Sunday, Oct 10, 2021 — QUARANTINE IS OVER!
We’re free! It’s a little scary…now we must be about the work God sent us here to do – with the many decisions that entails.
Pastor Luesak picked us up at our hotel this morning, (Sunday) and moved us to a guest room at the Thailand Adventist Mission (TAM). He has stored our household belongings for the duration of our 16 month trip to the US. The guest room is in the Thai church, directly behind his house. All pretty handy! We had supper with Pastor Luesak’s family and had a wonderful time discussing final prophetic events in the light of current news.
We will be discussing plans for our house in the days ahead – location on campus, floor plan, etc. Best to wait until things dry out after the rainy season to start building. We will look for a place to rent in MaeSot, about an hour south of the school, for 4-6 months while they build. MaeSot has a border crossing to Myanmar. Myanmar is in turmoil, and the Thai government, like the US, struggles with illegal immigrants crossing the border. There’s nothing new under the sun!
Monday morning we will visit the TAM office to process our work permit. We need to visit our bank to again access funds we left here. And, we need a truck, but we have scouts working on that!
Jonathan and Hannah are in Chiang Mai this weekend for a visa appointment on Monday. They’ve looked at three trucks so far — no, one sold before they got to it, so two truck and still looking. God has one in mind for us, and we’re praying for wisdom and discernment as we look. We so appreciate their willingness to be feet on the ground in northern Thailand.
Monday, Oct. 11 –
Jim’s work permit papers are on their way to the Department of Religion. They should be back in a week, and then the papers and passport go to the Labor department for another week. We can’t travel without the passport, so we either go north and mail the passport back to Bangkok or wait t weeks to head north. We’re praying for wisdom.
Dug out our Thai language books :-)
Jonathan and Hannah test drove a Toyota pickup for us today and we joined them with FaceTime. It looked good; we made an offer and bought it. God is so good! It’s a 2003 Toyota Hilux Tiger, 4WD (needed to access the school in rainy season) with a D-4D engine which gets superior fuel mileage. It’s diesel, as are most vehicles here. We’ll get to see it within a week or two. Then begins learning to drive on the left side of the road.
Tomorrow, Oct 14 –
Jonathan will bring our truck to us, we will fill it with stuff and go visit the kids for at least the weekend and maybe another week while the work permit is getting processed. Then, Lord willing, to Mae Sot and the school.
Thank you for your prayers, we are taking this journey one step at a time and God gives us His peace along the way.
Jim and Irene