English as a Second Language

We met again on Sunday, August 28th and Dave opened with a devotion from 2nd Corinthians 1:9.  Thank you Dave for starting us off on the right foot.

We've been told that it's natural to have fear when going to a foreign land to share your faith. I can only speak for myself, but those fears are alive and well!  We want to share God's love and salvation with others, but there is always that lingering doubt.  We will rely on God and the Holy Spirit to be with us. As in 1st Corinthians 2:2-5 - ² For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³ I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. ⁴ My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

We are interested in building relationships with these wonderful people and sharing our love of Jesus and His powerful act of salvation.  In order to do that, we have discussed the need for personal and team daily prayer time while we are in Thailand and taking the time necessary to get to know some of the people we meet.  Who knows, with the availability of e-mail, we might even be able to establish a "long-term" relationship!

We've all been assigned a subject to present to the English as a Second Language (ESL) class, such as favorite foods, traditions, families, pets, gardening, BLC, sports (Who could travel from Wisconsin and not talk about the Brewers and the Packers???????), and many more.  We will be doing 14 sessions and a closing ceremony for the students. The idea is to make this a fun learning experience with games, music, pictures and whatever else we can think of.  These sessions will hopefully open opportunities for us to share our love of Jesus.

I guess we are "official" now:  we've been registered with the State Department.  WooHoo!!

The Three "P"s

Pictures – Preparation - Presentation

Did you ever think of taking pictures as being part of a mission trip?  Well, I sure didn’t!  Not until, that is, we discussed it at our last meeting.  We are so thankful to all of you who have supported us financially and prayerfully and just plain ol’ support!  We want you to feel like you’ve been on this mission trip with us.  We have been granted a huge opportunity from God to bring other people to Him and you have helped us make it happen. 

While we are in Thailand, we hope you’ll follow this blog because we will be writing every day about our mission, our God sightings and showing you pictures of the people we’re meeting and the culture we are experiencing.  When we return home, we’d like to do a presentation of our trip. We do hope that some of you might be encouraged to experience a short term mission trip as well.

In September, we will be meeting with Dennis from LCMS World Missions.  We are so anxious to continue our training with him.  Our team will be busy writing down questions for Dennis, so that we don't forget what we want to ask him. Everything we can learn about these wonderful people will make it just that much easier for us when we are with them.

We are requesting your prayers for so many reasons.  First of all, protection and safe travel (Did you know that this trip is 23 hours in the air?  Yikes!!) Please pray that we can be accepting of our hosts’ culture, make us open and receptive to them.  Also, please pray that we may impact these people with Jesus.

Thank you to Kathy and Jim for supplying us with a yummy lunch of Pad Thai and Bangkok Curry from Noodles and Co. Let us not forget that awesome dessert - that was completely American!!