For anyone still out there.....

If you haven't completely given up on my lack of blogging, here are some Christmas pictures. I spent Christmas weekend visiting different village churches, joining in with their Christmas parties and activities and found myself really encouraged. First, I loved the simplicity that Christmas is about the birth of Christ, and the parties celebrated that. Typically, the activities involved a meal together, a brief explanation of Christ's birth, fun games and songs and presents for the kids. Thais are really fun, joyful people and it was fun to play games together, sing, watch kids excitedly open gifts and be really thankful, whether it was a candy bar, flip flops, or a bag of rice! I of course had to join in the fun by singing in English. People were extremely gracious....

Here's a girl praying for our dinner....



Christmas Dinner....Thai style! Eating on the floor, everyone gets their own bowl of rice and shares common main dishes. We made wraps with lettuce, rice, fish and spicy hot sauce.


Here's me and my coworkers, notice the great Poinsetta Tree behind us, I am trying to grow one in front of my house right now, it's only 2 feet tall right now, I wonder if it'll make it to this great height??
For those of you who worry that my Christmas is looking a bit too rural and rustic, here's a picture of one of the Christmas trees in a huge mall in Bangkok....the contrasts of the rich and poor in Thailand never cease to amaze me.

Here are the some of the women at my church, who dressed in these traditional clothes to do a special Thai dance. I also have it on video, which I'm trying to figure out how to add to the blog site. I'm thankful for my church, I'm really enjoying it and slowly building relationships and friendships, and learning a lot about Thai rural life from these great people.


I made instant friends with these kids by playing soccer, the little guy dressed like Santa was so sad when I left. This church has a real outreach in their community with the kids through a soccer team, allowing them to travel, see different parts of Thailand, learn discipline and teamwork and achieve success while they work towards a common goal.