January 26, 2009: The University

Hello everyone. I have just finished doing a little yard work and Bum is in the kitchen making a birthday cake for one of the girls she is mentoring. We have had a wonderful day off today and I thank God for the days of rest that He gives us.

Not too much has happened this week, at least not that I was personally involved in. I got a call on Tuesday from a friend of mine who is also doing her internship and she told me that the first draft of our internship report paper was due Sunday the 25th. I had not even started thinking about the paper let alone typing it. Needless to say I have spent most of my non-teaching time writing the report. I turned it in via email on Sunday night still very much unfinished, primarily due to the fact that so is my internship. I have to send in the final draft by the 25th of February and then go to the university and give a presentation involving what all I have had to do during the internship. Then I got another call from the university on Friday morning telling me that a professor will be coming to see me about how my internship was going and to talk with Michael about the same. This was not a problem however I rather enjoyed being able to talk with the professor and she seemed quite happy with the report that Michael and myself gave her.

Sunday was a pretty busy day at the church. I had my Sunday school class as always. This Sundays lesson was on "The Joy, Power, and Wisdom of Jesus the Man". Last week was about "The Joy, Power, and Wisdom of Christ in salvation" And next week we will look at "The Joy, Power, and Wisdom of Jesus in Eternity". This is all part of a study we are doing based on a book by John Piper called "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ". After the service was over the staff and a few volunteers went and picked up a number of needy children from the neighborhood and brought them back to the church and had a late Christmas celebration with them. The reason for this was that the church had thirty-six Samaritan's Purse boxes for children and wanted to give them to the kids that lived near the church. They brought the kids in,i watched the Christmas story, sang songs and played games with them, and then gave them the boxes. It was a good time for everyone.

I am beginning the work for my online TEFL certification course. Please pray that I will stay diligent and finish the course well. This certification will help me to get a teaching job here after my internship is over. Pray also that God will direct me in exactly where it is he wants me to be after I finish with all of my internship requirements.

Bum is teaching through Genesis right now in her Sunday School class. She is doing this with two new believers, Nong Aoo (Sounds like Oh) and Nong Fa (Nong before a name means that the person is younger than you). Both of these girls are high school students and have a lot of uestions as they are studying. Pray for Bum that God would give her wisdom and insight into his teaching and help her through the Holy Spirit to know what to answer the questions raised in class and after. Bum has also come to me with question concerning some of the things the girls have asked her. Pray that I too will receive wisdom to answer questions brought to me.

That is about it for this week. I forgot the camera at the church office so no pictures right now but I will try to upload some soon. Here is an album for you while you wait.

Adventures with the Family: October 2008

I am also going to start back doing Thai Fun Facts each week (I used to do these in my news letter and some are fun others are just facts and some are serious but that is kind of a long title).

Fun Fact #1: Thailand is the Number one producer of rice in the world. Vietnam is 2nd and the US is 3rd.

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We love you all.

January 19, 2009: Pictures

Bum and I on our one year anniversary

Me in front of the I Berry ice cream shop in Chiang Mai. It is owned by a comedian/artist and this is one of his sculptures. you can't really tell but that thing is about 20 feet tall.

The family at Bums Great Uncles house

Bum and I at the bridge to Laos near her relatives house.

Another picture from our anniversary.













Me and our new dog Cookie. her name was going to Beatrice but Bum didn't like that name.













Bum and cookie.













Me, Bum, and Kim in Sukhothai. This is the ancient city that was the first capitol of Thailand (then known as Siam)












Me and Naam waan MCing for the Mae Fah Luang Christian Club Christmas celebration. God has worked in me a lot concerning my fear of being in front of people.









A group of us from the church made a small road trip up to Mah Salong. This is a mountain where they grow a lot of tea. I have been here many times but it was a first for some and the first time most of them had been here on the motorcycles.









At a tea plantation a few Kilometers away from the shop in the above picture.












Bum and I in a tea field.













After coming down off the mountain. We stopped to stretch and wait for some of the people to catch up. Our bike is the blue one. This was my primary means of transportation for over three years.









This is just a picture of me and Bum that I like.


















This is Bum's Dad and I cutting bananas from the stalks. He and some friends had been out all day harvesting and when they got home I got to help cut.











At Bell's (Bum's younger sister) baptism.













Bum and I in Nakhonsawan with some of her old friends. Bum is the only Christian these girls know on a personal level and probably at all (other than me now).










I hope you have enjoyed these pictures and i am planning on including pictures in most of my upcoming posts. I am going to try not to do this too often because it takes for ever to upload these and then to arrange and label them.

Grace and peace
Glynn and Bum

January 18, 2009: Annoyed for the Glory of God

It is Sunday afternoon and I am sitting in the Grace Language School office under the front stairway of the church. Kids are running around and playing. One of them who has decided evidently that he does not want to play has been screaming for no apparent reason for about 5 minutes now. I am not sure if this screaming is bothering anyone else the way it is me but thoughts of the child falling down or being knocked over by one of the larger kids, or even someone going to the child to comfort or discipline him fill me mind (the wheels begin to turn). Why do things bother me the way that they do? Why am I so irritated by little things like the faint screaming of a child or the rattle of a car window slightly ajar? Did Jesus ever get annoyed by little things like this? And if he did how did he use it to glorify God and bring him honor?

The answer I think has to do with perspective. What am I focused on when I am feeling annoyed? Usually, as with most situations in my life, my focus is on me and how the given situation/annoyance is affecting my happiness or peace. I am usually so absorbed and preoccupied with myself that it only serves to draw me deeper into me. Were my perspective to shift towards how this thing can be used in drawing out of myself and towards fellowship with God and glorifying Christ through my thoughts and actions then these troubling things would be seen as agents of God for spiritual growth instead of agents of Satan for disharmony and inner strife.

So how can I do this? First I will decide to use the annoyance as a stimulant. I am making a conscious decision to think of God and how to glorify him when something annoys me. I think that I will begin to look at annoying situations more as blessings than annoyances as I continue to pray for God to use them to work through me to glorify himself. Next I will act on the annoyance (blessing) to be an agent of change in the situation in a way that honors and glorifies God. In the case of the screaming kid I mentioned earlier I can see several possible pointers to glorifying God:

1. Go to the child and do all that I can to bring peace to him. Whatever you do to the least of these you have done to me.
   
2. 12.6 % of the worlds total population is undernourished according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Most of these are Children (33% of the worlds children are undernourished), that is a lot of crying children. I commit myself to pray for the worlds hungry children every time I hear a child scream. (UNFAO 2006)
   
3. According to estimates from the UNAIDS 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic, around 30.8 million adults and 2 million children were living with HIV at the end of 2007. That is a lot of children that will probably die as children. Again, pray.
4. I know of many children that need prayer, a big brother to love them, a friend to play with them...I can actively seek them out and fill what ever need I find them to be in at that time.

It is not hard to see opportunities to bless others and glorify God if I will just stop looking so intently at myself. Please pray that in what ever I do, whether I eat, or drink, or react to an annoyance I will do it all to the glory of the Lord.

This was just a reflection I had and wanted to share with you guys. Bum is upstairs at a Sunday School Teacher training workshop and I am still sitting in the office writing this blog. Last night we had a small dinner at the house with a few of the girls from the church to celebrate Lek's graduation from an online Bachelors degree program. We will not be able to go to the actual graduation so we did this just a way to be able to fellowship with her give thanks to God for His helping her accomplish second university degree. I got to make spaghetti for diner and this was the first time i have ever made the sauce completely from scratch. i think it turned out alright and we all had a great time.

Friday night I put on the second English Coffee House for Grace Language School. Coffee House is a way for us to bet together with students outside of class and build relationships that go beyond those of the teacher student classroom relationships. I feel as though this coffee house did not go nearly as well as the first one did. The first coffee house was a Thanksgiving/Halloween themed night where we spent most of the time playing games and talking about the two holidays. The picture here is of me dressed (rather last minute) as Kung Fu Panda. Please pray for God to help me as I begin planning for the next coffee house. It will be food themed and I will be playing the fear factor all your favorite foods in a blender and drink them game (reference Gregg Key, a happy meal, and nausea). Also pray for me to become a better leader and planner. I think I lack skills in delegating responsibility and time management. Most of you know that it is my goal to be a preacher/teacher one day and to plant churches in unchurched regions of the country. I think that I lack many skills that will be useful in accomplishing these goals and ask that you would pray for me as I work towards becoming all that God would have me to be in Christ Jesus. I ask for this in regards to both spiritual and practical ways as I try to walk, and work, and minister to the world that I we are in and not of.

My teaching load has gone from one class two times a week to two classes three times a week plus the original one class twice a week. All the classes are after lunch so I am pretty busy in the afternoons. I have been able to share the gospel in two of the three classes naturally due to the fact that we talk about Christmas and Resurrection Sunday (Easter) in those classes. Pray that God will open doors for the gospel to be proclaimed more often in natural and effective ways. Also pray that God would draw people to himself and "shine in [their] hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ Jesus."(2 Cor 4:6)

Bum and the rest of the church staff along with Michael's family and the Webb family (Our friends and members of the church) went yesterday to Open Arms to minister to Burmese and Thai street children living near the Thai Burmese border. Open Arms in a ministry of a member of our church named Frank. The staff and others go to his building near the boarder to help play with feed and bless the children in various ways. Saturday they took about 30 boxes from Samaritan's Purse to give out to the kids. Bum said they had a great time and I think that she was probably blessed just as much as the kids were in her service to them. For any of you who may not have met Bum she is in the front of the picture wearing the pink shirt, pink scarf, and huge smile. I think that you would agree that God has blessed me much more than I deserve. As for Bum, perhaps God is using me to punished her for some great unconfessed sin. Poor Bum.

That is about it for this week (I'm sure its not, but I can't think of the rest right now). I will try this evening when we get home to post some pictures of what all has been going on along with some other pictures of general Glynn and Bum day to day living. Also in closing if you have any questions about anything that Bum and I do or are involved in or are just curious about Thailand and the people that we are ministering to please feel free to ask here or send it to me in an email at life_nchrist@yahoo.com.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
For the glory of His name
Glynn and Bum
2 Corinthians 1:3-7

New Year, New Blog

It is January 7th and I am sitting at the office thinking of how little I tell people about what is going on in my life. So I am going to start posting and updating this blog as often as I possibly can. I think this will be easier for me than trying to write emails, I am not really sure why that is but we will see.

Here is a very general sweep of what is going on in my life right now and what will be happening, God willing, in the near future.

I have now been married for one year and nine days and it has been a very sweat year. As Bum and I grow in our marriage relationship I am also growing in my understanding of my relationship with Christ as his bride. I thank God for the gift that he has given me in Bum and in the lives of other married people as examples and inspirations for Bum and I to emulate. I am going through John Piper's book This Momentary Marriage and am enjoying seeing marriage filtered through the lens of scripture in stead of contaminated by modern culture and the worship of self for the sake of I.

I am working at Grace Language School (GLS) as an intern for my second semester of my last year at Mae Fah Luang University. GLS is an outreach of Baan Atithaan Church to both benefit the community and open doors to spread the gospel. I work as a teacher and recruiter for GLS and do anything else that pretty much anybody asks me to do. As recruiter I would like to take a second to say if any of you are or know of any recent college graduates that would like to come to Thailand for 1-2 years as volunteers for GLS please contact me so that I can help them get here or give them more information. So far in my internship I have taught over 50 hours, planed Friday night activities for the students, helped arrange a three day English camp, and various other things around the church and school. My internship will end at the end of February and then I will begin working full time for a school that I have been teaching at on Saturdays for the past three years.

Bum and I are planing to come to the States some time next year to stay for 2-3 years. I hope to go to seminary while we are there but that will largely depend on how much financial support I am able to raise before and while we are there. After our time in the states is over we will move back to Thailand and settle in a city called Nakonsawan. This is an almost totally unreached area consisting primarily of ethnic Thai peoples (almost 1 million as of 2006 census). Bum has a lot of friends who live in this city and they all tell her that she is the only Christian that they know. We hope to move there start a small business/teach English and begin a house church. Please pray that God would establish our plans and lead our steps.

That's about it for my first post. Please keep Bum and I in your prayers and know that we will be praying for you.

Philippians 2:3-5