Hi everyone, I just wanted to let any of you who are downloading podcasts through your iPods or through iTunes there is an amazing ministry that has made its sermons available - Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. You can search for him on iTunes or you can go to his webpage at http://rzim.org and go to the radio archives where you can download mp3's of his talks. We have really been enjoying his teaching (hearing any English is nice) and would like to encourage any of you who might be interested to check him out.

Also, because I have liberally abused links to definitions from this site, I highly recommend using Wikipedia when searching for definitions on the web.

We're doing great here, the sponsor team has been here the last week or so and we have been running around with them. We are heading back to House of Joy now for the farewell evening with the orphans and sponsors, more updates to come.

Well, you guys must be praying for us! Even in the simplest of things our needs are being met. However, maybe this post should be entitled "be careful what you ask for".

We have been in the city for the last week (my dad is coming with the sponsor team this afternoon) and have had a nice time catching up on some business and going to a Haw Shui Dza (New Rice Festival). It also has admittedly been nice staying in a home where the rats don't keep you awake. However, last night we heard some strange sounds emanating from our storage room. We dug around in there and found the source of the noise - 4 baby kittens! Aparently we had left the door open one night and mom came in and brought her new babies in "out of the cold". However, our storage room is not the best place for hungry babies - especially when mom is locked outside, so we made a bed for them and put them back outside where mom came back and claimed them last night. Now they are living underneath our hedge - whining right outside of our office.

Assuming they survive to adulthood, one of these little guys might have to accompany us up to the village to take care of our houseguests up there. Thanks for the prayers!

Paul & I have always been dog people, but recent events have made us seriously consider our preconcieved notions regardging the appeal of the common cat...

We've known for some months that we had a rat sharing our village home with us. Although the thought of rats is rather unsettling, we've gotten used to sharing our dwelling with a multitude of little creatures... geckos, spiders even the occasional chicken. So it was not too much of a stretch to simply accept that he was there. At nights we could hear him scurrying through the rafters, but unless we left food readily accessible, he didn't seem to be too much of a bother.

Little did we know that "he" was really a "she" and she was pregnant with a litter of baby rats...

About two weeks ago we left the village to spend a week at the Foursquare Thailand National convention in the southern part of Thailand. As usual, we piled all our belongings (bedmats, pillows, and a few plastic bins of food, books & clothes) on the bamaboo platform in our room & covered it with a tarp to keep the dust off.

It seems that the common English phrase "nesting tendancy" which is so often used of pregnant women is also applicable (in a more literal sense) to pregnant rats. When we returned from our travels, we found that Mama Rat had decided that our tarp covered pile was the perfect place to set up home. She had chewed gaping holes in our bed mats and created a snug nest amont the inner stuffing of our beds. She sampled nearly every thing we had. Luckily most everything was in plastic storage boxes, so although our boxes are now scarred with tiny teeth marks, there was not too much damage.

Unfortunately, there was one thing which was not in a plastic box. One of our favorite snacks in the village is chocolate milk. Here in Thailand you can buy shelf-ready milk called UHT which comes in boxes (like juice-boxes in America), and we had a large box of 48 milks under that tarp. As it turns out, chocolate milk is also a favorite snack of rats. The rat chewed a hole in the top of the outer box, and then proceeded to chew holes in nearly every individual box of milk! Needless to say, by the time we found it, it was a horrid stinking mess of rotten milk, maggots & rat droppings! YUCK!

Obviously, it was a pretty tough evening. But we didn't realize what an emotional expenditure we had made until the next morning when we both woke up feeling like we had been hit by a bus! After everything, we've decided that we need a cat!

This last month has been school break for many of the schools in Thailand. It's always fun for us to have all the kids around. During this break all the teenagers went to a camp run by Akha Christian Youth (ACY). When most of the adults had left for the fields we found ourselves with a large group of 8-12 year old kids. So all day long, while Paul played various games (mostly soccer and football) Lori took on the incredible effort of "doing hair" for all of the girls in our village.

Akha women are amazing, they are incredibly strong and their daughters learn quickly how to work hard. But on this one occasion we were able to give them a chance to feel beautiful. Half way through all the hair-dos one little girl came up to the group. She is a particularly tough case, and lives in a difficult home in our village. We never see her smile and although she is intrigued by us "pala" she usually observes us from a distance. Like many children in Akha villages she has very short hair (lice & scabies). She was watching all the girls and their fancy hair braids and was just stoic in her observations. Our hearts were broken and we knew we had to do something for her. Lori remembered she had a handkerchief in our house that she might be able to use. We pulled her aside and made a big deal out of her new "hair". Once it sunk in that we really thought she was a beautiful little girl, she ran off. When she came back she had cleaned herself all up and had put on a dress! This little girl who never smiled was grinning from ear to ear for days - knowing that she truly is lovely.

In the end, all the girls took their new hair-dos and made them Akha. Picking flowers from all around our village they made themselves laurels and - of course - wanted their pictures taken.