Our main purpose for being here as missionaries, and as a team, is to plant a church here in our area, Ram II, and eventually plant more churches following that, hopefully someday in other parts of Thailand as well. We believe that building relationships is what plants churches, so we spend alot of our time doing just that – building relationships with people and hanging out! We meet alot of Thais through our everyday life – our immediate neighbors, our extended neighbors, vendors in our area, our English students, our co-workers (who are all Christians with one exception). Outside of day to day interaction, we try to make plans with these people as much as possible, in an effort to get to know them and build trusting relationships with them, which of course could take years!! Especially with our basic Thai ability, which is growing but difficult to go deeper than surface-level most times. We pray often that God would be pleased to use as vessels for Him here in this area with the Thai people we know, and we pray for spritual interest among our friends and the Thais we have gotten to know well.
Here are some recent shots of such times:
Thais love posed pics…we had a barbecue at our house for some English students and friends.
Barbecue here is known as cooking shish-kabobs usually – with tomatoes, pineapple, chicken, squid, etc. Jean, your applesauce made an appearance, thanks to Andrew. Thais love it!
Here is Stacy with Tuum and Kim, two of the funniest people I know, after eating an all-you-can-eat Japanese buffet. (That strangely had American and Chinese food also, but whatever) Our stomachs are stuffed! Kim & Tuum are such a dynamic duo. They are inseparable best friends and are neverendingly silly and loud. When I teach them it doesn’t feel like work, just fun, because they are so fun to be around. Earlier this summer, Bethany and I went with them to the beach also!
Here’s another time we went kareoking with Bethany & Anne also! Catherine Rogers came too! 
Sadly, one of the group, Phii Dam, decided to move away recently and has just left to go live with her husband in southern Thailand. (It’s common for Thai families to split up for financial reasons, like parents will live in Bangkok to work while their kids go to school in the countryside and live with other family). We were all really sad to see her go because she was such a sweet person and just so kind to all of us! We had a going away dinner at our house but I really miss her presence when we are all hanging out or in class every Saturday.
