Update on the long lost Bethany and Leigha!

Wow, where do I begin? There is so much that I could share with you all. The past two months have been an incredible time of stretching, pruning, and growing for both Leigha and I. We have seen and experienced so many things that I never anticipated on this trip. But then, who ever knows what God has in store for them! If we knew ahead of time I’m sure we would rarely obey, and therefore we would rarely taste of the goodness and blessings of our faithful and mighty God. If there is one thing that I have been learning over these past two months, it is a new and deeper understanding of the goodness and love of my heavenly Father. He has been so faithful.
When I committed to making this trip I anticipated stretching, but not in any of the ways that it has taken place! I thought that the Lord would stretch me by giving me tasks that I didn’t think I could do, or things that I had never tried before. Instead, He has really challenged me in my attitude. He has shown me so many things about myself that I didn’t realize were there—things that I didn’t really want to see—but that needed to change in order to have a closer walk with Him. He has been so tender, and yet has been giving me exactly what I needed, and will continue to do so! I am so thankful for a heavenly Father that cares so much about His children that He is willing to put them through pain and discomfort in order to draw them closer to Himself. Our God is so good!
So what have we been doing these past two months? I will give you a few highlights and post some pictures to go with them! Let me just say that traveling and working with this team has been awesome. I have really enjoyed getting to know everyone. We have Uncle Ross and Aunt Cathy, Birch and Connie Champeon with their twin boys Warren and Rowan, and then there are six of us girls with one more joining us for the last 7 weeks. Kristy, Carla, Sarah, Allyssa, Leigha, and I almost have our own little family of just the girls! We really enjoy singing together (which we usually do in each of the churches on Sundays) and one of the highlights of this trip was making a CD! This was something that was totally unexpected, but Uncle Ross really wanted us to do it as a ministry to some of the folks here, as well as their supporting churches. We knew that it would be much less expensive than in the States, but we had no idea what to expect. It all started off as just an idea and something we talked about a little bit, but it all got pretty serious when one Sunday we found out that we had an appointment to go to the recording studio on Tuesday night! Thankfully we were able to get the appointment moved to that Thursday, but we only had a few days to practice. (We did get out of doing supper dishes that week so that we could practice!) For the next few days we practiced quite a bit and then just committed it to the Lord and decided to have fun while letting Him take care of how it turned out! It was really a good process for all six of us as we learned to work as a team. We were unsure of what to expect at the studio. We were prepared for just a microphone and tape recorder, but it actually turned out better than we expected and all together it cost us about $25! Crazy huh? It was a lot of fun and quite the experience.
Leigha and I also really enjoyed visiting the Bible college one day with Dad (it was great to have him here!) as well as visiting the children’s home with him. Leigha has established some really good friendships with a few of the nationals that she has been working with, and about two weeks ago they finished the project that she has been working on since September so that was very exciting!! Since then she has been creating, coloring, and importing pictures for the primers and will start on another translation editing project when we reach India. I have stayed very busy doing all of the cooking for our team, as well as coloring pictures for the primers and running errands. I have really enjoyed doing the cooking, but have found it to be very interesting! All of the vegetables that we eat raw have to be cleaned in iodine water before we eat them. We are very limited in what food supplies we can get here so we brought a lot of things with us, but we have still had some interesting experiences (and substitutions!) One thing we have to be very careful of is the water here. When we wash our dishes we are very meticulous in making sure that every drop is dried, otherwise we would probably get sick. Praise the Lord for His protection and good health! Other than some kind of flu bug for a few days we have been pretty healthy.
There is so much more that I could tell you all about, but I am going to stop for now and post some pictures. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support. We are truly enjoying being a part of what God is doing here in Asia. Right now we are enjoying a few days of resting in Bangkok, but please continue to pray for our safety as we travel to India on Friday for the last six weeks. We miss you all and really look forward to sharing everything with you when we get home. May God bless you richly until we meet again!!!