Larry and Jan Martin,
International Ministries, American Baptist Churches,USA
Ban Luang, Thailand, May, 2005
Dear Partners in Ministry,
We hit April running and the heat hit us full on. We pulled out and dusted off the fans and strategically placed them around, joking that the electric bill was going to be high. A few days later we joked again that the electric bill probably was going to be cheap, as we started to experience regular, long power outages, 2 of them over 6 hours long. That has been the order of the month with the longest being 30 hours long and causing us to have an impromptu party to use up some meat that was starting to defrost.
No power means a number of things, no fans, no lights, no computer and most drastically no water. We generally pump up water from a well. The 30 hour outage saw us fixing up the tap on the rain water tank to get a more efficient flow - making it possible to bucket water to the bathroom and kitchen.
We had a number of events in April and we thank you for joining us in prayer for them. Our annual mission conference was good. We enjoyed being led by our speaker through Philippians.
We joined in the Thai New Year celebrations in our village and were able to pray for God’s blessing on some of our neighbors, but for the most part avoided the water fights.
The Junior High English week was sparsely attended most of the students figured they were on ‘vacation’. The 9 that did come had a great time and really enjoyed the various activities especially making and consuming snacks each day.
The primary age English week was deliberately limited in numbers as we were using it as an opportunity to train up some young people from our old church at Payameng Rai. We picked up a 13 year old and 3, 14 year olds and brought them home and installed them in our spare room for a week long slumber party. They told the Bible story each morning, led games, and craft. Larry went through the activities with them the day before and made sure they could do them, Jan led them in Bible studies and developed her nagging skills to new heights, ‘Turn off the lights’, ‘Quiet!’, ‘Go to sleep!’, ‘Do your washing’, ‘Have you cleaned your teeth?’ ‘Hurry up!’ and of course they were here in the 30 hour black-out so we had ‘Use the water sparingly.’ We all had a wonderful time and praise God for them and their passion to be used by God for His Kingdom.
We pray that, that passion is evident in all our lives (yours and ours) and that God blesses each of us with fruit.
May you know His presence daily.
Larry and Jan
Prayer and Praise Points
Praise God for what has happened here in the last month and pray that seeds planted would grow.
Pray for Hair, Pim, Add, and Fai, that they would continue in their desire to be used by God.
Pray for the Ethnic Thai team meeting (May 5,6) as we thrash out some issues.
The new school year starts this month and we will be starting our regular school program, pray for opportunities to interact on a deeper level with the teachers.
Pray for Larry as he has extra meetings in Chiang Mai this month involving travel.
Posted by Valerie at May 1, 2005 10:20 PM