Hello From the Regions Beyond

Those of you who only get updates about our lives through this blog probably are wondering, "what happened? Did they make it back ok?"  Yes, we made it back safely to Cambodia.  It was a long trip but we made it safely.  Upon our arrival we met up with some dear friends from our home church; the Pate family.  Kris and Julie, Anna, David, Thomas, and Daniel.  They stayed with us for about three weeks.  They came in from Texas to help us by substitute teaching some of our classes. Julie also helped out in our home while Jennifer and I adjusted to the new addition to our family.  Kris and I worked on some computer lab stuff and he proved to be a skilled and tireless worker.  And their kids helped to make sure Katherine never had a dull moment! They were such a blessing!  Here is a link to their blog site which describes their trip.

http://joylogblog.blogspot.com

Life has returned to a more normal routine the past few weeks.  I have been working with Daniel, my Translation Teammate, to finish translating some reformed literature.  These are the books we have been working on:

1689 Confession (95% done) - 3rd edition - added proof texts, revised wording, added study questions (Public Domain)
Life by His Death - John Owen (35%) done - A book about what Christ accomplished on the cross (With Permission)
Christian Beliefs - Wayne Grudem (15% done) - Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know (With Permission)

Please pray for these important books to be translated accurately.  Pray God would supply the printing costs.


God bless,
Bill

Going Home & The December 2009 Newsletter

We are planning to take the 4:30 PM train back to Bangkok tomorrow.  After arriving we will take a taxi to the Cambodia border which is a five hour drive.  If the family travels well, God willing, we will pickup our car and drive back home (another 5 hour drive).  Please pray we will arrive safely and enjoy returning to our work in Cambodia.

Also, Jennifer’s mom left to go back to Texas this morning.  We were so happy to have her help and her company for the three weeks that she was with us. She was a blessing.

 The Hales!  Katherine, Me, Jennifer, and Isaac.

Finally, Pastor Chheng sent out a newsletter to give an update on the ministry.  It has lots of information that will help inform your prayers for the work.  Here it is:

December 2009 Newsletter

 

Peace,

Bill

It’s in the DNA

We have been looking at Isaac and talking about who he looks like, me or Jennifer?  Then we opened up some pictures of Katherine when she was a newborn to see if there were any similarities.  Here is what we saw:

They look almost exactly the same!  Same chin, mouth, nose, eyes.  So we concluded that they must have the same mommy and daddy! 8-)

Things are going well here.  We are enjoying the cool weather here in Chiang Mai.  Last night it was 61 degrees at night which felt downright cold to us.  In Cambodia it feels cool if it gets to 75 at night. 

Isaac is still learning how to play during the day and sleep at night!  We hope he learns quickly so we can sleep at night too.

Take Care,

Bill

The Man Cub!

It is with great joy and thankfulness to God that I tell you, "Isaac has been safely born into the world." Jennifer went into labor this morning at 4:00 am. We went to the hospital and little Isaac was born at 8:30 AM on his due date. He weighs 7lbs 13oz and is 19" tall. He is healthy and doing well. Jennifer did great too and she is also doing well. We left the hospital the next afternoon and are now resting in our guest house. Thanks for all your prayers...the delivery went very smoothly.

The next step is to get his birth certificate translated into English, establish his USA citizenship, then apply for his passport.  We are hoping to get all this done by Dec 15th so that we can return to Cambodia ASAP.  Please pray that all the required steps would get completed, according to the will of God.  We are so thankful for your interest and prayers, both for our family and the ministry in Cambodia.  May God bless you and keep you!

 

Bill

We’re All Here!

We arrived safely on the 12th and Jennifer’s mom, Martha, arrived yesterday, safe and sound as well.  We are enjoying the reunion and the comfortable setting.  We have met with our doctor and seen the hospital and both are going to work out well.  Isaac is officially due to come on the 24th and it is an exciting time.  Thank you for your prayers!

I told the ladies that we need to have a man child around here to help out with the hormonal imbalance of our apartment.  8-)

Here are a couple pictures of the Juniper Tree:

The Lord Jesus Reigns,

Bill

Traveling Across Asia

Hello again!  We are making our way across Asia and have one more leg to go in our trip.  We successfully drove from Prek Ambel to Koh Kong on the edge of the Cambodia – Thailand border.  It was some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen in Cambodia.

We arrived in Koh Kong around 5:00 PM.  We stayed in the home of some missionaries who are currently on furlough in the USA.  Here are a few pictures of their home.

 

We had a restful night of sleep and in the morning we headed out to cross the border into Thailand.  The border paperwork was very easy and we had crossed the border which is right next to the Gulf of Thailand by 9:00 am.

Here are some pictures of the border crossing:

Next we headed on to Bangkok to drop of our friend Kara and her son Noah.  She is planning to have her baby in Bangkok two days after Jennifer.  Our taxi driver was great and we stopped two or three times over the course of the trip to get snacks and use the bathroom which made the women happy!  We arrived in Bangkok at 3:00 PM and had a few hours to rest before our train left for Chiang Mai. 

 

Here is Kara and Noah along with Jennifer and Katherine at her service apartment.

When we arrived at the train station to board the train which we thought was leaving at 7:00 PM we found out that it actually left at 6:00 PM and that we were too late to take it.  So we stayed the night in Bangkok and are planning to take today’s 6:00 PM train.  So we will be arriving a day later than we expected but that’s just fine.  We were a bit wiped out from travelling and the extra rest was good.  Our hotel is right next door to the train station and is very convenient.  Neither one of us has ever ridden on a train before and we both think the train station is a cool place.

Please pray for us to successfully complete the last leg of our trip and arrive safely in Chiang Mai.  The train ride is 14 hours.

 

God bless,

Bill

We're Going to Thailand!!!

Hello you guys! We are doing well here. Things are good in the church and we are at peace which is a good thing. Katherine recently celebrated her birthday and she is now two years old. It's hard to believe possible. Here are a couple pictures of her little party.







We are leaving for Thailand tomorrow morning for the birth of our second child, Isaac. We are going to a city called Chiang Mai. Last time we went to Bangkok but it was too big and busy for our tastes. Chiang Mai is supposed to be more quiet.

Please pray for our travel and the delivery to go smoothly according to God's will. The trip will be in three parts. The first part I will drive our car to a town called Koh Kong which is on the Thai border (approx 5 hours). We will stay the night there at a team of missionaries' home. They are working with Mission to the World. We will leave our car with them and cross the border on foot the next morning. The next part will be a taxi ride from the border to Bangkok (5 hours). Then the third part is a train ride. The train is a sleeper train. It leaves Bangkok at 7:00 PM and you travel while you sleep. This part of the trip is like 11 hours! The train goes pretty slowly I think. And God willing we will reverse the order on the way home.

In case you are wondering, we didn't fly because 1)The cost and 2)The airlines have changed their rules regarding pregnant women flying. They have to be earlier than 34 weeks to fly. That was just too early for us. We both teach at the PATC and have many responsibilities around here and we didn't want to be gone for over two months. So we decided to go over land.

Also, please pray for the Thai Government to process the paperwork needed for Isaac to come back with us to Cambodia quickly. This can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months to get his birth certificate and citizenship processed. We are hoping for the 2 week version. 8-)

Finally, please pray for things in Cambodia to go smoothly in our absence. We have many people setup to help out and we are thankful. Please pray for, Daniel, my substitute for the first two weeks. He is a PATC student who is ready to graduate in 6 months. Pray for Soda and Allison Chheng. Soda is pastor Chheng's son and he and his wife are coming for a visit from November 20th to December 10th. Pray for the Kris Pate family. The whole family is coming for a visit; Kris, his wife Julie, and their four kids. They plan to stay a month from December 10th to January 10th. Pray they would be effective and enjoy their stays!



Peace,
Bill

Ministry Update - Part 1

Over the last several months we have seen a season of harvest in the ministry.  I suppose this should not come as a surprise because Jesus said that problem is that there are not enough workers to reap the harvest, not that the harvest is too small.

   

Katherine helping me make a cabinet

While Chheng was visiting in the USA, we started a new effort to share the gospel in the Prek Ambel area.  We decided to follow a road headed west out of Prek Ambel.  The plan was to follow it for about 8 km until we had shared with most every house.  The evangelist’s were consisted of the PATC students who decided to stay for the summer, church members, and two days a week me (I was and still am working to correct and revise the 1689 Baptist Confession that was translated a few years ago).  This went on six days a week in the morning from 8:00 to 10:30 for around four months.

A further word about the church members that joined with us.  All of them are busy everyday.  Many of them have cows and to feed one cow they have to go and cut grass for 1.5 hours.  This is per cow.  Some of them have 2, 3, 4, or even 5 cows.  If you do the math you will see it’s not a quick job.  Also, they are busy doing things by hand that you would normally use a machine for.  A Washing machine, a stove, a shower, a toilet.  All these things take much longer for the average Cambodian.  They wash clothes by hand, make fires for cooking (and chop down wood), walk to the river to bath, and look for a quiet spot for a bathroom.  Yet, week after week, I watched these folks coming to the church to participate in the work of the gospel.  They didn’t come everyday but nearly every time we went out we had someone from the lay membership join us.  Many of them are not good speakers.  Many of them weren’t sure how they would start conversations.  But they stepped out in faith.  It really encouraged me to see them taking the gospel to their neighbors and families and friends.  And I hope you know that often times these folks are the hardest folks to share with.  Please follow their example!  Share with those around you!  If they can find time so can we.

So back to the evangelism.  For the first few weeks we didn’t see much response.  Some people said they would come to visit the church but didn’t.  Many people just plain rejected the idea that Jesus could be a substitute for the sins of his people.  But by God’s grace we pushed on.  Then we started to see fruit.  A man openly repented of his sin and wanted to follow Christ.  Then he brought his wife and kids.  Then several children started attending that we met while on the road.  Then two women started coming to the church and every week more and more new faces were joining our services.  Many of theses faces we had never shared with but the Lord brought them.  We had so many new visitors that we decided to buy a church van to make a pickup run on Sunday mornings before church.  I became the driver (though two church members are in the process of learning to drive) and on my first trip I had 31 people in a 12 passenger van. 

Since then, the Lord has continued to bless.  My young adult Sunday school class has grown from 25 to 45 students in the last few months.  The children’s class has been separated into four different groups because it had grown too large.  And the Church service has gone from 70 people to around 100.  Several times we ran out of chairs and had to borrow chairs from the PATC center.  What a blessing!

to be continued…

Bill

A New Car!

Well, it’s new to us.  It’s actually a 1996 Toyota 4Runner. 

It has like 11 inches of ground clearance and a 4x4 on the fly system.  We’re ready to go beyond the regions beyond now!  We are very thankful to the Lord for his provision and to the First Baptist Church of Parker, Texas.  We are thankful for our old car too!  It was a 1987 Camry and it served us well.

I’ll post a bigger update on the ministry soon.  The Lord has been blessing and there is much news to share.  God bless you all.

 

Bill

How to Burn Corn

A couple of weeks ago Sopheak’s family invited everyone over to eat the first fruits of their corn crop.  Sometimes direct translation from Khmer doesn’t carry the same idea in English.  I was hoping this would be the case when she invited us to eat “burnt corn.”  It wasn’t.  The description is accurate in both languages, but the golden/blackened ears drizzled with a green onion sauce made good eatin’.  More importantly, it was a good time.

 

You know, they cooked A LOT of corn, all of which could have been sold.  But they love the Lord.  They love the brethren.  Their priority was to be a blessing. 

 

God bless,

Jennifer