Well, we are off to Chaing Mai for a weekend of acting like tourists!  Josh and I are excited about getting a room that is our own (we can talk and no one will hear us!) with air conditioning.  Yeah!  It has been a fairly normal week.  Josh had a girl come in who had been told that the clinic did abortions (providence?) and she was not ready to be a mom.  She was about 12 weeks pregnant and still in school.  They did an ultrasound and let her watch her little baby kick and move and then Josh explained what happens when they perform an abortion.  She was not sure what she wanted to do when her appointment was over.  Aiden and I showed up at the clinic as she was leaving and she watched Josh play, laugh, and coo with Aiden.  I've been praying for her and her baby this week. 

Ok, we will be back in touch with you early next week.  I hope you have a good weekend.

Happy Happy News!
I just heard that my cousin Craig and his wife Amanda are pregnant!  WHOOHOO!  Ok, so I tried to find her e-mail address to write her and congratulate her but because I do not keep my e-mail organized I couldn't find her address.  SOOOO please if someone can let her know that I am SUPER excited for her and would love to contact her via e-mail that would be appreciated. 
 
Craig and Amanda, you will make wonderful parents.

So living in Thailand is pretty inexpensive.  I was working on money stuff today to see how our spending was going and I thought I would share how the costs of some things work out here.  I can get 10 eggs (they are sold in 10s not 12s) for 23 Bhat which is a little more than 50 cents.  The girls picked up 2 bunches of bananas yesterday for less than75 cents.  Josh and Ryan get Oreos here for about 1/2 the price in the States.  (Although they do say there is a little less filling they were really excited about the Oreos.)  I came here with little clothing because I didn't have any summer clothing from my stay in Canada.  The plan was to buy clothes when I got here and I havn't been dissappointed.  I can get a nice skirt and a matching shirt for under $10.  I bought some "around the compound" shirts for about $1 each.  Josh and I are planning a get-away for our anniversary and the biggest room at the resort is $25/night.  So, as you can imagine, it hasn't been too hard to save our pennies.  There have been costs still; about $1,300 for my plane flight, $700 for living costs, laundry (diapers!), and Thai lessons.  There have been a few people who have been generous in supporting us financially and I wanted to take this space and this time to say that we are very grateful for your help.  :)
Bye for now!

It is 7:45 in the morning and Aiden has been up for an hour and a half.  (Yes, he slept in today!)  What has Aiden done with his morning?  Well, he started the morning off by climbing off our bed.  Nope, he didn't fall off... he climbed off.  First one leg then the other.  It was so amazing to watch.  Then Aiden suprised us by using one of the plastic chairs in the lounge as a push-cart.  He was walking around the lounge pushing this chair.  Yes Grandmom(ma) we did get video footage!  We will let you know when he starts walking.  :)

Ok, it is time for an update.  Thanks for checking back even when we don't post for a week! 
 
The English Camp:
Last weekend was the English Camp that we put on for a school group.  Thank you for your prayers.  Josh and I led 4 different sessions with 22 students each on Saturday.  We taught them transportation vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronounciation.  We especially had fun teaching them how we hail a taxi in the States.  In Thailand, you would stand on a street corner, hold your arm down, and wave your fingers.  It is hard to explain but it is a very reserved gesture.  The kids had a lot of fun watching my exaggerated demonstration of how to get a Taxi in the States: waving your hands above your head (!) and shouting "TAXI!"  At the end of the day the kids had fun skit activities that their teachers had planned and we got to be a part of that by sharing testimonies and a Christian skit.  The kids were here as a school group with their teachers and none of them were Christians.  They came expressly to learn English and we wanted to do that well and effectively so that they would listen to what we had to say about Jesus.  The next day was Sunday and we started off by teaching them "Old McDonald" which they really enjoyed because it became a contest to see if the Thais could make better animal noises than the farangs (foreigners).  Ever tried making an elephant noise before?  Well, they do a great job!  Then we did a big group teaching session on the garden of Eden.  Mary (the doc's wife here) made it into a news-report situation and we had sentences written out that they practiced saying.  After that we split into smaller groups and led them through reading an easier-English version of Adam and Eve's temptation and sin.  We helped them with their pronounciation during that and had translators to help them know what the sentences said in their own language.  Then we all met back together and Mary told the story of Jesus emphasizing his death and ressurrection.  Again we broke up into small groups and helped the kids read the stories outloud.  (If you teach English to adults who don't speak English and would like to know more about the stories click here: http://www.chronologicalbiblestorying.com/esl_efl/esl_efl_harthcock_materials.htm)
 
After that we all met together and played a tounge twister/try American food relay game.  You should have seen their faces when they tried the Mac&Cheese and the Gatoraide (which they thought tasted like pee water)!  They did enjoy the deviled eggs and the chocolate pudding! 
 
At the end of the camp the kids were all very thankful and expressed a desire to have another camp in October or next summer (anyone from the states want to come help out?)   They presented us with some beautiful fruit carvings and a big stack of thank-you notes.  The thing that touched us the most was when the head teacher (principle?) said thank you for teaching him that Love was free.  We had tried to emphasize, among other things, that God loves us (esp. through His Son) and that his Love is a free gift.  We were so excited that the message had been communicated!  Since this was an English camp and not a church camp we did not have an invitation or any "who wants to accept Jesus" thing.  Our aim was to teach them English excellently so that they would listen to the message that we had to share.  Now, we pray that God will cause those seeds to grow and when they meet other Christians they will have an understanding of what they believe and they will be more open to the Gospel.  We also pray that future English camps with these kids will be fruitful and that true believers will be brought out of the group. 
 
Camp ended well and we were exhausted!  Aiden, however, has struggled with teething all week long and his sleep has been sporadic.  I think things are getting better and I certainly feel much more rested!
 
On Thursday a group of farangs went out to plant rice.  The Thais were being nice and helping us out so we could experience a little of what rice farming was.  We planted a field of rice in 1 hour (it would take a group of Thais 30 minutes).  Thais love to laugh and have fun and so while they were helping us get our rows straight and scoop spiders out of the flooded field they would say things like "will this rice grow?"  Anyway we had a great time and our backs ached afterwards.  We have a great respect for the people who spend weeks planting, go back and weed, and then harvest the rice! 
 
Today we went to the border market that is on the Thai-side of the Thai-Laos border.  We had a good time and bought some nice northern thai material.  It is nice to get off the compound and see a little more of what Thailand is like.  I think when we come back (for it seems that God may be leading us here in the future) I would like to live in a town or a village.  Oh well, those are just my plans.  We will see what God does. 
 
Love you all!  Good night.

Here are the guys standing in front of the resorvior. This is after the girls attacked Ryan with handfulls of mud!

Here are Josh and Ryan standing in front of our planted field. They are holding the clumps of rice plants that we tore off pieces of and planted.

Here we are planting rice in the foreigner's field. Ryan is in the front with the hat, Josh is in the ball cap, and if you can see me I am in the pink shorts.

Here is the Christian lady who was noticed because the bad spirits could not touch her. You can't really see in this picture, but her glasses are tied on with a string around her head since she claims they don't fit Mien faces as well as the western faces they were made for.

Here is a picture of the new Mien believer that Ryan mentioned last month.

The other day Ryan killed a snake with a broomstick while Aiden and I watched. Aiden gave his "gonna' cry" face and then let out a great big wail. Yesterday Aiden was pulling up on Ryan's leg to get to the guitar that Ryan was playing. Well, Aiden grabed a hunk of Ryan's skin and leg hair and Ryan let out a hollar. Aiden burst into tears to go along with Ryan's yell. Today Aiden bit me for the first time while nursing and he cried in response to my yell. I can tell that my little boy is becoming more sensitive to the things that go on around him. This serves as warning that I need to be careful about what he is exposed to. I want to make sure he is around lots of the right thing and that he is around as little of the wrong thing as possible.

Aiden is getting his top two teeth. We've been expecting it for a while, but they are finally on their way! I am teaching English today and so we will see how that works out. No other exciting news other than the fact that I am eating hard-boiled eggs this morning! *YUM!*

We are getting things together for an English camp this weekend. The kids will be middle-school age and are comming to learn English. We hope to teach them useful English and also about God's love. Josh, Mary Beth (a girl from the States), Jerry (a carreer-missionary lady who lives here), and myself are teaching about transportation. I never thought I would be doing this and I am a little overwhelmed with trying to think of the best way to teach English. Apparently in the schools they are only taught strict memorization and repition so hopefully we can teach them something a little beyond that. Please pray for us this weekend and please pray for the students; that God would open their hearts to what we have to say about Him and that His Word would reap a harvest.

Just thought I would post this one also. I am carrying Aiden in a Hmong-style baby carrier. The carrier is very nice (and pretty too!) and allows for more air flow than some other carriers.

Aiden really enjoyed the rocks and I even kept him from swallowing any!

This bridge was a part of the trail that goes to the top of the waterfall.

Here is my hunky husband holding Aiden with the waterfall in the background.

Here is the family at the waterfall! Ryan isn't in the picture because he is climbing up to a higher waterfall.

Aiden loves these flowers which grow next to the garage here. PePawn loves holding Aiden! Pe- is a prefix added to the name of anyone who is older than the speaker.

We dearly missed watching fireworks in Carrollton this Fourth of July but we still had a good celebration here in Thailand! We spent the afternoon swimming at a waterfall. Aiden loves the water and once he got used to the roar of the waterfall he had a great time splashing and playing with rocks. Then we came back and had hotdogs, potato chips, and soda for dinner. Mary brought out a delicious cake and ice cream. We all felt very full of food. After that, they pulled out the fireworks: bottle rockets, sparklers, and some others that were big and gave a very satisfying boom in the sky. All in all, it was a great Fourth of July.

Aiden playing the part of Baby Jesus when the shepherd come to visit. (I'm in the background telling the story.)

Ryan telling the story of Noah with Josh and others demonstrating the 40 days of rain.

Josh teaching English sentence structure: subject, verb, object. Couldn't have done this without the knowledge gained from taking Latin this last year!

Kids gathered at the main assembly for the Lua English Camp.

This was a busy weekend for us! A team of students from a church in Oklahoma City came and helped us host an English Camp for about 140 kids from the Lua people group. The camp was held over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We taught English by taking the kids through different stories in the Bible starting with Creation and ending with the Ressurection. The camp was orgainized Thai-style which means that we were very flexible and didn't always know what we would be doing next. We found that the kids listened to the story best when we had them come up and act it out as we told it. The kids were reluctant to volunteer to act but when we said that whoever played Mary, Jesus' mom, would get to hold Aiden we had an eager volunteer. About 13 kids said they were interested in becoming Christians so please pray that they will have their questions answered and that their families will be okay with their decision. We are doing a similar thing this upcomming weekend and next weekend so pray that our energy levels can remain high! It is dificult to go all week and not really have a weekend to rest. Thank you for your prayers and support.