Our three months in Thailand is drawing to a close this week.

Tonight it rained for the first time since Christmas. We didn't realize how used to not having rain we had become until we got excited by it's freshness. Hopefully the next couple days will be cooler and the air will be clearer. I am including a picture since this is quite out of the ordinary. It shouldn't rain until the end of the hot season in June.

Thai Rain in Hot Season

The Garrisons took us out for our last night in Thailand and we went to The Duke's for dinner and then had ice cream afterwards. We finished up the night playing charades with the kids. All together a very nice evening.

Tomorrow we take the overnight train to Bangkok, and then fly to the Philippines Friday with a layover in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia (on Borneo) for a short visit. We will be spending 3 weeks in the Philippines with an organization called IFL (institute for Foundational Learning - www.iflintl.com). Here we will be learning in a hands-on setting about some of their different community development projects that help provide relief to the rural poor in SE Asia, as well as ministering the love of Jesus to them. We don't know many details of our time there, but we will keep you posted as we learn more. After our time at IFL, we will be spending a week or two traveling through southern europe before heading to the Netherlands where we will spend a month studying at L'Abri (www.labri.nl).

We are very excited about this new part of our journey and excited about coming home after that :-)