Chuck and i love to do pre-marital counseling. We feel the Lord has taught us a lot about what to do and what NOT to do in order to build a great marriage. We want to invest into those lives that the Lord has put in our paths. We believe the Lord has put you in our lives for a purpose. Our marriage is the greatest and most important/significant earthly relationship we have! We must build it INTENTIONALLY……daily! Thank you for allowing us to pass on to you some of these nuggets of wealth the Lord has taught us over the years….

Number 1 of four marriage builders is….ENCOURAGE

We must be each others minister of encouragement……lets start our discussion by sharing some of the things we do to encourage our partner on a daily basis……

one of the things chuck and i do is….we call it…..our first encounter….. everytime we see each other for the first time after being apart we make sure it is a postive encounter. Whether it is when we first wake up in the am, whether we have parted just to drop the kids to school and back in 5 minutes or whether we have been apart for an 8 hour or more day, we make sure when we greet each other that it is a positive greeting. We may ourself have had an awful day…someone may have seen us when we dropped the kids off and gave us some really bad news or “jumped all over us” for something, we may have had a dream that our partner cheated on us(ever do that? :O) ….regardless of what has happened bad to us in that time we were apart we intentionally prepare ourself to greet our partner positively….then when the moment is “right” unload…but becareful not to make your partner the blame of why you are feeling so bad.

what is something you do to encourage your partner on a daily basis…..

Here is a slideshow with captions so you can get a little taste of our life in Thailand for our first month. Click the multi colored link on the lower right side to see it full screen.

Well, so far it’s been a pretty smooth ride till yesterday at least.  We have a truck, but it isn’t registered due to a missing document.  Our shipment of clothes and furniture has been held up by unscrupulous people in the system.  Pray we can get it released please!  The rice fields are being planted around us.  Really a joy to be surrounded  by that kind of thing. The evenings are cold and we sleep deeply without even a fan.  Still on mats on the floor, and keeping our food in a cooler needing fresh ice every day. Kids are excited about their new school friends. Really excited in fact.  Although they are not included in school for this week (exams from last semester) they still go to school and hang out.  We feel great about that.Having a good connection with the students at the University already so that feels good too.  Just pray this shipment through for us, ok?

Well, my last official act from our home of 18 years is to sit at the counter top in our empty house and type out this blog entry.  In thirty minutes we leave for the airport to board our flight to Thailand.   I find myself thinking about death all day, like this is a rehearsal for the time when I am leaving this world entirely.  I have met with many to say goodbye.  I had to make sure all bills were paid and those who had worked so faithfully for us were properly rewarded for their loyalty.  I don’t think we can really reward them adequately at all.  More like a generous thank you gesture because how do you reward faithful love that has been given on a daily basis?  The Filipinos we know are the most amazing of people.  So forgiving and kind.  I hope we have taken that into our spirits and carry it for life. Now to fly and start another entirely different chapter of our story. 

I just wanted to write a general email to everyone who has been commenting on things you see on the site.  I have been moving around too much to answer everyone directly, but I wanted you to know that your comments are important to me.  I read them and appreciate that you have taken the time to post them.  Keep ‘em coming!

You have probably seen it on CNN by now.  A group of around 30 marines stormed into the beautiful Manila Pen Hotel, one of our most frequent spots for quiet meetings, and called for a press conference to demand the resignation of President Arroyo for corruption.   Her government responded with tear gas, 1,500 police and soldiers and by ramming an armored personnel carrier right through the front doors and into the grand lobby.  Gunfire, smoke–craziness.  This was a minor event that should have been talked out.  Press and guests were everywhere.  Tensions are just so high now.   Many in the military want her out and she is determined to stay.  (remember the Clinton years?) Jessica and Brooke had a rugby game nearby which was cancelled.  We’ve been having a tropical storm for a week anyway.The city is under a curfew after the mutineers intimated that events like theirs will now start to occur all over the city in the following days.  I guess it’s the frog in the kettle syndrome, but people here just roll with things like this.  Nobody is rattled or nervous.  It’s such a huge city with as many people as two states of Georgia combined and there are over a dozen little worlds with a million people in each pocket so most of us don’t go too far from our zones anyway.  We live 12 miles from the event which was a mile from the radio station again.  (We are very centrally located and when we get our Manila voice we will have so much influence from that positioning.)  Just keep praying, ok? 

OK, here in the Philippines we have to sometimes make our own fun. So, cut a tiny ditch for your butt, cover the slide area with a vinyl tarp that becomes a frying pan for your leg in the summers, then open a garden hose and make a bucket of laundry soap as lubricant and you have a home made superslide. The slide ends in mud and horse poop. Good, clean fun. Well, maybe not so clean but fun still.   

Well, even though we traveled from 11 PM arriving at 1:30 AM and didn’t sleep until on the second flight, one hour, at 6:30 AM, then hit Chiang Rai to see the kid’s new school and look for houses, the kids did w o n d e r f u l l y!    They really connected with the kids at Family Learning Center, which is still in its infancy.  They loved Thai children and when we looked at houses (a huge step down in lifestyle and size) they were totally ok with it.  I was proud of them.  They really do have a missionary spirit in their hearts.  By the end of the sleep deprived day they were trying to learn Thai phrases.  We didn’t get to bed till midnight. Today we really need to find our house.  Pray about that please. Julia said yesterday, “I wish we didn’t have to go home and could just get started here now.”  That’s the kind of thing that warms a father’s heart.  

OK, this week we travel as a family to Chiang Rai to look for a house and school for the kids.  When we return we will apply for our visa and if it is granted will move just after new years.  We are all excited about the possibility of starting life over there.  Work wise, not too much will change. I will still be in charge of the UCB radio network in the Philippines and will travel to Manila one week a month for goal setting and face-to-face meetings.  Already the network stretches over 1,000 miles so we do our staff meetings online anyway. Besides that, we produce  materials for Asia which we can do from anywhere and we travel doing training events in Asian nations.  What we are looking for is a good home base with less crime, less cost (we have two at a time in college for the next decade) less pollution and in a non-Christianized nation.  There are quite a few choices in the region, but the Bangkok airport offers some of the lowest fares and easiest connections in Asia so we feel it is the best place for us to make as our new home base. Having the University outreach there for the past three years is another reason to move there.  We are already connected  there and have a burden for Thai youth that will energize us and give our kids new places to plug in. Pray for us in this week that we find all the details we need and are kept safe.  Thanks!