Two Events

For me, two significant events took place during the past couple of weeks, both separated by over a thousand miles. The first was our annual home school conference held in the central highlands of Thailand. Over 50 missionary families, including mine, gathered from various Asian countries to improve our home schooling efforts and to evaluate the academic progress of our home schoolers. (Most missionary families send their children to International Schools. But I was allowed to continue home schooling Martha and Jonathan.)

Jonathan, along with other children from grades 1 to 8, spent much of the week in testing. Jonathan had a composite score of 94, meaning his score ranked in the 94th percentile of all U.S. 7th graders. Pretty good for a boy whom I have to regularly pull hair and twist ears to get him to do his home work. Martha, being a high schooler, was exempted from the testing. So she enjoyed most of her week in various activities with the other high schoolers attending the conference.

But I had it hardest of all. You see, the parent who teaches the child/children is required to attend the conference. In most families, that’s the mom. But in our weird situation, it’s me. So, alas, here was this dad who had to attend all these “Sessions for Mom”. Like the old expression says: I felt like a fish out of water. However, the moms were very sympathetic and the food was good.

The second event was here in the province of Iloilo. Eight members from the First Baptist Church of Azle, Texas arrived for 4 days of witnessing and evangelism. We divided the group into teams, then penetrated three different villages, going house to house, sharing our testimonies and encouraging the folks to participate in the Bible Study that our local leader would soon begin in their neighborhood.

The week culminated on Saturday when 11 new believers committed their life to Jesus Christ through baptism. We gathered in the morning hours along the beach just outside the city where two of the Azle team members baptized 5 adults and 6 young people. In the afternoon, about a hundred of our house church members from one town gathered for fellowship, singing, and testimonies. All in all, a very interesting two weeks.