We had a great team to Thailand. It was a long trip and a hot one. Officially it was the hottest weather they had seen since the 1950’s, and I’d believe it. Several of us started in Singapore. I spoke at the missions conference for a church in Singapore and we got to visit a missionary family that we love dearly. From there, we hopped over to Thailand and began building a playground.

With the help of Kids Around The World, the playground was disassembled in the States and shipped over to Thailand. We got to put the puzzle back together. As far as we know, it is the largest playground in the province, definitely in the village. As we were building it, many families would stop by to check on the progress in anticipation. It is going to be a great tool to help engage the community and bring families to the church. As we were trying to not die of a heat stroke, the other half of the team was leading a VBS and engaging the kids directly. It was great to watch the impact they had on these kids and see them teaching the Bible.

We had a fun surprise as part of the trip, we got to help distribute Operation Christmas Child boxes to Thai children on the Saturday after the kids club. They loved it. We had a huge dedication for the playground and it was immediately swarmed with kids. They show up before the sun comes up and don’t leave until it is dark, even now.

Next we traveled to northern Thailand to work with the Lahu tribe in one of their villages. MANNA is working to start a project in that village to help tutor the kids and give them a chance to break the cycle of poverty. We put on a VBS in the village and had time to fellowship with the church with a large cookout. They taught us a traditional dance and we made a lot of great friends. The really wonderful part came a week later when we found out 4 people accepted Christ as their savior after we left and 6 were baptized last weekend. If you ever wonder whether or not short term missions have an eternal impact, they do!

Thank you so much for your support for our family. We head out next week for 75 days as we work to minister in Romania, Greece, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. We appreciate your prayers and look forward to updating you on our travels.

We had a great team to Guatemala right after Easter. It was great to take a team of youth and watch them serve the people in Guatemala. We worked in a Mayan village for several days. The team washed the kids hair and feet, built stoves for families, delivered food and water filters, and put on a carnival at the church. We were able to teach Bible lessons to the kids and their families.

We also worked at our Children’s Village where we help care for teenage boys. Our group repainted the home they live in. Kim did a great job of painting, unfortunately, I spent more time cleaning up my painting messes. I promise, I did get some on the walls.

It has been a whirlwind since Easter. I went from Guatemala to Ohio for our annual meetings, then from Ohio to New Mexico. It was another case of delayed flights, changing airports and getting in at 2 in the morning. But, we made it in time to watch Kayli compete at Nationals in gymnastics for Texas A&M. We get home Sunday evening and have Monday and Tuesday to prepare for our team to Thailand on Wednesday. I look forward to giving you an update in May when we get back from that team. That you for your prayers and support. Enjoy the photos.

Happy Valentine’s Month! It has been a fast and furious start to the year. Kim and I headed to Asia in January. Our first stop was in Vietnam, where we spent time in Hanoi with church planters there and got to work with the young adults. I love to see what the Lord is doing in Vietnam.

From there, we picked up a medical team in Cambodia. It was incredible. The medical providers saw over 500 patients alone! The dental, physical therapy and vision team saw over 500 as well. It was truly amazing to see people from 6 states and 13 different churches come together in one place for one purpose. That’s a lot of logistics! The travel agents we work with are the unsung heroes behind the scenes helping make it all happen.

We got to see patients come back from last year. And, we met a lot of new friends in the process. Kim was very excited to have an occupational therapist join the team so that she wasn’t alone in the physical therapy department for the first time ever. They saw 200 patients between the two of them.

I enjoy seeing the impact we are able to have in the field alongside our ministry partners, but it is also encouraging to see the impact each team member has on each other as we work together and spend hours on buses and planes talking. It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord knows exactly who we need on our team and how He has prepared them with a perfect skill set to be used. We had several non-medical people on our team, and it would not have functioned without their help. We even had a MANNA Trustee and Christine O’Neal, MANNA’s Medical Coordinator on the team.

As an added bonus, we got to watch Kayli compete at the University of Texas Invitational via a Facebook live feed. The Aggies came in first, just saying. 

Our trip home was quite the adventure. Our flight out of Siem Reap was delayed because a forklift operator damaged the plane. They had to bring in a new one from Vietnam. We barely got the team back to Phnom Penh to catch their flight home. Then, on our flight home we got stuck in Tokyo for over 20 hours, from what started as a mechanical issue, and ended as a revolt by several passengers refusing to fly. Fun times. But, we made it home in time to hit the road out to West Texas.

Thank you for your prayers and support. Enjoy the following pictures.

It has been a busy and amazing October and November. In October Kim and I took a team to Thailand to work with our ministry partners in Baan Nam Khem, where the tsunami hit. It was a great team with a lot of moving parts.

Part of the team build two pickleball courts. Pickleball is quickly becoming the fastest growing sport in Thailand with no court within 2 hours of this village. Now, they have 2! It will be a huge open door to engage the community and parents of the kids at the school we partner with. Another part of the team put on a Kids Camps where they taught the kids and had games, songs, and engagement. We even got to deliver food to the village at one point.

We got home in time to visit our girls in college, work on the new MANNA offices, visit a church and then I headed to Guatemala to help with a team. While in Guatemala we did construction work and outreaches in a Mayan village. Then, we went down to the coast and worked in a fishing village where we got to release sea turtles with the kids! We took some of the kids from our Children’s Village to hike a volcano, then played soccer, and finished with helping build a house for a family. I love it when you have a framer, 2 electricians and a plumber on a trip and they all get to use their expertise to help multiple communities!

I made it home the middle of this past week and we are excited to have our girls home for Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for, especially for you, your prayers and support for our family. We appreciate you all and pray you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families. 

Enjoy some pictures from around the world.

It has been a crazy August. We got our girls home and had their wisdom teeth out. While they were recovering, I took a team to Mongolia. While I was in Mongolia, Kim and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, 13 time zones apart. She is an amazing and loving wife to put up with me! I made it home in time to move our girls into college. Kim and I head to Kentucky this weekend and then lead a medical team to Mongolia next week, and then on to Cambodia. Other than that, pretty uneventful. LOL. 

I had the privilege of taking a homebuilding company, their employees, and families to Mongolia. As soon as we landed, we got to visit an orphanage we work with. It was rated the #1 orphanage in Mongolia! Over 250 kids have been adopted out of it over the years. Seeing these kids being loved on after being abandoned is truly a blessing. 

After visiting the orphanage, we replaced the siding on our feeding center in Ulaanbaatar. It was great to work with the kids and fix up the building. (Even the doghouse got an upgrade.) This building has seen so much. We have seen people saved and ministry leaders grow up in this building. A girl grew up in the project, played the guitar for church as a teenager, and is now married to a pastor. I love seeing the fruit from these projects. 

Once the siding was completed, we put on a carnival for the kids in the community. It sounds simple, but watching the impact on the kids was amazing. From face paint to balloon animals, and hamburgers, it was a blast. We even got to deliver water filters and food to families in the community. This gave us the opportunity to share the Gospel and pray with these families. To get home, we had to fly through Seoul and spend the night. Of course, a typhoon decided to hit while we were there, so that added a little excitement to the end of our trip. But our flights still made it out and we got home, mostly dry. 

Mongolia is a hard place to get to, and I am grateful for those who are willing to go. I am excited to be back there next week with the medical team. Please be in prayer for our travels and team. Kim and I will be overseas for almost a month. I appreciate your support and prayers for our work and family, they are felt.

I am writing this from an oral surgeon’s office while waiting on our daughters to get their wisdom teeth removed. It’s been a crazy month and a half, sometimes I can’t remember where I’m at. LOL Made it home from Asia on Sunday night, unpacked yesterday, wisdom teeth today, repack tomorrow and head to Mongolia with another team on Thursday. Here is what the Lord has done since our last update.

Thailand…

We made it to Thailand and got to work at a school in Baan Nam Khem. We were working with a youth group and got to put on a sports type camp and a kid’s club. One day we delivered food to people in the community. We loved on the kids, built tables, and enjoyed the fellowship with the missionaries. From there we flew to western Thailand to work at a school and orphanage with the same team. We got to teach the kids, host a youth night, participate in with the soccer team, a field day, and deliver food to the community. Amazing team and equally amazing projects.

Vietnam…

We celebrated the first half of July 4^th in Bangkok with other American missionaries, then the second half of the day was spent in Hanoi. I cannot say I have split the 4^th between two countries before. While in Vietnam we worked with a missionary that is planting churches there and Saigon and tried to love on their family. We visited a building that some generous donors recently helped acquire to expand the English training we do with them and start a new church plant. We spent time with the young adults and got to speak at a church in a new location. 

Japan…

We hopped to Tokyo and picked up a team from west Texas to help fix up a youth camp. The Japanese kids started camp this week and our team went and prepared the camp for all the kids. It was a great team. They built a treehouse/fort, with a climbing net and a zip line. We might have tested out the zip line, just to make sure it was safe for the campers. 🙂 Another part of the group cleaned out the basement at the camp that had collected items for over 20 years. It was a monumental feat, but in the end, they did the impossible and got it cleaned, organized, and setup for ping pong and pool for the campers. 

I appreciate your prayers and support for our family. Please be praying for my trip to Mongolia this week and changing time zones 6 times over the course of 2 weeks is going to be interesting. 

Our time in Jordan was truly amazing. We love the the partners we get to work with there and the team was great. Our team consisted of dentists, nurses, and doctors covering women’s health, pediatrics, and general medicine. Kim was our resident physical therapist for the team and found herself quite busy.

We were able to love on people from the community and refugees from places like Syria and Iraq. One refugee had been tortured, toes cut off, and scars all over his body. Kim did a lot of physical therapy with him. But, his joy was unbelievable. He told her his pain was all worth it because he now knew Jesus. Amazing! There were so many incredible stories like this that I cannot share. But, know your prayers for our team were answered in a great way. One man had been to 4 different doctors for an ailment with no help. He was nearly suicidal. But, our physician was able to correctly diagnose the problem and get him the help and relief he needed.

I am grateful for those who came to serve and gave of themselves for people in Jordan and the hundreds of patients that were treated. I am also extremely thankful for our friends in Jordan that have worked alongside us and taught us so much.

We are now in Thailand with another team. So, here are some pictures from Jordan until our next update. Thank you for your prayers and support of our mission work.

After the medical team went home, and I got out of the hospital, I had the privilege of working with a team in Thailand and Cambodia. We worked in Baan Nam Khem where the tsunami hit. From the ruins of the waves came an incredible project teaching and feeding children, and a church reaching the community. Part of the team put together a teaching program. Each day they taught Bible lessons, put on skits, helped with crafts, played games, and loved on these kids. The grand finale was a massive water balloon fight with the kids. Nobody went home dry. LOL.

The rest of the team did construction work. We poured concrete, hauled gravel, stones and trash. And, we got to engage and play with the kids each day. As a treat, we had a special dinner with the staff at the project one night. I love this place and cannot wait to come back. During part of the trip we packed over 200 meals and distributed them to people in the community in need. 

After we finished there, we had an epic trek to Cambodia. It took a couple of days, and the people on this team were troopers. They had 10 flights from beginning to end, but never complained. We made it to Cambodia and put on a similar program with a church in Siem Reap where we have had a MANNA nutrition center for years. It was so awesome to get to spend time with the pastor, his wife, the kids and church members. They are really reaching people in Cambodia. We got to meet a young man name Wandy. He grew up as a child in the nutrition center, he is now pastoring a church plant from this church. I love seeing lives changed over the years! Thank you for your prayers and support. I will be traveling stateside speaking in churches until the end of May, then we will be leading teams all over the Middle East and Asia. 

Enjoy the pictures!