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April 2016

I just wanted to send this update that Gavin wrote for our board.  It is pretty informative.  The only thing I would add is that Rani got all A's except for and 89 in English on her last report card.  I had to help her not to be disappointed!    She made some nice friends and was enjoying the last bit of school much better.  Thank you all for your prayers for her.  

Below is Gavin's update from the trip he took to Thailand in May to take Rani home for summer break and to check on the ministry there.

This week Candace is completing the final week of a three-week summer class for an alternative program that helps her get licensed to teach in Arkansas.  She has already been offered AND accepted a position to teach 7th and 8th grade English in Maynard, AR.  It is a small farming community with a high poverty rate, similar to the one where she grew up.  Candace really believes that God has led her to this, and she's reaI just wanted to send this update that Gavin wrote for our board.  It is pretty informative.  The only thing I would add is that Rani got all A's except for and 89 in English on her last report card.  I had to help her not to be disappointed!    She made some nice friends and was enjoying the last bit of school much better.  Thank you all for your prayers for her.  

Below is Gaivin's update from the trip he took to Thailand in May to take Rani home for summer break and to check on the ministry there.

This week Candace is completing the final week of a three-week summer class for an alternative program that helps her get licensed to teach in Arkansas.  She has already been offered AND accepted a position to teach 7th and 8th grade English in Maynard, AR.  It is a small farming community with a high poverty rate, similar to the one where she grew up.  Candace really believes that God has led her to this, and she's really looking forward to it.

I got a real estate salesperson's license in Arkansas a little while ago, and I've been doing a lot of informal training on-line - there is tons of free stuff available.  I began my efforts to get listings in earnest after getting back from Thailand, after taking Rani back.  

After reducing our support to the children's homes in Mae Chaem and Nohbo, we committed to supporting Rani (here in the U.S.) and the two college girls (Saa and Beebee) in Chiang Mai.  We also committed to supporting another girl who lived in our house in Mae Chaem (Noke, who is now a high school senior).  While I was in Thailand last month, I ran into one of my former students (and then met her with one of her friends, also a former student of mine).  After meeting with them, I cannot explain meeting them as being accidental.  

So, we (me and Candace - we believe in obedience to God's leading) decided to support these girls (Fah and Sea) at university, also.  This falls in line with our belief that it is at the level between graduating high school and getting to university that there seems to be a great need for help.  We have told ALL of these students that we have made these commitments to them without knowing where the funds are coming from.  We have asked them all to pray for success in gaining or earning ourselves the support we need.  They are aware and seem happy to be a part of the same leap of faith.  

We plan to give as much as we possibly can from our own earnings to support these girls and trust God that it will be enough or that He will bring alongside others who feel called to help them as well. 

I was thinking of having our annual meeting in the beginning of September.  I'll send out date/time requests as that draws nearer.

Thank you so much for your continued support and prayers.

Gavin and Candace

January 2016

Dear Friends,

This will most likely be my last update from Thailand.  We leave for America next week!  Today we are having freakish weather.  It is like a wonderful rainy fall day.  Rani and I went to a coffee shop this morning and she had her first hot cocoa ever.  We sat outside even though it was cold and misty just soaking in the loveliness of it all.  Here is a picture.    Rani has already gotten her first coat and is getting ready for her first plane ride.  I am excited about all the firsts.

But mixed up in all the “firsts” are a lot of” lasts” too as I say goodbye to this beautiful and horrible country that has been my home, my love, my hate, my despair and my frustration and, in a lot of ways, the place of my redemption.  So much of who I am now was formed here and God used it to make me what He needs me to be.   It was here I became a mom and a teacher and these things I hope I will continue to be for the rest of my life.

               The hardest “lasts” are saying goodbye not to a place but to so many people who I have loved and who have loved me back.  Especially, the children I have watched grow up.  There are at least 7 of them coming to see us off at the airport.  We will especially miss our dear girl Saa who is going off to university to become a fabulous English teacher.  It is good that in all these “lasts” with her she is having some “firsts” of her own. 

We took her and her cousin BeeBee to their university.  We chose a dorm for them that is more expensive but where they will be housed with international students so they can continue to use their English.  We went this weekend to buy her first pair of high heels because the universities in this country require freshmen girls to wear black high heeled pumps.  I thought nothing in Thailand could surprise me anymore but that one did.  She had never been in a shoe shop before where you had to ask for your size so she kept trying on the one shoe that was out and saying oh it doesn’t fit and putting it back till I was ready to strangle her!  It was a very difficult concept for her to grasp.  So she got some “comfortable” high heels that she can’t really walk in but she has them. 

               The two university girls also got computers.  Saa is so excited about hers that even after having it for a week, she still replaces the dust cover over the keyboard every time she is finished typing.   It is very silly but also cute how much she loves it. 

               We have also had some wonderful news from the children’s home in Mae Chaem.  They had 14 children become Christians and were baptized.  Some of them we had had for a few years.  One child had their whole family come to Christ.  The focus of the home has changed, as the Thai staff have made it their own.  It has gone from being a home that trains up Christian children to be leaders to becoming focused on evangelism through the children first, then their families and eventually entire villages.  This is the vision of the pastor that we work with and the home is now under his leadership as we have stepped back more and more from the home.  It is the way it should be, with Thai pastors and workers ministering to their own people.  I think it is a good goal for every missionary to become absolutely and totally irrelevant to the work except for prayer and friendship.  That is where we are now with our homes.

Sometimes, when it has been hard for me to let go, God reminds me that the children’s home was never mine to begin with.  It was always His.  The way we started was so miraculous and while we were building the children’s homes it seemed like miracles happened almost daily.  God was so faithful and He always will be. 

So we leave next week, Wednesday, February 3^rd. Rani is coming with us to attend school as I mentioned before.  She is very excited and has been studying very hard to get ready for high school in America.  She has become a book worm of the highest order.  She plowed through the Hunger Games but it took her months but I gave her a more realistic fiction book and she fell in love.  She read it in a week, and the next one I gave her she read in a few days and now it is getting difficult to keep her in books.  I took her to the book store and she put her arms around an entire shelf of books and said I want to read all of these.  She has turned into….well….. ME!  I totally relate to the obsession. It is good to get her to America where English books are cheaper!  But nothing could be better for her English.  

We just ask prayer for us as we transition.  Pray for her that she will have no trouble getting into the country.  Even though she has a visa, I believe letting her in the US is at the discretion of the passport control officer.  Please pray for her too as she adjusts to American life and starts school.  I know it will be a challenge for her but she is one of the hardest working, most determined people I know.  Pray for Gavin and I as we look for jobs.  My teaching certificate is from Minnesota and not worth much in Arkansas.  They don’t recognize ESL as a valid, stand-alone license.   It is disappointing since I studied in graduate school for 3 years to get it and I love teaching so much, it hardly seems like work to me though, of course, it is ridiculously hard work.

Thank you to all those who have supported us over all these years.   We will continue to support the three girls through college and the Nohbo (refugee) children’s home for one more year.   You are all very loved and appreciated. 

Love,

Pictures 2015

October 2015

Dear Friends,

I haven’t written in a while so please excuse the very long email! 

Gavin and I have been enjoying a break from school.  In Thailand, the schools take a 3 week break after the first term.  It was nice to rest and focus on other things after a very busy, sometimes stressful first term.   We start back on Monday. 

Rani has been brilliant at school.  She finished the term in the top 5 in my English class.  She won the best actress award, voted in by the other students, for her role as Helena in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The duplication of information frustrates her because she is so desperate to learn, and desperate to be able to go to a good school in the future.  For this reason, we have decided that next year she will study at Ridgefield Christian School in Jonesboro, Arkansas.  She interviewed and was accepted by the school and we picked up her student visa on Monday.    She will go end of February and we will go with her.  Lisa, will go to a local Christian college here in Chaing Ma to study to be a teacher.

So our time in Thailand is ending and I can’t help but look back at the last time we left Thailand.  I was so sick and depressed that I literally wanted to die.  I left in a mess of failure and broken dreams.  I had no idea even who I was if I wasn’t a professional missionary.  Now I know that being a missionary is not who I am but what I do.  I know that my work goes on, wherever I live, to live out my faith for others to see, to die to myself and follow Him every day.  Caring for the poor, widows and orphans is not the job only of missionaries but of the church.  It is not bound to geography or profession but the mandate of every one of us who will stand before Christ someday and hope to hear Him say “Well done”.

We are going home and while so many things did not work out the way we thought they would, I think they worked out the way He wanted them to.  Gavin and I think we came here for two girls and we wonder, would we have come if we would have known it was for just two?   We are thankful for all God has done in these last two years.  The children’s home in Mae Chaem is growing closer and closer to being self-supporting.  We mentored 5 other children who have lived with us at various times and we hope we have had an impact on their lives.  We saw three of our girls baptized and one saved.        

I got an update from our director of our children’s home in Mae Chaem and she gave me list of our graduates from the last ten years and what they are doing now.  Six of our children, who grew up with us, are teachers now.  One young woman runs her own children’s home, serving over a hundred children.  We have eight young men and women who have graduated Bible school and all but one is actively working in ministry.  There will be more.  Two of our graduates last year went to study to be teachers and our Lisa who is with us now, just realized her calling to teach.  I could see it on her for a while and I kept trying to steer her that way and this break gave her a chance to help her aunt in the village school and she fell in love with teaching.  She is the most loving, nurturing, gentle girl you could ever meet.  Her English is so good and she is what her Karen people desperately need.   All of you wonderful sponsors who have helped us for so many years, thank you!  This is your work, and your sacrifice that helped these young people to be able to achieve their dreams.

Attached are some pictures.

Love you all!

Candace

 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’  Matthew 25:45-46

May 2015

Dear Friends,

Hello from Thailand!   The season has just changed from hot to rainy and it has been a welcome change.  When we landed here on May 3^rd at 11 PM the pilot cheerfully announced that it was 95 degrees outside.  All I could think was, yep, that sounds right! 

I don’t remember when I have been so busy.  I must have been crazy to take an online course over my summer break.  I thought that having two weeks of overlapping end of course and first week of school wouldn’t be a big deal.  It was a big deal.  I had jet lag, final projects to do, and found out I am teaching an extra grade and three health classes on top of the full schedule I already had.   I teach 7^th through 9^th grade, English and Health.  In so many ways, what I am doing now is like being a first year teacher, I am writing lesson plans for every class, nothing I did last year is transferrable to this new teaching situation.  Last year I taught “Where are you going? I am going to the market”.  This year I am teaching  Romeo and Juliet.  The only thing last year has been helpful for was learning to manage a class which of course is the same everywhere.

We ended up with 4 students coming with us.  We lost one because her father decided he didn’t want her to go so far away from him.  Another girl just decided she wanted to stay in Mae Chaem a few more years and maybe come to the city when she was in 10^th grade.  So we have two girls and two boys.  They are the brave ones.  The boys looked a little shocked the first week and I was a bit worried about them.  They seem to be doing better.  Our 12^th grader, who I was worried about the most (she has NO classes in Thai, only English) seems to be doing the best.  She seems happy and enjoys the challenge.  Our 9^th grader, who was always first in her class is struggling with not being the best.  She is so competitive, she cannot bear not being the best.  But there are kids in her class who have a mom or dad who are from a Western country and are basically native speakers.    One girl in her class speaks 4 languages, plays the piano and is good at everything.  I tell her, just ignore her because people like that are annoying.  Do your best and you will be fine.

I see her struggle with perfectionism and I see myself.  Being a perfectionist and trying to be a teacher do not go together.  I find I can lose a nights sleep over losing my temper in class, or teaching a boring lesson or a million other things I do wrong.    What we are doing here is so difficult that it is teaching me to rely on God more and more.  I finally just told God this week, I am never going to be any good at this unless You make me good.  It gives me peace to think of it that way.  All I can do is my best and trust God for creative ideas, for wisdom, for grace, for strength, for energy and for love for my students.

I thought when we came to Chiang Mai, that it was for our 4 students and that was our ministry here.  I love working with poor children,  that is all I have ever done.   I had no interest in working with kids who can afford a private school like the one we work at.  However, I am seeing how starved many of these students are for love and attention and I wonder what further purpose God has for me with them.   I know God will show me more about His plan and how I can help these kids. 

I feel so blessed in so many ways.  We have a lovely home now and so many comforts that we didn’t have before.  I do like my job though it is totally consuming and I work all the time.   I know that I never feel God’s presence as much as I do when I am in Thailand.  It is not what I would have chosen for myself, but it is pretty clear that this is my place in the world.  I trust the One who knows me better than I know myself and loves me unconditionally and lavishly.  Our neighborhood is filled with plumeria blossoms.  These are the flowers that you often see on a Hawaiian lei.  The ones we have are pure white and very fragrant.  The trees are absolutely full of these gorgeous, fragrant flowers and they shower the ground with blossoms.  I often look for a perfect one to pick it up and bring home to put in a bowl of water.  There are so many and they speak to me of God’s grace, so lavish, so extravagant and so absolutely lovely that it seems almost wasteful.   His Grace is like that, filling our lives with its beauty and fragrance, if we dare to walk, every day, with Him. 

We love you all,

Candace

January 2015

Dear Friends,

This morning we celebrated the baptism of three of our girls who live with us.  I am attaching photos from this morning.  Two of them grew up in Christian families but had never been baptized.  One of them is from a family of new believers.  As I was talking to one of them about being baptized she said that sometimes she is afraid that after she is baptized she will make a mistake.  I had to laugh and tell her that I promise her she will make many mistakes after she is baptized, probably every day and that is okay.  That is why Jesus died, because we can’t be perfect, we just have to accept His perfection as our own.  It was a happy day.  It was also a hard day for our youngest girl, Joonie, whose family is Buddhist.  She has become a Christian here at our home but her family will not let her be baptized and do not even realize she is a Christian.  They don’t want her to be a Christian but of course they can’t do anything about the fact that she loves God.  I talked with her and cried with her and let her know that God loves her and has a special plan for her life.  When we were praying about the children to take into our family, God made it clear that this girl, even though she is supposedly Buddhist, is very special to Him and we were to take her with us.  We just pray for her family and someday I know I will watch her be baptized as well.

As I was watching our girls standing there waiting for the baptismal service to start, I looked around at the jungle mountains around us and I was struck by how different it is from the place I was baptized in.  They were singing in their lovely Karen language and it was beautiful to me.  I thought about when I was baptized as a young girl and how I had no idea, that someday I would be a missionary in Thailand and all this strangeness would be normal for me.  But God knew.  God saw this day way back then as I knelt and gave my heart to Him.  And He sees what these girls will become as well.   He, no doubt, will do in their lives, way more than they ever dreamed, just like He has for me.

God has been working in a great way in our lives as we are preparing to move to Chiang Mai.  The idea of looking for a house was very stressful to me because Chiang Mai is a two and a half hour trip through the mountains.  It is very hard driving and going there and back on a Saturday.  After teaching all week, it is very tiring.  We were preparing to have to start traveling there on weekends to look for a house when I got an email from some dear friends who were closing up their house in Chiang Mai to move back to the States.  We met them and got their house, much of their furniture and house things (at second hand prices) and their truck!  The house is in a very quiet, safe neighborhood, 15 minutes from our school.  It is nicer than anything I have had in Thailand (screens on the windows!)  and big enough for us and our 6 children for a very reasonable price.  Our truck is 17 years old and we cannot fit all our children inside out of the rain so a new truck (similar to an SUV) was definitely an answer to prayer.    We just were stunned at how God provided for us so splendidly. 

Thank you so much for all of you who pray for us and support us so faithfully.  God is definitely working in our lives and in our new family.  Having 5 girls in our house is definitely stretching sometimes but for all its challenges, we get so much more joy.  They are wonderful girls - driven, studious, funny, silly and sometimes very wise.  We love them and are excited to see what God has planned for them.  We are still looking for sponsors for their school tuition next year.   Please consider sponsoring one of them next year in the bilingual school they will be attending.  All of their school fees for 6 children together come to about $500 a month.    God Bless you!

Love,

Candace