Party!!

Just a quick note - Last night we all went to a joint birthday party for a few of the missionaries here whose birthdays are in January. One of our fellow team-mates was celebrating his 60th. The party was held at one of our missionary partner's home. Barbeque, curry, tacos, and ice cream cake with a lot of time to fellowship, and the traditional "coin toss" filled out the evening.

The party was a whole lot of fun. All of the Thai pastors that we work with were there as well as most of the PABWE (Phillippine Assoc. of Baptists...) missionaries that work in and around Bangkok.

Hope you are all having a good week. You are all continually in my thoughts and prayers.

In His Love,

Bethany

IndoChina Conference

This past week we attended a regional mission's conference that was held in Trat, Thailand (see map). We had a total of 18 missionaries plus MK's coming in from 5 different coutries, including ours. It was held at a resort that was right on the Bay of Thailand. The conference was over 4 days and our key speaker was Jim Ruff from the ABWE home office - He and his wife Jan were missionaries to Japan for over 20 years before coming off the field to work full time at the home office.

The Conference was great! Jim & Jan Ruff are such encouraging people!! Jim spoke on Asian Theologies and the elements of good missionary field teams. Excellent. We had the whole resort to ourselves, so our off times were very relaxing. I really hope we can have another one next year. It was so nice to get to know some of our other missionaries around the world and hear what God is doing there.

Love to you all,

Bethany

Happy Holidays

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's with your friends and families. For me it was a wonderful time to celebrate in the Joy of the Season with my new friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. Although it was very tough being away from you all.

We had a 3 week break over the holidays. The week before Christmas we were able to take in a few Christmas concerts (including the Messiah) and some of the Thai church's Christmas outreach programs.

Christmas Eve - Lesa and I had dinner with some of the Fillipino missionaries and their friends and family (most of whom we already knew). We spent Christmas Day cooking, watching Christmas movies, and talking to our families at home.

The day after Christmas we hosted a birthday party for one of the Thai's. They brought the party - we supplied the venue. It was all our Thai friends from Bang Khen Baptist Church. We had a blast!! Games, food, testimony time, and lots of great fellowship and laughter.

New Year's was spent at a picnic hosted by a Thai family from our church. Later, Lesa and I watched the fireworks from our roof.

That's all for now. Many blessings to you all, this 2008. I look forward to talking to you again soon,

Love in Christ,

Bethany