From our 'home' to our 'home'

Life has been very full and exciting. We have done a whole range of things from hosting a short term ACTION team, going back to Canada for a couple weeks for our brother's and friend's wedding, to jumping back into life back here in Thailand. We have felt so blessed these past two months with having an opportunity to go back 'home' to Canada and being able to come back 'home' to Thailand. We love both of these homes. But the home that we both are really excited to go to is our permanent home in heaven with Jesus.


Us with our neighbours and the ACTION Team. It was great having this team.


Here's Amanda hanging out with some of our neighbours right before we went to Canada.


Here we are with our niece Makenna. We just can't get enough of her. She's cute from the inside out. (And that's not just from two biased Aunties' viewpoint.)


Here's the two newest members of our family, Makenna and our new sister-in-law Ashley. We love them both a lot.


We sure love our sister Sherri and her daughter. We felt so blessed to spend a week with them.


We spent a day together as a family before Jon and Ashley got married.


Soaking up all the time we could get together.


Our Family (minus two and a half)


At Jon and Ashley's Wedding


Our entire family


This is at Reg and Faa Wall's Wedding


At the reception


Catching one last hour with Jon and Ashley before coming back to Thailand. They had just come back from their honeymoon.


Back in Thailand going out for ice cream with a bunch of our friends.


Amanda hanging out with some of our neighbours.


I love hanging out and reading together with our little neighbours.


This is me and my good friend Bia.


Isn't Phuket beautiful? This is around a 20 minute drive from our house.




Amanda and I love to go to these rocks to meet with our Maker.

Cobra, Chompuu, Rain, Team

Hello Everyone! Things here in Phuket have been great! WE have really been enjoying getting to know our neighbours more and more lately.

Here are a few things that have added a little bit of prik (Spice) to our life in the past couple weeks:

- Trying to kill a baby cobra that was in our yard. After trying to get the snake, we realized that our technique in trying to get it was probably not the best technique. I guess broom sticks and rakes aren't the best method of catching a deadly snake. Obviously not, because we never did catch it. It dissappeared into one of the trees and we haven't seen it since. Afterwards, we were talking to one of the neighbours about the snake and they said that maybe it was a good thing that we didn't catch it because if we had, the mother snake may have come looking for it.

- It's been fun climbing our Chompuu tree and giving the neighbours fruit. A Chompuu is a roseapple. For those of you who have never tried them, it kind of tastes like an apple and pear mixed together. The Chompuu from our tree are sour. Yumm!

- We have been in rainy season over the past while. And I love it! It's not like rain in BC, that comes and stays a loooong time and is cold and often doesn't rain hard. Here when it rains, it comes down so hard that the pressure of the water coming down is better than the pressure in our showers. Often if you step out into it for two seconds, you'll be drenched. And the rain is warm. And often the rain comes at a certain time in the day and the rest of the day is sunny! So when it starts raining I sometimes can't resist the urge of running out into the warm rain and getting soaked.


Here is our most recent team picture. We sure love having a team. They are like family to us.

I LOVE TEACHING!

I just finished my first week of teaching English at a local Thai school close to our house. I love it. I teach 4-6 year olds, grade 4s, grade 7s, and grade 8s. It's so fun and the kids are so cute.

God is so good. He really knows what I love doing and He allows me to do it. I'm just constantly amazed by His great love for me and I just want everyone to be able to experience this deep love.


As I've been thinking about God's love for me, I've often thought about these pictures showing all these people drowning. These people are trying to find different ways to be saved. The boat with the man reading a book represents different types of teachings or different religions that teach people the good things they need to do to get saved. The man is trying to teach the drowning people how to swim.

I really like this picture. The man who is helping the people into the boat represents Jesus. All that the people, who were drowning, had to do was receive help from this man. It's just that simple. Like I said before, I'm amazed by God's deep love for us. He sent His son Jesus to die for us so that we can be saved if we believe in Him and choose to follow Him.

One big thing that I've be learning to do is embrace the complete freedom that Jesus has offered to me and to all who choose to follow Him. This freedom is a freedom from sin, it's a freedom from heaviness, it's a freedom from burdens. There's been several times where I felt heavy and burdened,but then I just sensed Jesus saying "Amber, why are you trying to carry those burdens. I've already set you free from those burdens when I died on the cross for you and rose again three days later. And you've already received this freedom when you repented of your sins and chose to follow me. I didn't suffer and die for you so that you would be heavy and burdened, but so that you can be free and joyful". This freedom is a freedom to live a life that is full of joy, peace, and love. How could we ask for more than this?

I'm glad that this freedom that Jesus offers, isn't a freedom from problems and hardships. I've been realizing that it is most often in the midst of problems, hardships, and pain that I learn how to trust in God more and I experience a deeper level of His love and compassion.

God's love is so GREAT and isn't crazy to think that His love that we experience now, on this earth, is just a very small fraction of what it really is like.


--Amber

Rawn may??

Here again is our wonderful team!


This is our team seeing how high we can jump.


This is Amber and Nong Pen (our little sister).


This is Amanda and Duan, worshipping God together with our team and some other people at the beach.

Life has been great! The pictures above were taken at a Baptism Celebration of one of the teachers of the kids on our team. It was great!

Also, we have definately entered hot season. Today, the thermometer read 43'C in the shade outside the house. And add humidity on top of that and it makes it feel even hotter. But all this hot weather has made us very thankful for airconditioning. It's kind of funny how we change. Right now I have my airconditioning set to 27'C, which feels so cool compared to outside my room. We are also very thankful to live in Phuket, because Phuket cools down at night times.

We hope you are doing well. God bless!

Team Retreat

Within this past month we had an opportunity to go on a team retreat to Prajuap and also to go up to Lopburi for some language checks.

WE LOVE OUR TEAM!! We feel so blessed to be a part of such a great group of people.


At our retreat we all worked together to make a big sand castle.


Everyone hard at work.


Here's our team. They are like our extended family here in Thailand. We love how God has called us here to work together.


Here's our real side (hee hee). We have lots of fun together.


This is a peak into one of our team meetings at our retreat.

Hanging out with our Neighbours

It's been harder and harder for us to find time to update our blog. Sorry about that. We are trying to get better. Here are some pictures from the last two months. Some of the pictures are from our Saturday afternoon kids English club that we've been doing since January and some are just of us with our neighbours. We've been really enjoying getting to know our neighbours more.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

This past Christmas was our second one, in a row, here in Thailand. At Christmas time last year, we were so happy that we were in a hot tropical country instead of our cold, rainy, snowy country. But this year we actually missed the snow a little. We were talking about how it would be nice to see the snow for maybe 2 or 3 days. I don't know if we could handle it any longer than that though. It's getting more difficult to wrap our heads around any temperature lower than 20 degrees Celsius.


This Christmas we really enjoyed going caroling with a bunch of the members of the Thai church we are attending. I have to say our Thai friends take Christmas caroling to a whole new level. They didn't just go caroling one night to only a couple places, but they went several nights to around 10 different places each night (and at most of the places the hosts gave them something to eat or drink-you get SO full). The time that we went with them, we didn't return home until 2:30am.


Here we are caroling in Robinson's on Christmas Day. Some of the employees were even dressed up like Santa Claus and a cow(??).


Here Amanda is with two of our younger Thai friends at a Christmas production.


This picture was taken by our little neighbour who is five years old.


This picture was taken at the Tsunami memorial we went to in Phangnga on Dec.26. Thousands of these latterns (made out of rice paper) were let off to remember the thousands that died here.


Here I(Amber) am hanging out with the cows on an island that was greatly devestated by the tsunami. We went to visit some of the people while we were there.


This is my favourite picture. In the picture Amanda is hanging out with some of the kids on Koh Kho Khaw island.

For New Year's Eve, Amanda stayed here, in Phuket, with my parents, and celebrated with some friends of ours. But I had to rush off to Malaysia to do another visa run. God continues to show me that He is all I need. No matter where I go or what I do, He is there with me, watching me, protecting me, and loving me. No matter how alone I may be,I don't get lonely because the Creator of the Universe, who is also the Author of Love, never leaves my side. There is so much joy and peace in following and knowing Jesus.