate the buddhist temples that were always next to the King's palace. The king of Thailand does not live in this palace anymore, but it is used for celebrations. (If you look close, you can see the soldier on guard on the right hand side of this picture. We saw the emerald Buddha and the huge gold reclining Buddha. We were saddened as we watched people bowing down to the idols and dropping money in the many pots that were around the Buddha as 'acts of merit'.

Gab and Guggig, Thai Christians here, went with us. Gab told us about the Thai massage school in the Temple area and said that they were the best in Thailand. So, Helen had a 45 minute foot massage. After the pain was over, the massage was great. They used sticks to poke the pressure points and rubbed special lotions on the feet and lower legs. Helen is ready for another one. The rest of the team decided that they were not ready yet.

Free days are also used to do laundry and shopping for food and party supplies. We invited all of our readers to a party every Friday evening. The first party was a 'Balloon Party'. We made balloon sculptures and played several games with balloons. We are reminded of "Thai Time" when it comes to parties. The parties are supposed to begin at 6:00 PM. When we are invited to be a guest at 6:00, we arrive at 6:00. In Thailand, that means 6:30 or later. For the second party, which was a Birthday Party, we planned for that eventuality and things went better. We had a bubble blowing contest, a 'Birth of Jesus' Wordfind, a Bean Bag Toss game, and paper airplane folding and flying contest. We all had a good time. We also taught the Thais the new Birthday Song. They all sing the same traditional "Happy Birthday" that everyone in America sings. The February birthday people, including Tom and Tuli, were first in line for the brownie birthday cake and cookies. We concluded the evening with devotional songs, a scripture and prayer.

Monday and Tuesday are our 'free days'. We are planning to go to the Floating Market about 2 hours from here on Tuesday. That will be interesting. We understand that there will be many vendors in wooden canoe type boats that are quite insistent that they have wares that we need. We will see.

Our team is still adjusting to the fact that almost everything is open air here. We eat everyday in open air cafes. Yesterday a woman was sitting at one of the tables eating with a dog in her lap. Unique for us! The marketplace is open air. Almost every shop just opens up the whole front of their store with large steel doors to open for business. The church building is also open air. It is a large unusual building that is built on pillars above a pond of water. We are enjoying the location so much. We get a nice breeze which is very welcome on the hot days. Homes are not fully enclosed. They have large glass doors that are open much of the time, with no screens. They keep saying that the mosquites are terrible, but we have not experienced that too bad yet. The ones we have seen are very wimpy, compared to Minnesota Mosquitoes anyway. We are told that during the rainy season, which starts within the next few weeks, that they will be worse. That is after we leave. It is very dry now. No rain since we arrived, but things are still green.

We are all still encouraged by our readers. One of Tom's readers came to worship with us this morning. That was exciting. Others have shown much interest in the story of Jesus. We all have some that don't seem to show up when they are supposed to, but the others more than make up for that. Today we also read with some of the students at the Bible College that meets at the same location as the church here. They want to improve their English skills. That was fun. We are using our usual Luke workbooks.

We continue to keep you all in our prayers and covet yours as we continue our work here.

Love you all, Gary and Joanne, Tom and Helen

A TYPICAL DAY

Tom and Helen and Gary and Joanne are busy at work in Bangkok now. We have enough readers to keep us very busy and are also doing what we can to help and encourage the Christians in the Watcharapon Church of Christ. Tom is teaching a Sunday morning class for the adults and Helen and Joanne are getting ready to share some ideas about teaching children's Bible Classes. Gary has been asked to teach a Wednesday class. We enjoy the Christians here and they have made us feel so welcome and loved.

A typical day?? Well it begins with a COLD shower. There is only one knob in the shower stall for a reason. The water comes directly out of the ground and is very 'invigorating'. We keep thinking that we will get used to it, but that has not happened yet. But, we are clean and we so enjoy the modern facilities and the very nice home that we are staying in.

After dressing, the four of us gather in the dining room for breakfast together. (Joanne is the official cook.) Joanne heats water and we have instant oatmeal, yogurt, raisins, juice, coffee and usually fruit of some kind. The oranges and bananas are especially good here. After breakfast we get together in our room for a morning devotion to begin our day. We also plan our day and share experiences from the previous day. It is interesting to share the questions and comments from our readers. One of Gary's readers asked, "Why did Mary and Joseph have to go to the stable to stay when they were in their home town. Where were their relatives?" That took some thought. Thai people are used to sharing their homes and people sleep wherever they can, but in the house. Another wanted to know if Mary was still a virgin after she got pregnant.

After brushing our teeth and trying to remember not to drink the tap water, we walk about one half mile to the church building to begin our reading sessions at about 10:00 AM. Each of us has at least 15 readers that come several times each week so we are busy. There are still people on the waiting list to read with us. At noon we all try to save a free hour to have lunch together. There are several sidewalk cafes within walking distance. We can get a Thai meal for about $1.25. That includes rice (or noodles), vegetables, a small protion of meat, and a coke. Sometimes we even splurge and get dessert which might be banana soup or ice cream. The meals have been quite tasty. We do try to avoid the hot spicy peppers which can actually burn the mouth.

Then it is back to our readers. The vast majority of our readers are professional people over the age of 30. They are very bright and ask very good questions. Some of the readers cannot understand why there are English words that are spelled differently but sound alike. How do you explain that one? They ask, "How do you know which meaning it is?" They want to learn English so that they can improve their jobs. We have enjoyed getting to know them.

At 9:00 PM we say good-bye to our last readers and Tuly (our host) picks us up in his car to give us a ride home. He says that he does not want us to walk that late at night as we go past some temporary workers' shacks. This is an area where there is a lot of new construction going on. It feels good to get home to our air conditioned rooms and rest. Before going to bed however, we must have our evening snack since we have had only fruit and granola bars since lunch. Our 'comfort food' continues to be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before bed. Tuly thinks that we are pretty silly, I think. Tuly's wife works for a catering company and sometimes brings home some pretty good treats that they share with us. Last evening she brought some petite cakes and stewed chicken tarts. They were VERY good.

It does not take us long to get to bed after our evening snack as we are usually pretty tired. It is a good feeling, however.

We are relieved that jet lag has finally subsided and we can actually sleep until at least 6:30 AM now and we are ready to go to bed at night.

Today is Sunday and we were blessed to attend worship with the Thai Christians here. It is such a blessing to us to have an interpreter for the lessons through headphones. We also have English hymnals and can sing with the Thais. It is amazing how many of the same songs that we sing with the same melodies.

Monday and Tuesday are our 'free' days. We plan to visit the Royal Palace and a special temple in Bangkok. This will also provide time for us to do our laundry and grocery shopping and shopping for the parties that we hold for our readers on Fridays.

Once again, thank you to all of you who are keeping us in your prayers and for the support that you have given in so many ways. We feel blessed.

Tom and Helen, Gary and Joanne

BANGKOK WORK HAS BEGUN

Tom and Helen and Gary and Joanne Nading have arrived in Bangkok, Thailand. We arrived in the middle of the night on Wednesday, January 18. The LST Welcome sign was a very comforting sight for us after 33 hours since leaving Lisa and Kelsey's home in Dallas, Texas. Thai people welcome special visitors with beautiful wrist bracelet flowers and we were so honored. It was good to get to our place to stay. We are staying in the home of one of the leaders of the congregation here, Toolee and Nui Prawit. It is a beautiful home and each couple has our own bedroom. We are quite comfortable.

On Thursday we held an information meeting at which we signed up about 14 readers apiece. There are so many here who are eager to practice their English. We held reading sessions all day on Friday and Saturday. We begin reading at 10:00 AM and read until 9:00 PM. On Friday all four of us had difficulty remaining upright our last hour of reading as our bodies were telling us that we should be asleep. It was better on Saturday. This will soon pass, I hope. I know that we will reamin busy while we are here as there are people on a waiting list to read with us. They are very open to learning about the book of Luke and we have also enjoyed learning things about the Thai culture and people.

Today is Sunday and we attended worship services with the Thai Christians. Their building is very beautiful, open to the outside. They sing most of the same songs that we sing at home and we were provided with song books and numbers so that we could join in the song service, we in English, they in Thai. We were also very pleased that we were provided with earphones and an interpreter for their Sunday morning lesson. This congregation is prepared to minister to both Thai and English speaking people.

We had lunch today with the AIM students from Sunset School in the US. They are working at the Christian Student Center at Ramkhankaen University about an hour from here. They have been in Thailand for about 8 months and it was interesting to hear their discussion of their work and time in Thailand.

We have been eating rice and stir fry at most of our meals. We have to be careful when ordering or we will get the spicy, very hot peppers that the Thai people enjoy. Other than the hot peppers, we really enjoy Thai food. In the evenings we have come back to the house and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as we have been too tired to cook and that seems to be our 'comfort food' at this point. We have found several very nice small sidewalk cafe's near our work place where we can buy food very cheaply. We will not have a problem staying within our budget for food, I think. Gary has also found a place for his Diet Coke! soo...we are doing fine.

We will try to keep you updated as we continue our time in Thailand.

Miss you all, Tom and Helen Norris and Gary and Joanne Nading.

Project Schedule

Tom and Helen request your prayers as we begin packing and getting ready for our LST Project in Bangkok, Thailand. Following is a schedule for January through March travel plans.

• January 5 - Leave Kansas for Oklahoma City
• January 6 - Fly to Nashville, TN to attend an American Farm Bureau annual Meeting.
• January 11 - return to Oklahoma. Will stay with Karguths.
• January 13-15 - Participate in Let's Start Talking Intensive Training weekend with other volunteers in Oklahoma City.
• January 17 - Fly out of Dallas, Texas for Bangkok, Thailand.
• January 19-February 28 - Work with readers in our project.
• March 1-5 - Travel in Thailand. We want to visit our readers from 2 years ago and the Christians in Phuket, Thailand.
• March 6 - Fly out of Bangkok, Thailand to Dallas, Texas.
• March 7 - End meeting with Let's Start Talking.
• We plan to visit our children in Texas and Oklahoma on our way home from Dallas.

We are told that we will have internet access during our project and would enjoy hearing from our friends while we are away from home. We will try to keep you all posted on our activities during the next few months.

Love you, Tom and Helen Norris