valentine's day.

happy valentine's day. i love you! :) I KNOW that sounds totally cheesy, but it's true. I don't feel like it's just a day for lovers, I feel like it's a day to celebrate LOVE.
I LOVE Valentine's day. I love love. I mean, the idea that there's this invisible force that can tie people together and connect them and bring joy and pain and suffering and fun and happiness is so beautiful to me. I pray that God's love is real to you today and only increases.
I have about 16 weeks until I come home, but I feel like God is telling me to come back after the summer until January. So I'll be home (South Carolina) in June and probably leave again in late August and will stay in Thailand from late August to January. So, unless God delivers some BiG different message, that's the path.

Thai phrases of the day: *please note, these phrases do not include tones, and yes there are 5 of them*
1. Aahaan Thai phet kwaa aahaan farang kha. - Thai food is more spicy than white folks food.
2. Dichan ja bye boat wan aathiit kha. - I will go to church on Sunday.
3. Dichan rak khun kha. - I love you.
4. Hong naam thii nay kha? - Where is the bathroom?

Jesus is rad quote of the day: Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

sporty sports day.

Normally, the school takes the entire Superbowl Monday and turns it into "Sports Day". We had to postpone it a week though, b/c of the rain, you'll see our new "field" and you can imagine it after a couple days of rain. So I was on the official "Olympic Committee" jk, but I did get a plan and help a lot :) It was so wonderful seeing our hard work being paid off by the kids enjoying their day. We did the 400 Meter Dash, 60 M dash, shotput, discus, high jump, broad jump, long jump, baseball throw, basketball shootout, soccer shootout and football throw. The kids were divided up into 5 teams, Lithuania, Zimbabwe, Mongolia, Madagascar and Brazil. It was a fun day, here are some pictures...

Lithuania, the winning team!

So intense!

The Elementary girls running the 400 m dash.

Teak doing the high jump. I can't lie, she's one of my favorite students.

This is the amazing Pii Apa. He works "maintence" for the school, and he's great. He lined the field and is super-helpful. If you look back at the Akha Hilltribe village we visited, he lives there in one of those homes.

grace = unmerited favor.

Here's a picture of my niece b/c she's so cute. She just gets in her car seat and trusts, she doesnt doubt that her Mom and Dad are going to take her somewhere wonderful, she doesnt worry about the ride. She just plays where she is and knows that they've got it all under control...

If you've never had to fall on your face before God and ask Him for forgiveness, I feel sorry for you.

If you've never had to fall on your face before another person and ask for forgiveness, I also feel sorry for you.

I had to do both recently. It was an extremely humbling feeling, knowing that your future depends on the way that these beings respond to your apology and repentance. The idea that your next few moments or days or life or eternity depends on whether you're forgiven or not is an extremely humbling feeling. Derek Webb says "you're only free when you have no choice". I believe it...there is freedom in knowing that your only option is to trust the One who will not love you any less or more tomorrow than He does today or did yesterday.

I had to apologize to my supervisor and his wife and it was really difficult, but really beautiful. After I nervously delivered the truth of my sin, they didn't even have to look at each other to decide that they were going to forgive me. They just knew. I really desire that one day, to be so in synch with my husband that we know we will give someone immediate grace when they sin against us. Like in Luke 17, when Jesus says to His disciples, "If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins 7 times a day and 7 times comes back to you and says 'I repent', forgive him." As Christians, Jesus told us to forgive. Not only did they forgive me, but they gave me so much GRACE. They prayed over me, said I was released and told me they loved me. I left their home knowing I had experienced Christianity.
However much love and grace they gave me however, I know that His love and grace and truth abounds all the more...

seriously?

So, one of my very cool students, Emily, wrote this note about a motorbike accident she saw on the side of the road...

I saw a dead body today.We were just driving to drama practice, the same road we drive at least twice everyday. I wonder where he was going. On a stretch of road normally deserted, there were at least forty people, mingling casually. Death interests people. I wonder if he was popular while alive. While driving past this crowd, expecting a parade of sorts, I see a bundle wrapped in blood-soaked cloth. I wonder if he liked the color white.His body was lying on the side of the road. Everyone was just staring at the once-alive body now haunting the corner. I wonder if he really lived. It’s over for him. No more chances. All those thoughts he had buried inside him will never be known. I wonder if he was married.Maybe he left behind a family. Maybe he never said “I love you” to the woman he truly loved. I wonder what he wanted.And worst of all…I wonder if he knew Jesus. Did yet another human die without knowing the freedom and love of Jesus Christ? What if I could’ve told him? What if my lack of boldness cost him his introduction to Jesus? I wonder.

Well, so afterward, she found out that there were in fact 2 dead bodies. A family had been on a motorbike. The pregnant mother, a father and a small child. The mother had died instantly and the son had a broken leg (and later died in ICU), but the father got stuck under the truck and the truck driver didn't stop...because as all Thai's know, if you hit someone, it's just better to kill them, b/c if you hit them and they survive, then you have to pay for their entire hospital bill, but if they die, you only have to pay their family 40,000 baht (around $1200). It's amazing how as a race or culture we feel as though we can put a price on a life...

maybe...

Alright, so here's what's going on...still struggling a little bit with the plan...
This weekend at church the message was about how sometimes the things that seemed foolish at the time, turned out to glorify God the most. For example, have you heard the story about Gideon? Alright, this guy had an army of 32,000 men and God was like..."that's too many men for me to show My power, just so I make sure you can't brag - I'm going to reduce that number"...and then God told him, "separate those who lap the water like a dog from those who kneel down to drink...and take the 300 who lapped and I'm going to give the Midianites into your hands." That doesn't seem to make sense, does it?
Another foolish thing to the world's eyes is that Mary had a baby as a virgin. The speaker said people probably asked, "Who's your baby's daddy" Mary said "God". Probably looked kind of foolish to the world.
So maybe the idea of staying another year looks foolish compared to the world's standards. "You probably should go home and get a teaching job with a good salary and good healthcare and be saving money up." I dont think it would be an easy decision to come back next year. It's actually kind of hard for me to even type about, but God is sovereign...always is, always was, always will be...

Thai Phrase of the day: Dichan rak sawn thii FLC kha! I love to teach at FLC!

Jesus is rAd quote of the day: and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it. - matt 10:39. (that sounds a lot like faith to me...)

step by step.

I feel like this is a theme that God wants me to follow right now, here's how He communicated it.
So lately, I've been feeling a little pressure to make a decision about what I'm going to do next year. Whether I come back to Thailand, stay in SC, move to Montana (I don't know I just feel drawn there) or whatever...So I was feeling totally stressed about this...what am I going to do?!?!?
Then, last Saturday, Damaris and I went and did a little hiking around and we were going up to this waterfall and there were some really steep, difficult concrete "stairs" going up the side of the mountain. As I was climbing them, God said..."look, these stairs aren't easy andyou have to focus on one at a time".
I told Damaris that God just revealed that to me and it reminded me of one time in college when me and Sarah Anne and a few other girls were riding in Sarah Anne's car (connie) and the radio was turned down really low and we were talking about our futures and wondering who we were going to marry...and all the sudden without anyone touching it, the radio turned up in the song right at the line that says "and step by step I'll lead you"...and we all were in shock.
If I didn't have the point by then, God really wanted to drive it home by making sure that we sung that same song - "and step by step I'll lead you" in church last Sunday.
And He know's I'm stubborn and oblivious sometimes, so He even made sure that my friend Kyndra told me too. She said that God kind of told her that I just have take things one step at a time...
pretty rad huh?
so that means that my next step is home to Columbia on June 24 and looks like Charleston after that. please pray that i keep my eye on this step and all that God wants me to do here! thanks!

whyowhy?

Why do you think it is that people (Christians) naturally go 1 of 2 ways...
1. When life is good, they're always thinking about and praising God, spending all sorts of time in the word and in prayer and then when things turn bad, they turn the focus inward and forget what's important.
2. When life's peachy, they forget about thanking God and just think about themselves and when things turn bad, they immediately turn to Him for help.

**my camera is broken for a bit...im going to take it to the Canon store to see what they can do, so I won't have too many pictures until then :(