Fun-filled last few days...

Sawadee Ka!

Everything's going really great here halfway across the world...I went to church here in Khu Khan for the first time on Sunday; there were only about 5 other adults besides the missionary family and us 5 college students. Although the whole service was in Thai, it was still exciting to get to see some kids and know what the local church is like. From what the missionaries have told me, there are very few believers in Thailand--in fact, during the 6 or 7 years that the Cobbs have been here they've probably just seen a handful of people get saved. It's kind of a struggle for us college summer missionaries to minister as well because we don't know Thai, so all we can do is just smile and nod at the people around us (which the Thai people love :). This morning we went to a school nearby to see if we could teach some English to the kids, but for some reason the school was closed for the day--there were only some really young kids, but they were about to be let out. David said you never know when a school will just randomly close...not for any particular reason, just kind of random, so we just learn to be flexible.

Instead, the 3 member team that gets to stay one more week, me & Kendall, and David went to another town and handed out Thai tracts to alot of the people there. Many of the people weren't home though because they were working; the ones we did see though were polite and took the tract even if they may not have wanted it, while others actually started reading it. Right when we were loading up to leave, the school in the village let out, so we gave tracts to the kids coming out and they were pretty excited to get them. Sometimes it's hard for us and the missionaries to know exactly how to minister to the people because we're limited with the language barrier and all, and the missionaries have seemed to get little interest in people going to church or learning about the gospel. The Thai-Khmer people are very friendly, it's just hard to get them to understand that pleasing spirits and worshiping dead ancestors is not what they need. Please pray that we would be able to search for and find ways to show the love of God to these wonderful people, and for us not to get too discouraged when we may not see people getting saved, etc.

Amidst the mission work, I've gotten to do some fun things to enjoy the Thai culture--including riding an elephant! Mondays are our days off, so the other missionaries were glad to take me and the other 3 college students to ride elephants and see a show in a town called Surin about 1 & 1/2 hours away. It was so much fun, and afterwards we went to a small mall where we got to bowl a little and eat pizza or KFC for dinner. We were all whooped at the end of the day, but now we can say we've ridden elephants before!

Thanks again for all your prayers...Luke 8:2~Hannah