It is a Friday morning. The sun is shining hard and bright to warm our Thai soil and I’m on my second cup of coffee. Mornings are my favorite time to spend at home. I take advantage of the slight coolness (high 60’s) to don a cozy sweatshirt and soft pants. After 10AM this is no longer pleasant, since we are already emerging from our ‘winter’ into the dry/hot season, and it’s already too warm for sweatshirts. In six weeks, we’ll be in the 90’s every day again!

For now, in my comfy clothes and with my steamy cup of coffee, I sit remembering all of you. My soul praises God for your faithfulness, your care, and your kindness toward me! Even now, at the end of January, I am receiving Christmas cards sent last month. I sit with all of them in my lap, the physical evidence that you remember me. Thank you!

In my last update, I wrote about the process of orientation at New Life Center, and about diving right into the work I have been given.

One of my main tasks is English-language grant reporting — to inform various funding sources and donors how we manage their money and what has taken place as a result of their faithful support. Each report is a team effort. The NLCF staff gather the data from their activities with residents and scholarship students – then they hand it off to me to translate and format before we present it to the donor.

My work is not glamorous, but I love it! And I’m good at it. I am stunned when I think about how God has made a place for me on the mission field, using the puzzle-piece gifts that, five years ago, made no sense at all to me. Thank you for supporting me to live and work in this place. I hope some of you will consider coming to visit, so that you can really see the incredible ways God uses New Life Center to change the lives of young tribal women.

In December, I also had the special opportunity to give my first sermon in Thai to about 150 residents, scholarship students, and staff of the New Life Center. Each person present received an envelope containing Isaiah 43:1-4, a passage to which I have been clinging since my own youth. The opportunity to remind these precious ones of God’s abiding love for us was a gift! Since then, my reception among the residents is always warm and full of smiles.

Very soon, I will celebrate two years of life spent in Thailand. People ask me regularly whether it is difficult, and the answer is yes, some things are very difficult. At the same time, it is not difficult at all. Perhaps this is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 11:28-30 when he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” A burden is a burden, regardless. But this burden, while difficult, is light. Glory to Jesus.

I miss you, and am sending my love. Please continue to stand with me in prayer for safety and health, wisdom and patience. May you sense the light of God all around you, even now.

With love from Thailand,

Jeni