Wow!  The year is already flying by!  Can you believe it is February already?

First, we want to thank all our friends and family so much for the encouragement while Grace and I were sick with Dengue Fever back in December.  While it was not the way we planned to experience our first Christmas in Thailand, we none the less felt the presence of the Lord and were ministered to by Him through the prayers of the saints.  We are excited to say that we are fully recovered and everyone is healthy here!

We kicked off January with all of us attending language school in the afternoons.  Paula and the kids spend the morning hours homeschooling, then we all head downtown to language school for class and back home in the early evening.  Paula and I have both had opportunities to share the Gospel with our teachers and other classmates as the discussion always comes up about why we are here.  We ask for prayer for these people and for further opportunities to build relationships and share our faith even more.

Another exciting bit of news from this week is that after almost 4 months of being here, I took the plunge and got my “baykhapkhii” or Thailand Driver’s License!  We have a Thai friend who owns a car and he is going to be traveling for the next several weeks and thought it would be good for me to have a license and learn to drive in Bangkok.  Getting the license was easy, but driving… that’s another thing!  I mean, I can drive a car, but the separate lanes thing is really just a suggestion here in Bangkok.  Then, there’s the thousands of scooters and motorbikes that travel between the cars, trucks and buses!  Well, our first excursion was successful and no damage was done, so we praise the Lord for that!  Our plan is to not own a vehicle (except the bicycle Paula got for Christmas) for our first term. Having to use public transportation facilitates more face-to-face interaction with Thais, but having a license and knowing how to drive here is a good idea in case of an emergency.

The last week of January we were in Chiang Mai for our annual conference with our mission board, United World Mission.  This was a great time where we gathered with other missionaries in our agency from all over Asia for worship, teaching, fellowship and rest.  We had great opportunities to talk with veteran missionary families and share feelings as early first term missionaries.  The conference also gave us a chance to catch up with a couple of families that we had been in training with in North Carolina.  Hank and Grace had a blast with the kids. Would love to show you pictures of us all there, but to protect ones in closed countries, no pictures of missionaries from our conference. However, we can show you other Thais we met in Chaing Mai and some of the elephants we met! We had a wonderful time.

So, that’s the latest with us.  Things are going well, we are learning more each day and we feel truly blessed to be here in the service of King Jesus.  Thank you all for your prayers and a special “thank you” for those who have given and continue to give faithfully and sacrificially to partner with us in the work God is doing in the kingdom of Thailand.

Here are some prayer requests:

-we ask for a special anointing of the Holy Spirit to learn the Thai language to more genuinely relate to the Thai people and share the Truth of God’s love with them.

-we ask for Divine appointments and for God to soften the hearts of our neighbors, our land lords, our teachers and some of our classmates who have shared an interest what we are doing here.

-we ask for continued prayer for our family as we are moving into the stages of transition when families typically struggle with culture shock as the early months of the move are behind us and the permanence of things settles in.

-we ask for continued financial provision as we have had a supporter drop because of financial issues.

-and, we ask for prayer for our team in the areas of team communication, unity and fruitful partnerships with Thai Christian leaders who share our vision for life-on-life discipleship to train, develop and equip believers to grow the church and transform their society.

Much love from Bangkok,

Bobby