October 2021 Newsletter

It has been six months since we landed in Thailand. It has gone so fast and yet weirdly it sometimes feels like we have been here for a lot longer. 

We made another trip to immigration to renew our visas and we were only given 30 days. We can have someone go for us this next time so we won’t have to make another trip to Bangkok. Which is good because we still have to quarantine for 14 days when we return. Knowing this we decided to take a little break after getting our visas. We went a little farther down the coast and found a beach in Hua Hin. It is just a couple hours south of Bangkok. We had hoped that going somewhere after Bangkok would make it so we didn’t have to quarantine but it turned that we still needed to, so I am writing this from another quarantine. 

Hua Hin was a lot of fun. The kids went in the pool almost everyday and really enjoyed playing on the beach. It’s hard to believe that it took us 6 months to make it to the beach for the first time! We rode on elephants, ate some yummy food, and went to a water park. In typical Leland fashion, we had the Covid version of these. We were the only ones riding elephants and we had the entire water park to ourselves when we first got there. We went on a walk to a cool lookout over the city (fun) and came back to monkeys tearing our car apart. (Not fun)

The Covid numbers have been dropping this last month so some things are starting to open back up. The teachers are back in school so we will be learning in person when we get out of quarantine. We have been learning to read and write in Thai. It’s exciting be able to start reading signs and menus but it is definitely challenging. Thai, like English, has a lot of rules that you have to know in order to read and of course it has exceptions to those also. 

We got together with the other missionaries here in Lopburi to help people who have been affected financially by Covid and restrictions. We had fun with this project and we’re able to make 100 bags filled with practical things like food, soap, shampoo, toilet paper, and a Bible tract. We gave them to the local church to hand out.   

Our last night at the beach turned into a downpour and so did our drive home the next day. Thailand has had a lot of rain the last few days with a lot of flooding. We had a flood warning the other night but thankfully the river and canal by us didn’t go over their banks. There has been significant flooding in Lopburi though. The government has declared a state of emergency with 10’s of thousands of people affected here and 100’s of thousands affected country wide. Please be praying for flooding here as rainy season usually lasts a couple more months. 


dustinl@converge.org
melissal@converge.org
 


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