Marsha's Blog

 (Note to Reader: This is another in our series of “River Crossings” blogs, written while we were in Thailand (2009-2011). Enjoy! Today marks our seventh week of Thai language study, and as we keep getting exposed to all the language we don’t know yet, I figure in another month we should be totally illiterate! So, to celebrate the occasion and find some encouragement, Tony was blessed with the chance today to preach in Japanese. It’s a small group (about 30) of Japanese and Thai people who meet at a hotel not five minute’s walk from our house. I suppose a visit from royalty might have gotten a bigger response, but I don’t think so.  Having been  without  a  “real  live”  pastor  for  so long, they were determined to make the most of the situation, asking for not only a sermon, but also Lord’s Supper and a Benediction (reserved for the ordained in most Japanese churches). Tony gave it his best shot, pulled out the stops, and was like a kid in ...

Note to Reader: This is another in our series of “River Crossings” blogs, written while we were in Thailand (2009-2011). Enjoy! We’re coming into that dangerous stage of language study: the time when you know just enough to be understood, but not necessarily what you think you’re communicating. Like for instance the other day when Tony told the motorcycle taxi driver he wanted to leave dog doo on his bike (Ghii with an upward inflection rather than Ghii with no inflection). The guy must have understood, since he gave Tony a ride home, but now we know why he was grinning so much! Actually, my literary creations are quite proper, if not exactly useful, like telling the teacher yesterday that I wanted her to take my refrigerator outside, please. Hey, you never know when a phrase like that might come in handy. And come to think of it, I’m not the only one lacking all the information necessary for the situation. I remember a few years ago during the Sydney Olympics, we had some friends come...

  Dear Friends,  While you’ve been following the blog I wrote 13 years ago and re-loaded it during this time when we’re on the road, I also promised you a real-time update now and then.  Tony and I realised we’ve been here in Hawaii for more than half the time we’ve committed to, so I guess that a ‘catch up’ time is warranted. First of all, let me say how we miss you all in Australia.  Clearly you’ve moved on and the waters over the gap we left have filled in, making us both happy that you’re OK without us, but at the same time sad, because we miss you. So what have we been up to?  We’ll, of course Tony is LOVING his teaching job here and is often amazed at the depth and spiritual hunger of his students.  He was honoured to be able to speak at the 2021 graduation ceremony of the Oahu Bible Institute, even though HIS students will be graduating in the future after he’s gone.  Almost instantly we were bowled over with new opportunities for preaching and ...

 (Note to Reader: This is another in our series of “River Crossings” blogs, written while we were in Thailand (2009 – 2011). Enjoy!) Well, it’s been a week! We were “promoted” to Thai language level two and on Monday new classes began with the same “let’s kill em’!” breakneck speed the teachers seem to enjoy. We have new teachers, new rooms and a few new classmates who seem to be barely out of diapers. At least it’s clear that their brain cells are half the age of mine. I, on the other hand, vacillate between     being on top of the game and dragging along behind with      no idea what’s happening. Neither of us have actually cried yet (Tony DID decide to quit one hour but then had  tremendous success the next). It’s definitely a ‘day by day’ experience. Some of you expressed concerns last week about our blog, saying we should come home and just quit trying so hard. Part of us says, “Yeah; why are we killing ourselves, when we could probably take ...

 Making Bad Choices (Note to Reader: Continuing this journey down Memory Lane, I thought I’d share a blog from 2017. Enjoy!) Over the years as I’ve tried to plan out the rest of my life, I don’t think I ever pictured myself sitting flat in the gutter in our local tourist night spot. But there I was, sitting beside our grandson while he held his head between his knees. It all started with a birthday promise. When our oldest grandson turned 7 a few weeks ago, we gave him a necktie (and found out that what he really wanted a whole grown up suit). Along with the tie was a promise that, having now reached the age of perfection, he would be given the treat of a night out to a fancy sit down restaurant. We were all excited. Well, this part of Australia is currently in the middle of a newsworthy heat wave, so the necktie didn’t happen on either of the men, but we were all dressed ‘smart’ and were in pretty high spirits as we pulled out from his house. Now for some time, our family slogan h...

 (Note to reader: This is another in our series of “River Crossing” blogs, written while we were in Thailand (2009 -2011). Enjoy!) In Bangkok we don’t have a car. That means we have a variety of transportation options at our disposal. We try to walk most everywhere, but of course we often go further than the neighborhood. Most of the time I feel quite blessed to be able to raise my hand wherever I am and a sleek A/C taxi pulls up. Then the fun begins: will he speak any English, will he understand my Thai, will he go 90miles an hour thru the streets, or will he take the ‘back way’ thus running up the fare? Other modes for movement are the famous ‘sky train’ that is clean and cool, but bastioned above hundreds of steps, making it nearly as much work getting to as the trip itself. Besides that, it’s pretty limited in where it goes. There are buses and a subway, but we haven’t really demystified those yet. Where do you get on? How do you get off? What does it cost? With all the canals ...

 More Than Ice Cream (This is another in the series of blogs from “River Crossings”, several years ago. Enjoy!) Let me tell you about a girl I met this week. Her name is Fon (pronounced ‘fawn’) and she came to see me with another girl I was meeting for the first time. Let me back up. The “other girl” had rung me the night before. She got my name from a mutual acquaintance of ours in Japan. She is new in town and a bit lonely, so I said, “Look, even though my kids are coming for a visit this week and between them and language study we don’t have a minute to spare, come to the Dairy Queen on Sunday afternoon after your church service and we’ll at least get to see your face.” A few of our folks like to go there after the three-hour Thai church service for a taste of “home”. She did, and brought her new friend that she had met on the bus going to church. Fon sat down and seemed relieved that a few of us around the table could speak a few words of Thai. She began to share her story with...