A Childhood Dream Come True!

 Here's one of my entries from last Friday Evening!

5/16/14

Today was a beautiful day! It was a Friday. The last class of the second to last week of this 6 week media missionary course I am teaching here to the Karen students! I taught a bit on Photoshop today, mostly with Eh k' nyaw. He looks to be a promising possible media worker here in the future! While leaving the studio mid afternoon and walking through the rice fields and orchard to get to my place, I realized that I was in one of my childhood dreams! I came up to put my clothes away from drying on the line and get ready for Sabbath! After taking care of everything, as I sat there on the front porch of my Medical Missionary building eating some supper of Karen food, mostly rice, and looking at my partial view of the valley and surrounding hills, it was incredible!
We had sunshine most of the day and the typical afternoon thunderstorm with some rain which had just passed. In the lush green valley below as Sabbath was drawing close I could hear the beautiful voices of the Karen students from our foundation singing 'Little Brown Church in the Wildwood' in their native tongue! What memories that can bring back! I almost felt like I was in one of Eric B. Hare's stories!
I went down a little later after supper after the students had finished worship and were practicing their memory verses. I wore my Lugi, a Karen mans Sarong, and was standing visiting with Eh too and the gardener and his wife when the students were coming out. The kids were all happy to see me. One of them pulled me along to come to the dorms. It was fun! I played with some of the boys in their dorm then hung out with some of the boys and girls in the girls dorm. The kids always enjoy when I pull my iPhone out. I try to get a few pictures with them but before I know it they are looking for the guitar app so they can play the guitar! :) these were fun times that I won't forget! And now to sleep dreaming of a new and exciting Sabbath! Thank you Lord!

My Work in Thailand!

Here is an update about my work here in Thailand. From shooting video for projects to teaching a 6 week Media Missionary course! If there is some way you would like to help email me at: jrhn322(at)aim(dot)com. Thank you and God bless

Older Random Entries

 I thought maybe some of my diary entries might be worth putting up on my blog. I'm not much of a writer but I need to write more!

5/9/14

Worship this Friday evening was in Karen, so I didn't understand it, but didn't want to look like I was ignoring the message, so decided to imagine what the message was about and what the pastor was talking about. It actually got kinda interesting but the ideas didn't all go together. It's a little harder on the imagination when the Karen inflection isn't just like English.

Oh, that I had a thousand lives to give, I would send them to live with and learn the language of every culture that I may share Jesus with them! But I have yet, only one life and I will strive to give it completely to God and to go wherever He wishes me to go, no matter the consequences!!

Thailand Arrival (Video Update)

Check out my first in a series of video updates showing my trip to Thailand and my work there as a Media Missionary

Chiang Khong Health Seminar

Aw, sweet rest! I'm sitting on my bed, eating some papaya, in the center that Leading to the Light Ministry has up in Chiang Khong, Thailand. Leading to the Light is the Rawlings ministry. They are renting a place to do the health work up here. Unfortunately, when we first got a here a few days ago, the first night I didn't sleep very well because the bedspring was very hard with no mattress. I woke up all through the night and when I got up in the morning I was in soo much pain because I had knots all over in my back from the hard surface! I think that was part of what took my immune system down. I then started not feeling too good. I may have gotten the flu or just eaten the wrong soup, that, by the way, was really spicy! Anyways, I have been in bed the last day or two just trying to regain my strength. Right now it is Sabbath evening and I am feeling a lot better now! I was able to be up a lot more today and walk around without feeling very dizzy!

Now, for the more interesting part! We are up here doing a four day health seminar in Chiang Khong District! They have already done 8 health seminars up here but this is the first one that we are working with the local government. The local government clinic opened the doors of its lecture hall above the clinic for the meetings and Supot Wicha, who is the director of the clinic welcomed us and introduced us to the locals as "Ambassadors of Health".

Of course we want to be more than just ambassadors of health down the road but there are a few more steps for these people than in America, where most are already Christian. Now you can see how powerful the Health work is as the "Entering Wedge"!

The district leader also stopped by to welcome our team and shared how this was one of the first times someone had come from outside the district to teach the people about health! He was very excited to see us here! The seminars have been going well so far! The people are really enjoying it and one of our local Adventist workers up here said she would follow up and visit the families that were at the seminar to make contact with them and start befriending them!

Festival of Lights

We went to the Festival of Lights several weeks ago at Maejo University in Chiang Mai. They have a mass lantern release, where they release several thousand lanterns at the same time! It was breathtaking and really got me thinking! We are to let our light so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven! It almost seemed like an object lesson to me, where we are the lights! When the lights are lighted they can't help but rise higher into the sky. The higher they rise the more they can be seen. I saw many lanterns that had lost their fire later that had plummeted back to earth. They were useless when on the ground but when their fire was rekindled they would rise again into the sky! When you have Jesus in your heart you can’t help but shine out to those around you! Let Jesus love burn in your hearts today!

Long leg of the trip - Nov. 4

Later that morning I hopped on the plane, ready to leave the country. Farewell to the United States of America! I'll speed things up now, hopefully, so I can catch up to where I am now! When boarding in San Fran there was a group of young men all in blue. I started talking with them and found out they were a group of Hispanic Christians from Spain, I think and they were on their way to do some mission work somewhere in Asia. It was really cool to run into some other missionaries like that! We were on the same flight so I saw them off and on all the way to Singapore. I got an amazing picture flying over the Golden gate on the way out! This was probably the longest stretch of the trip. Roughly 20 hours over the Pacific ocean! It was really weird because we were moving almost with the sun, so the day streeeetched out and the night finally caught up to us a few  hours out of Korea. There was a short layover in Seoul, South Korea in the middle of the night where we basically just got off the plane and then back on. From there it was a few hours to Singapore. We got in at about 1 or so and my next flight wasn't till 8 so I found a somewhat quiet corner and curled up to sleep for a few hours. I was awakened by the airport security, I guess just to make sure I wasn't a homeless person trying to blend in as a traveller. I was able to get some good sleep though and felt a bit more rested when I awoke. I went exploring for breakfast and found a good vegetarian Indian food place which had some awesome, spicy Samosas! Once done there I headed for my terminal. On to Thailand at last! It was clear as we cruised over Thailand headed straight for Chiang Mai! We got in after a few hours and Mr. Rawlings picked me up at the airport. He had to do a shopping trip so I got a pretty good tour of most of Chiang Mai. The Rawlings just got back to Thailand probably a week before I got here. We stopped at a really good vegetarian restaurant and had some lunch. Boy was it delicious!