We moved into our new apartment in the middle of October. We had so many reasons to move and a few good reasons to stay, but we are so glad that we decided to make the move.
The apartment complex we moved to is primarily filled with Thai tenants, which gives us so many great opportunities to utilize our language (and rely on our Thai language). There is also a great play area and park-ish area for Lauren to go out and play. It has been so great for him to be able to play outside and make new friends (and for us to make some new friends too).
Please pray with us that we would have opportunities to share God's love with our new community, especially as the Christmas season approaches. We are hoping to have some chances to share the meaning of Christmas with those we have built relationships with so far.
We have also been preparing for our competency exam, which we will take on November 29th. We are currently still in a three month exam prep course. Our exam will consist of evaluating our competency in four categories: reading (basic reading comprehension), writing (essay and explaining a graph or map in 50 minutes), listening (we will answer questions based on our understanding of various recorded material) and speaking (a ten minute interview). We have taken two practice exams now and we feel as well as we can before a exam of this magnitude.
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| making Thai crafts at school |
Please pray that we would finish our preparation course strong and do well on the exam.
We are excited to move on to a new stage of language study. After our exam we will be plugging in more at the church we attend and become more actively involved in ministry.
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| Celebrating missions week at our church (representing various cultures) |
We hope that you all have a great week and thanks so much for following our progress.
May God bless you and your loved ones as we enter this holiday season.
(Here are some recent photo updates:)
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| At a park near the river |
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| Keith's most recent transformation |
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| Snake show at the park |
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| Five boys in the back of the car... it was a wild ride |