Unusual Sunday!

This past Sunday, we had a very unusual day. At around 6 a.m., as I was praying and preparing for our Sunday services, I was alarmed when my doorbell began to ring over and over again. It was quite unusual for me to have anyone ring my doorbell let alone repeatedly. I opened the door to a man yelling, "Naam Tuam!, Naam Tuam!!" This is the Thai word for "flood"! I did what every man who has a man standing there yelling in a foreign language at him, I smiled shook my head up and down and said, "OK!" 

I walked out to the gate, as he ran to the next house to warn the sleeping neighbors, and saw about two inches of water in the street. To me two inches was not a reason to be alarmed, so I turned around to go back inside. After warning my sleeping neighbors of the flood, the man came running back over to my gate and told me that I needed to get my car out of my driveway to save it from the coming flood. We talked for a few minutes and I noticed the water was now higher than it was just a few minutes ago. I decided that I would move my car, if nothing more than to make our personal Paul Revere feel like he did a good job. 

As I drove through the neighborhood, there were some places that had up to six inches of flooding, but there were many streets that had no flooding in anyway. We parked the car and walked back to our house through the flooded streets. Jacob and Abby decided they would pass the morning hours before church by throwing leaves into the flooded street. They were outside for about five minutes before Jacob started yelling frantically for me to come outside. I jumped up and ran outside expecting the water to be overflowing and coming into the driveway. When I got to where Jake and Abby were, they were yelling, "A fish! A fish!" In my driveway sat a six in long snakehead fish. I asked how they got it, and they said that it "climbed" not "swam" into the driveway. They were so proud of themselves, and had me take pictures of it so that I could show it to everyone. 

Life in the mission field is sometimes difficult, usually fulfilling, but always an adventure. This is just one story of our extraordinary lives in an extraordinary country. Follow along as the seven of us enjoy our service to God and experience the adventures of the mission field.