5 Rathmells and a Moped

Well, it’s only been 2 1/2 weeks and already life is beginning to feel normal.  Jack is playing soccer, the girls are making clothes out of tree leaves and sticks, I’m starting to stress about my upcoming Comprehensive Exams and Buddy is talking about starting businesses.  That just about means life is humming along. 🙂

Unpacking that, we have begun to get a rhythm…but each aspect is a little different.  Jack is playing with kids that are (in some cases) much older than him…he has a coach who knows what he’s doing and challenges the kids hard (as opposed to the poor single marine that got “asked” to coach teams in Okinawa by someone much higher rank than him!)  This has provided lots of opportunities to talk about how wise men love correction.  🙂

Buddy got to be at a conference this week dealing with the topic of using business as a mission…if you know Buddy for more than 12 hours, you know that his love and gift set hover in the business arena and he is constantly trying to bridge ministry and business opportunities.  I think he might have found some connections this week! 🙂  Pray that God will use his time with others to help him think through opportunities to further ministry here in Southeast Asia.

We are blessed with friends…some that we had before we even came…the five Rathmells and a Moped revolve around our weekly dinner date with our friends Rick and Asia…fellow ministers here from Colorado.  Yesterday, we didn’t have the truck so we all hopped on the moped to a restaurant about 2 kilometers away.  We made it no problem!

We are hoping to get a truck this week, please pray we get a good deal and find just the right one.   We really are beginning to feel like this is becoming home.  We hope to get the stuff we shipped this week, but the information coming out of Bangkok is well, a bit confusing.  There is a chance we might have to pay import taxes, so we will have to see.  Things move on “Thai time” here…which means a clock/calendar is rather pointless.  We got used to “island time” in Okinawa, but the Japanese are proving to be a bit more willing to stay in line with deadlines, etc! 🙂

Off to make dinner and get Jack from soccer…see, I told you things were normal…