Friends

We thank God for the amazing friends that we have. However, the closest of my friends are at least 800 kms away. It's been a difficult past 10 months without having friends around me. Isaan people are much, much, much more reserved and shy than other Thai people. This has made it difficult to make friends. Even Christians of Ubon have been reluctant to start a friendship. Therefore, church has also been a struggle area.

I got a phone call a couple weeks ago from a Singaporean missionary (he was Boy's supporter while at DTS and did the mini message at our wedding). Josh came to the university to meet with me.

Josh has really been feeling led to start a YWAM base here in Ubon, with a focus on university students. He (and others) feel like they need to start with the university where I am teaching. Josh kept seeing my face as he was praying about it and believes that God wants me apart of the work -- seeing that I'm 'tent-missionarying' it with my 'field' being the girls I teach.

So, as long as it's okay legally, my name will be the university contact person for the club. It was really exciting to talk with him and share all of the doors that are slowly beginning to open up:

- I talk (sometimes through email or Facebook) with one of my 3rd year students daily. She has told me many times how much she loves me and is thankful that I'm her teacher and helper.

- Every week, I eat lunch with a bunch of girls from my mid-morning class of first year students -- we get out right before lunch time so it works out perfectly. They're not scared to talk with me because I speak Thai but push them to speak English for things they know (or help them say something random that they want to learn). But, the Thai makes it more comfortable to talk.

- A girl I don't even teach hangs out with me any chance she can.

- etc. etc.

Josh also told me that there's a group that meets for worship, prayer, message, etc. on Sundays. I've gone the past 2 weeks and it's been great! I've been able to make some friendship bases -- with Josh, his wife Margaret, his 3 kids, Kennie (she's a missionary from India), P'Nu (she's Thai), and Chris (an American). It was great to be able to worship together and then just talk just for the sake of talking! We went to Pizza Co. together this past week.

Please pray for Boy. Can't share the details on here.