 Rev. Tim Mueller and his wife, Dawn, recently traveled to Thailand and Cambodia to introduce A Child's Garden of Bible Stories to pastors and teachers there. Rev. Mueller has been a parish pastor for 21 years and currently serves St. John and St. Luke Lutheran Churches in Nashville, Illinois. Dawn is a Lutheran school teacher.
| Hello from Bangkok, Thailand!
Yes, we are sending this email to "everybody and his brother." We are over here in Thailand as the first stop on our trip to SE Asia. We are writing because we want to share our excitement about our trip and in the hope that you would be so kind as to remember us in your prayers. We have four things that we hope to accomplish on this trip:
1. On behalf of the Children's Christian Concern Society, we are here to strengthen ties with two daycare centers in Bangkok and to explore other avenues by which CCCS could be involved in Thailand and Cambodia. Dawn is a member of the Board of Directors of CCCS and serves as liaison to these two countries. Today (Friday, June 20), we visited the two daycares and had productive meetings at each. 2. Next week (June 23-27) we are team-teaching a seminar for pastors and (volunteer) Christian teachers called "Teaching the Young." That is to take place here in Bangkok. I have the Bible studies and Dawn has the "practical" presentation. 3. The following week (June 30-July 4) we are repeating the Seminar for a similar group in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 4. The last couple of days will be a special "25th anniversary getaway" for just the two of us in Phuket, the southern (resort) beach area of Thailand. About the flight here: The worst was getting everything ready to go. We had skads of stuff to bring over here and Dawn literally spent the whole night before we left sorting and packing. (I slept an hour or two.) Because it was an international flight, we did not have to pay anything extra for luggage. And since our tickets were purchased in February we did not have to add any fuel surcharge. We were each allowed two 50 lb. pieces of luggage for checked baggage plus one carry-on. So, of the 200 lbs. allowed us for checked luggage, I estimate we had about 120 lbs. of stuff. Much of it was Christian teaching material purchased by our Sunday School at New Minden for the two daycare centers, plus some books that one of the directors requested. We also brought along a lot of old Sunday School leaflets that we will give away at the seminars. The Lord has surely been answering the prayers being sent heavenward on our behalf. We both dozed quite a bit on the plane flights and feel quite good. The lack of sleep the night before may have served us well. The only effect of the time change was that last night (Friday night, early Saturday morhing) I woke up about two o'clock, wide awake. But after 15 minutes I was able to go back to sleep. When we took off from Detroit, we headed northwest across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and into Canada, west of the Hudson Bay, and made an arc across Southern Alaska and over the Pacific toward Japan. (On the map it is an arc; I have a hunch on the globe it is more of a straight line.) As we headed west we chased the sun and it never got dark. However, the airline has everyone close their window shades to create a sense of nighttime so that people can sleep. When you wake up in Tokyo it is the middle of the afternoon a day later. Rather weird it is. This flight was on a 747, with ten seats across. Being in the middle four seats we were nowhere near a window to peek out and see what was really happening during our artificial "night." At one point, however, while wandering up and down the aisles taking the long way around from the rest-room, I saw an awesome sight. Someone had opened the window shade in an open area (so as not to disturb any of the sleeping passengers), and there below us was a stunning range of snow-covered mountain peaks piercing a fluffy blanket of cloud cover. Only the tops of these sharp massive pieces of granite were visible. When I walked away the brightness blinded my eyes for a few minutes. Always desperate for a sermon illustration I thought, "Isn't that something. Man lives in self-imposed darkness while God's light shines more brightly than ever." May the light of Christ's Gospel shine brightly wherever people have tried to pull down their blinds to shut it out. The rest of the flying time was uneventful. The plane arrived early in Bangkok, about 11:10 p.m. instead of 11:40. However, by the time we had deplaned, got our passport stamped, and got all that luggage loaded up, it was something like 12:30 a.m. Our friends Joe and Ar were there to meet us and take us to the hotel. Joe and Ar are the faithful managers of the Concordia Gospel Ministry Center in Bangkok, which is sort of the nerve center for Lutherans here. We got to our room about 1:40 a.m. Friday morning. Our ride was here to pick us up about 8:30 a.m. Friday. We felt surprisingly well-rested. Love in Christ, (Pastor) Tim Mueller
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Children's Bibles arrive in Southeast Asia
Sunday school and Lutheran day school students, churches, and individuals across the United States have shown great support for "Telling the Next Generation: Children's Bibles for Southeast Asia." Click here to see how those mission gifts have resulted in children throughout Thailand and Cambodia receiving their own copies of A Child's Garden of Bible Stories. LHF volunteer Ken Precht recently traveled to Cambodia to help LHF translators improve their English skills. Read more about his experiences... "Jesus Affects My Life!"
Ken Precht's students wrote short essays about the person who has most affected their lives. Click here to read their essays.
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