Things are just as nuts as usual here. We have been running a summer program for about 60 kids in the community (and it's been tough) but it's also been really good. I love the kids, even if I stink at discipline.

There is this sweet boy named Ohm who is really smart and funny, but he is pretty shy and doesn't know very much English. Over the past 3 weeks he's opened up quite a bit, and yesterday I helped him read a book! Today, he started reading "Green Eggs and Ham". I don't know what he is comprehending, but we are working on pronunciation and he is doing so well. I am so proud of him.

It gave me flashbacks because that is the first book I ever remember reading by myself (the first book of many!), sitting on the our living room floor  (green fuzzy carpet) with the rest of the family watching something on TV, and mom doing laundry. I'm going to guess  there was popcorn involved. It was quite monumental for me, I remember.

Anyway, there are so many kids I've fallen in love with here. 

-- 

I have a huge praise report -- remember a couple of weeks ago when I shared about the boy who was falling asleep in class and was taken to the hospital? He had surgery and HE IS BACK! He has made an outstanding recovery. He has visibly lost weight, and is breathing normally. He is much more focused and retentive AND active -- he's been running around with the kids and laughing. Praise God. This is overwhelming to me. 

--

Please pray for us because we are going to Laos in a couple of weeks to renew our Visa's, but we will be staying longer with our friend Pat to share with those that we meet. We, really need your prayers in this.

--

I ... played frisbee last week :)

and then...I was sore for 7 days (still recovering)

my muscles are really out of shape --

it felt so good to run again.

--

We met a lady named Tuu who is from Laos and were invited back to have dinner in her dormitory with her and her friends! We will be going back each Saturday, she will be teaching us some Laos, and we will teach her English. None of them are Christians. Please pray that the Lord would provide opportunities for us to share with them.

--

Friday night prayer meetings have been somewhat postponed due to the holiday season, but hopefully they will start up again this Friday. Please continue to pray for this group!

--

A dear brother in Christ gave me two beautiful gifts.

The amber stone in my ring fell out several weeks ago, and he took it and fixed it for me. This ring is symbolic of many things in my life and my identity in Christ and I was so sad that it was broken.

He also gave me a new Bible (because I gave mine away). Now I have the word of God. How can I explain how wonderful of a gift this was? 

I cannot explain to you the gratitude in my heart for these two things, so please excuse the emptiness in my words.

God, thank you for putting loving Christian friends in my path, and teach me more of you and your love so I may be a light and a blessing to those people who's paths you place me in.

--

I wish I had pictures to share with you but I haven't been taking my camera anywhere! I'll try to post some soon.

Love,

Amber

I have so many things to share! I may need to split this into several updates for the sake of *post length* . Maybe I'll just mince some words.

A couple of days ago I made a new friend. We had a really in depth conversation about Judaism and Christianity.

He was the first practicing Jew I've ever met! I was so excited when he told me he was a Jew, because --I know the Jewish history according to the Old Testament, and feel a kinship toward them.

He was a very pleasant, intelligent man, and I hope to see him again, however, I was discouraged by his faith. While he is a practicing Jew and knows the Hebrew Bible (Talmud? Is that correct?) it seemed to me his beliefs were very universalist. I am saddened by this, mostly because Jews are people I have associated with a very deep faith and belief in the same God I serve.

This has become somewhat of a theme. Many people I speak with have had a similar mindset.

We spoke at length about the Messiah and who he thought the Messiah was (not Jesus, what a heart-wrenching sadness) and about the New Testament. He said that when he read the New Testament he was very very impressed, yet sad, because he had always heard about how Christians were hypocritical (he had never met a Christian) yet when he read the New Testament he saw what Christianity was supposed to be. And he said he felt sad because -- we are family, but our faiths took two separate paths.

Yesterday I met a Thai couple who spoke fluent English. We talked a bit and I told them I am a Christian and they asked me about that, so I was sharing the Gospel. I asked if they were Buddhist, and they said Yes. Then a little bit later he said, "I go to church!" and she said, "I studied at a monastery with the sisters for a little while!" (they were nodding as though what I was telling them was familiar) and I said, "but you are Buddhists?" and they both said, "Yes" at the same time.

I'm praying for these three.

**

I attended a worship/prayer time yesterday evening. It was good. I felt welcome and want to go back.

*

Today I will play my first frisbee game since breaking my leg! You have no idea how excited I am.

Gotta run (slowly, hehe), more later.
LOVE,
Amber

Prayer Requests

Hi everyone!


You know, I have two friends from home who are very ill.
Leroy and Mark.
Please pray for them.
I have not asked for their permission to share, so I will only give you their names, but I really wish I could be with them both to encourage them -- but I cannot in person, only through prayer. Please join me in this.

Also, if I could ask, will you pray for my Grandma Konz too? Not because there is anything wrong, I just love her :)

Today two exciting things happened:

1. WE RECEIVED A PACKAGE!!!! (Thanks Mom and Dad. We will have sugar to last us for quite some time, and the kids will love it too. Really, THANK YOU)

2. I made another friend! Her name is Alice. She is from Switzerland and spoke 4 languages, something I'm finding is quite common among Europeans/Asians-- I am struggling with 1 1/8 (the 1/8th being a probably too highly estimated amount of Thai that I know, but it's coming along!)

We spoke for a long time, because we were both waiting for a shop to open, so we chatted for about 3 hours, and it was nice. She is quite the historian! I learned a lot from her, and I got to listen to her cool accent!

We spent a significant portion of our time talking about religion. It was an interesting discussion about Jesus and aliens and giants.

You know, so many of the foreigners I have come across here in Thailand are *searching* for something, and they do not know what, but they have a lot of thoughts and ideas. I am finding a lot of false theologies and pseudo-Christian (cultish) grips on people, and a severe lack of knowledge of the word of God among people who are not Christian who claim to know the Bible. This makes me very sad, and makes me want to study the word even more. The biggest thing I have noticed regarding this is people have a tendency to read scripture and pick out the things that suit them, rather than take the Bible as a whole that points to Jesus in all things. 

I am so thankful to not be an aimless seeker. I am a daughter of God, redeemed from my wrongdoings by the blood of Christ. I have already found the meaning of life! Now it's focusing on the goal...

*********

Did I mention we have awesome neighbors? They took us on a tour :) There are a lot of pictures on facebook, but here are some highlights (compliments of Dtem and Dtoi *aka Kitichai*, they took all of the pictures):

Ice cream sandwiches. Please notice the normal looking BREAD
the ice cream is encompassed by.
Oh, Thailand. I love how literal you are.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!

We went to another waterfall the following day with our friends Lucy and Jo (from Scotland, and the UK), but we didn't bring our camera! The waterfall was made out of limestone, and you could just climb right up it, hence the name "the sticky waterfalls". It really was amazing, not like anything I've seen or experienced in my entire life. 

Tomorrow: Zip-lining through the jungle. (We have a week off from school because it is a Thai holiday called SONG-KRAN, which I'll tell you more about when I have some pictures)

my friend IB

I have a very exciting story to share with you!

Yesterday was Good Friday, and it WAS a very good Friday indeed!

Mackenzie went to Lampang with our neighbors (we had Friday off of school). Emma and I were simply exhausted and wanted a restful day so we stayed home, although going with the neighbors anywhere is always really fun, we just needed a break (it's been a crazy couple of weeks). SO I decided to go visit a waterfall and read the Good Friday story from the Bible -- it was fantastic, and a good place to recharge and be with the Lord.(and, I was perfectly able to climb through some pretty treacherous terrain, thank you GOD for healing my leg!)

On my walk home, God had set up a divine appointment for me :) I was walking one way, and Ib, my new friend, was walking toward me. I was JUST about to cross the street to have some lunch at coffeshop across the street, and we met exactly there, Ib thought he recognized me, we started to chat and we decided to have coffee together.

He is a very kind, friendly man, but has gone through a rough time these past couple of years. He told me he is at a crossroads and in a crisis and is really seeking something but he did not know what-- he told me several times he was about to lose heart. He told me he was considering helping out and learning about Buddhism from the monks. Ib is a Christian, but has fallen away for quite sometime (it seemed to me) and shared with me he was really turned away by "Pharisitical Christians" (if you know what I mean). I shared with him my faith and -- Jesus is so good -- Ib said I must be an angel sent from God because what I was saying is exactly what he had needed to hear and that he had "forgotten all of the things I was saying". I am rather overwhelmed, and so grateful to have been used this way. God is so good. He sent me here from Nebraska to Thailand to share the gospel with a middle-aged man from Denmark over coffee (among other things, I'm sure) and I am so grateful that the Lord has taught me so much thus far and am excited for what is next.

Will you pray for Ib?

I gave him my Bible.
We are now Pen-pals.
I thoroughly enjoyed his company, he is a gem of a man.

God is...so good.

I also wanted to share with you that we went to visit a beautiful lady named Dang (which means the color Red!) and were able to give her 5 Bibles that people from her church were in need of:

Pii Dang has a desire for LIFE. She has MS but is dedicated to live and wants to serve the Lord for as long as she can. Please pray that the Lord would grant her healthy time. Also, she has a prayer request -- she is requesting more money from the government to help her pay for her medicine, but has not heard back in awhile. Please pray that the government would grant her request.

AND: My friend I mentioned in a previous post is currently in a communist country distributing bibles to those that need them. Pray for safety of this person and the people in this person's company. Thanks.

Amen.
And HAPPY EASTER TOMORROW!!!!

this past month

Whoofta!

Things have been *so* *so* busy.

For those of you who have sent me messages that I have not responded to, and people I have not called, I sincerely apologize, thank you for your grace. I have a week off  from summer school starting Friday. You will be my priority :)

As for this past month, what a whirlwind!

We went to Laos (had a few minor problems with the Visa situation, but it should be okay). Visited our lovely relatives, whom I already miss (I will post some pictures of this soon and tell you more about them, because I love them), and then we got back and started summer school the very next day.

I put together a portfolio and resume last week (thanks Dad) because I am applying for a job in Laos --I'll tell you more about it as time transpires :)

Summer school is a tough one for me -- I love love love these kids and being with them is a blessing, but I am really struggling with this whole *teaching groups of kids* thing. Please pray for me. I've cried a lot. It is embarrassing, and I know the kids have noticed. Apparently God has a purpose in it. This is certainly *not* in my comfort zone.

One little boy, his name is Poom and here is his picture (Shayne I hope you don't mind! Pat emailed it and I swiped it!).

He is really funny, and we all love having him around. God loves him so much. On the very first day of summer school we noticed something wasn't quite right because he fell asleep nearly right away in the morning of the first class and it took way too long to wake him up. It happened again a few days later, and his breathing was really labored. We called Pooms parents and they came and we told him he needed to go to the hospital. I heard there was a lot of crying -- when they were told he was falling asleep, they said "he always does that!" He has been to the doctor several times, but apparently he was mis-diagnosed. God had a purpose in sending Poom to our school. He was sent to a better hospital and he went into surgery. He has been in ICU the past week, but is home today. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God.

There are so many kids here that need a lot of love.

Tomorrow we have a big meeting regarding our textbook project. It is a textbook integrating Christianity into Thai Social Studies. It is a project that God has placed specifically on Joel's heart (our director of the school) and I am confident the Lord will continue to orchestrate the project. I have done all the design work thus far, and we are going to present it to a group of representatives from Thai schools in Chiang Mai tomorrow. The meeting will be about "How should we do Christian ministry in our schools?" and hopefully people will want to come on board and help us with our textbook, because right now we are shorthanded.

Last night Pat, Dream and I went to a store and bought bibles. $300 were donated to the bible fund I mentioned in the previous post, and $150 was donated to Pat, so we were able to buy 25 bibles (about $15/piece)!!!! That night, I went a long with them to Mae Wang, a village, and joined them in a bible study with people from that community. We were blessed to give out 2 of the first bibles to two young girls who asked for a Bible a couple of weeks ago. They are not Christians yet, please pray for them. Their names are Prae and Fai.

Many of the bibles will be given out next week, because somebody I know will be going into a communist country soon to give them to people who cannot get them. Please pray for this person's safety and God's guiding hand.

The Bible is the living word of God. It is such a precious gift. Sweet as honey. Sharper than a double-edged sword. Please do not underestimate yours, and if you have not read it yet, please do.

Okay! I need SLEEP!

Oh yeah, and my leg is doing great! Thank God. I can walk nearly normally, I can put all of my weight on it, and am beginning to be able to jog a teeny bit (not very quickly, and only for a few paces, like, to catch toddlers about to walk into dangerous territory...). Am really looking forward to running again.

Goodnight, I love you all.
Amber