countries. They travel with LOGOS HOPE Ship that sails from one country to another, containing over 400 missionaries that sacrificed themselves for 2 year contract to serve the Lord in any country that the ship drops them off.

They do any work that is needed to help the spread of the gospel. They try reaching people of all countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Spain, Africa, etc…) by providing physical help, medical aid, evangelizing, or just washing dishes or cleaning floors.

If you saw the presentation about Thailand, you probably heard about a girl named Som-yueng. She lived here at school, and when she got older, her parents sold her. In the presentation we were called to pray for her, so that the missionaries might raise enough support to return her to school. January 6,2013 Som-yueng was brought back and is now enjoying her time at the Avoda school. We had a chance to witness this amazing God’s work!!! I am so excited to see God’s power and His mighty hand every day!!!

I know Serge has posted a few things about us learning the Thai language…well I wanted to share with you the latest news. Since Monday, Ploi has been teaching us the 44 consonants. This morning, we had a test on them (dun dun dun.) We had to be able to differentiate the sound AND remember how each letter was written. Not an easy task! However, we definitely felt the Lord’s blessing when all five of us received A’s!!!! Thank you all so much for your prayers!!! God is definitely answering them.

We all wanted to say huge thank you for everyone who is praying for us to learn Thai.

It’s going well. But please continue to pray. It has only been 1 week (and we learned all the Consonants already). The letters are very unusual and need a lot of practice in writing them. Practice, practice & more practice makes them so much easier to remember. :)

~Shoes~

As you can see that there a lot of sandals by the entrance, it’s because in Thai culture they always remove shoes before they come inside kitchen or the house or even the porch, regardless if the floor is clean or dirty, you still take off your shoes at the entrance. This rule goes for homes, churches, and schools. What is even more surprising is that even to enter some stores, one must remove and leave the shoes by the entrance! But not too many stores are like that. So far I’ve been to only one that you had to do that. And a good way to know when to remove shoes or not is: if you see LOTS of shoes by the door, that means you have to take off yours too ;)

I wanted to apologize for not updating the blog for a week or so.

LOTS of new things happened here and have much stories to tell and photos & videos to post, so I will do my best to catch up! But the main thing is that we actually SEE God working here and we see how he is moving the hearts of Thai people. It’s just a true blessing to be part of it.  :)

Last week half of our Avoda children that were participating in competition, had left to Chiang Mai (big city in North Thailand), but other half of children stayed home to cook, clean, and watch over the property.

So in the evening we had some time to spend with them. We brought with us few card games like “Go Fish” & Christian “Go Fish” with Bible characters and heroes and other similar games, and children here absolutely LOVE to play. Because they are growing up here like ALL children should.

Today we had a chance to visit a few small Burmese villages where the parents of some of the Avoda children live. These are the slums from where these children came from, but now they are living in Avoda where they have a chance to get an education, to be treated as human beings, to have their own rights,  to learn English and also to earn money by working (cleaning, laundry, cooking, ironing etc.) and learning life skills needed to become independent and make their own living some day.

We’ve now been in Thailand 2.5 weeks. How much can happen in a short period of time like that? A lot if God is doing the working. And He is definitely working!  This monday a van with police officers and directors from severals schools from the city of Tak came to Avoda. Raimond was almost jumping from joy when they left. These officials came to us christians for help. He’s lived here 20 years and it has never happened before. This is a HUGE step for them to come to us when they perfectly understand our mission here as christians. The police want us to teach English to the local officers. The directors are asking us to teach English in more schools. But it is not really about teaching English to us. It is about making crucial relationships with the directors and teachers and officials. That was Monday.

One day this week Tanya and I got a chance to go with Ploi into town. Normally to do at least one errand in Thailand takes half the day! It’s something we are still not used to. If you’re going out into town for something in the afternoon, expect to be back home late. It’s just how things go here. Nobody is hurrying anywhere. So while doing the errands we always get tired and hungry in the scorching hot heat and need to stop by some place to eat.