Merry Christmas! November and Early December update

Greetings friends, family and supporters,

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.  I hope you are well, and that the season brings love and joy and time with you families and those you care about.

It has been a little over a month (maybe about 6 weeks) since my last update...things continue to run in high gear, some days it seems I have very little time for my own projects.  Not that I am complaining, I am enjoying myself greatly; but it is certainly a lot of work. (we could use some more missionaries and staff, that is certain.)

Since my last up date we have had a lot of things happen:

Knocking down Walls. (Photo by Judah Dyck)

At the beginning of November the students took a work week.  It has been decided to move our bible college classrooms from one building to another building (from "The Tower" to "The Light House")...There are just too many ministries trying to make use of our downtown location, we are always tripping over each other.  The other building is also where the students live, so it will make it easier to simply move the classes and the VABC offices there.  To make this move happen we had to knock down some walls and renovate a whole floor of the Light House.  The whole process will take almost a full year to complete (especially considering we work on about 10 projects at a time) but we got the students to start the process; we knocked the walls down and tore up the old flooring to prepare the rooms to become classrooms.

Any wall will come down...you just have to hit it hard enough. (Photo by Judah Dyck)

The second week of November the student body went up north as part of the semesters ministry trip.  This time they went up to Chiang Mai to participate in the Gospel Music Festival.  Our worship band (which includes a few of the students) was one of the main bands playing so we decided to send everyone we could to help out and support the event.  I stayed in Sri Racha to keep things going here and went and joined them on the third week of November.

At the end of the Maesai Music Festival. (Photo by Du)

Normally our ministry trips are only two weeks long, and we usually resume regular classes immediately after.  This year would not have been any different: we already had a teacher scheduled (and he showed up on time), we had a class planned, and everything.  But, there was another Gospel Music Festival in Mae Sai (A small town on the Thai-Burmese border).  Our band was scheduled to play at this event as well.  As we have a sister college in the town we decided to hold class in the mornings at the Mae Sai, with their students.  So Pastor Al, Pastor Lorne (our guest teacher for the week), and I flew up to meet the students.  We had a great week with the students there and enjoyed the music festival in the evenings.

We returned to Sri Racha on the weekend and Pastor Lorne completed the rest of his course at home base to end out the month of November.  He was a great teacher (as are all of the people we have teach) and he really enjoyed his time here.  The students also were really blessed by his teaching.

As we come into December and get ready to end the first semester things are getting even busier:  We have Pastor Charlotte here teaching the Pastoral epistles, and I will finish out the semester teaching on church history.  We have at least three upcoming Christmas outreaches that the students are involved in which will keep us busy for the rest of the month.  We even have a big event planned on the 20th for our Children's outreach (That the students run) that hopefully will help us connect our families with our local church.  There is going to be another music festival in Phuket at the end of December that most of the students are going to (I am still undecided if I will be going.)  We are also launching another nursery and building a coffee shop at the Light House.  The pace never stops.

One of our last days in Mae Sai, we went Spelunking; here are the boys getting ready to go exploring the caves, (Photo by Alyssa Redner)

Christmas in Thailand is very different, this is my second Christmas here, which I think makes the differences even more noticeable.  Many Thais do not actually understand Christmas.  The malls and shopping centers getting caught up in the commercialism of it: holiday decorations, Christmas music, pictures of Santa Claus; but that is really all they know about it: A big shopping and gift giving time for westerners...and because they idolize the west, they get caught up in it as well, but mostly they consider it part of our new years celebrations.  Even the students that attend Catholic schools do not fully know what Christmas is about.  They do know that it has something to do with Christians, so they are more willing to let us put on events and listen to what we have to say, but it is very interesting to see how they interpret the holiday.  Although, maybe they do understand Christmas, at least the Christmas they see in North America:  From my time working retail I know that Christmas is no longer about time with family, love, celebrating the birth of the saviour, and peace on earth, but has become about getting, and out doing in gifts, about commercialism and materialism.

I don't mean to get preachy, I just find it interesting how things have progressed, and how Western Culture is interpreted in the East.

Well,  Once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year friends and family...I wish I could be there to celebrate with you.  May God's Love, Peace, and Joy continually fill you home this new year.

Blessings,
Tyler