Christmas with our other Safe Home

All eleven kids came over to celebrate Christmas with us. Each child was treated to a gift wrapped by our team. Cindy and our kids demonstrated the best gift ever given through a little skit of our own.




The children had to teach Anders how to ride a bike the right way!

Christmas at the Eegufer Camp, part 2

Today we went back to the camp, but to a different zone this time. They welcomed us with so many happy, smiling faces! Our program today was similar but this time we were able to encourage the Bible school students in the afternoon with our testimonies.



Lori taught a Bible lesson about the candy cane, and I must say am very proud of her! It was obvious that she wasn’t the only one doing the speaking! Others in our group sang songs or gave messages. Twenty-five came to Jesus today, praise God!



We couldn’t help but notice the rudimentary toy this little boy made as he strolled past us!


Here’s their general store:


Here are our friends, the Oregon team, who came to work with us during the Christmas ministries.


We had to say good bye, but hopefully not for long!

Christmas at the Eegufer Camp

This was our first day to be able to visit the eegufer camps. It was quite an experience to say the least. Over 100,000 people live here in this camp. It is spread over many miles and divided into different zones, although all the people come from some of the tribes in "B".



Following our arrival, we were led on a hike through the camp to their school. Along the way, we couldn’t help but notice how incredibly resourceful they are. With so very little given to them, they have found ways to build using only bamboo for their structure and supports and leaves in place of roofing tiles. This is all located along very steep mountains no less! They install running water in many of their homes and bathrooms, and plant gardens to grow vegetables. They are given some small food rations from the UN of rice, fish paste, and peppers to simply survive. But to many eegufer who have been hard workers their entire life, they feel hopeless by just waiting to collect the food given to them. They are confined to the camps. They may go back to their undesirable country of “B”, but it is difficult to return to the refuge. Unfortunately they are unable to travel anywhere else inside Thailand. It’s not much of a life, they act as though they are just existing.



So when we came into the camp we want to bring them hope! Mike, another newly joined leader put together an encouraging Christmas program for them. Then, a local Thai group put together a skit to perform the gospel and show the kids why we celebrate Christmas. Many of the children there made a commitment to Christ today and seemed very captivated by everything going on and what we had brought for them!






We treated all to a Christmas lunch of banana stalk soup with rice, peanut chips, roasted garlic, and strong chili’s and provided the students with a Christmas gift. For an American child it would not have seemed like much, but these kids were more then overjoyed to have received it! It included a couple of pencils, an eraser, notebook, and a couple of candies. After all the festivities, we taught them some fun games in their dirt playing field and they couldn’t resist but also sharing their favorites. Here they are showing us how to play a game in which we jump through bamboo poles while they pound them on the ground twice then close the poles together, hopefully with enough time to hop through in their dance set to music.

Hot showers!

After only two icy cold showers, Anders decided it was time to install a hot water heater! (He claims it is my Christmas gift =) He’s made quite a few other improvements too… but has come with some challenges. As hot water is a “hot” commodity, hot and cold water faucets are pretty pricey. The only reasonably priced faucets are single control faucets, so Anders set out to make a dual control faucet with two valves using numerous PVC couplings. He’s batting two of three, as both bathroom’s homemade faucets seem to be working fine without leaks, but he’s had to replace the kitchen faucet piping seven times and counting… Next time I’ll try to capture a look of his frustration.


Here he is with his buddy and helper Tenacon, who is helping him transport some water pipe. Later that day, the truck we had just purchased for the camp arrived, so no need to carry supply by motorbike any longer! (that’s just for you, Rich!)

Believe it or not, we have already beaten the jet lag!! Thanks to a tip from Jerry and Carrie, we woke up this morning feeling great. It may just be the placebo effect, but we don’t care because it worked! It goes something like this: you put a lit incandescent light bulb behind your right knee for two to four minutes upon laying down to sleep for the first night of your arrival. Now don’t burn yourself, as Lori accidentally found out, but just place it far enough away to avoid injury. If all goes as planned, you should wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, supposedly just having reset your internal time-clock. I know it sounds absolutely absurd… but after the misery of jet-lag, we figured, why not?

It’s so great to be back and get to see the kids once again. The house is decorated and we are gearing up for the children’s first Christmas!! Thanks to both our mothers, we have a gift for each child and can’t wait to surprise them on Christmas!




Oh, and our eyes can't help but water from the soooo spicy food:


Our next job will be to learn Thai. This is not on easy undertaking! Since Thai is a tonal language, it is so very easy to change the meaning of a word by just drawing out the vowel a bit too long, which is often undistinguishable to the American ear. For instance, if you wanted to say liver (pronounced ‘tay’) but instead said ‘taay’ you would be telling the person to die! Hope we don’t make that mistake! Luckily, we can’t remember the last time we ordered liver in a restaurant. Reading it is also very difficult, since they use their own characters, and don’t put spaces between words. Luckily, it makes it lot easier by living here and being able to practice with the other Thai staff.

Today was also the first day of Lori’s teaching career! With the first lesson, the kids have the English alphabet down, and have learned how to say a few of their favorite animals. They are just like little sponges, how we wish that we could learn Thai that fast and with so little effort, they are little geniuses!!

Stay tuned for our next blog entry- celebrating Christmas in Thailand, visiting the hill tribes, building the new home out of shipping containers, and Anders and his side-kick handyman transporting PVC pipe by motorbike!

Home sweet home… at least for now.

After exactly 48 hours of straight traveling we have arrived. Not without a few hiccups along the way, of course! You know us… we don’t seem to take a trip without some excitement along the way. As we finally arrived in our hometown at 4 am, we found one of our seven bags was missing. After much convincing of the bus driver and thanks to a kind Canadian who translated for us, the bus took us and our heavy luggage back to the last police checkpoint, where many illegals who had been riding the bus had been arrested. But that ride wasn’t without a hitch… they wouldn’t be bringing us back to our bus station. Oh how quickly we learn to trust the Lord, as we didn’t seem to have any other options. But, sure enough, after a few prayers, we found the bag amidst the alien’s pile of luggage. The immigration officer was kind with us, but was furious with the group, questioning to find who took the bag. No eager alien seemed to be volunteering information! And another answer to prayer- immediately after locating our bag, a kind bus driver, offered to take us and our seven bags into town. Thank goodness we finally arrived as we were beginning to view our luggage as unruly children. Nonetheless, we learned a very valuable lesson from this… when traveling by bus step off at each stop to keep an eye on your luggage.

Hello and Thank You to all our great supporters!

Praise God, it looks like the ruling party and prime minister have been ousted and the airport is open! After being postponed twice, our flight is scheduled for Dec. 15th. This has provided a great opportunity to see many family and loved ones, but we'd like to see more of the long lost. We'll be taking one last trip up to Northern California, so if you're around and as eager to meet as we are (or even half as eager) do call. As Anders' lost all of his contacts, we're relying upon you to call or email or send smoke signals.

Thank you to those who recently helped support our mission through prayer, tithe, or Christmas shopping of our imported Thai hand crafts. Thank you for purchasing as much as you did, for we've already sold two-thirds of what we had brought! Please help us sell out by telling your friends of Christmas shopping with a cause. View the remaining gifts, email us, and we'd be happy to send before we leave, to arrive just in time for Christmas!

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Email: andersandlori at gmail dot com (sorry had to write it weird so it wouldn't be caught by spamming software =)