Itsara

Please note that the guitars are not being given away ;-)

Some books and CDs (click to enlarge).

A free Gameboy Advance!

I was going to go into the story of how this whole thing happened, and I still will, but it’s occurred to me that there are a handful of questions that we keep getting. And it might help stem the tide of curiosity, doubt, and concern by others on our behalf if I answered them here.

Unfortunately there are some folks who I really wish could read this that are sadly disconnected from the Internet. Personally, I don’t know how I’d survive in such a state (about half of my long term memory is actually stored digitally in the form of other people’s informative websites), but somehow they manage it. Maybe they’re just smarter than me. Anyway, here goes…

1. When are you leaving? By far the most-asked question, and the one for which we don’t have a good answer yet. Because part of the purpose of this log is so that you can follow the process, I’ll tell you what we do know. When we made the decision almost a month ago, it was to move in less than a year. So no later than August 2005. We (and this includes Sean, who plans on going with us) plan on visiting our families in December; so no sooner than January 2005. Other considerations include finding and transitioning to a new worship pastor for Coast Vineyard – a process for which Pastor Jamie and I would like about 3 months for, and a trip to Hawaii that my family is taking next July (we’d like to go, the question is whether we fly from the US or from Bangkok, and how much it will cost). Like everything we’re not sure of, this is subject to change and to God’s will.
2. How long will you live there? Indefinitely. We have no plans to move back to the US. We have no plans to live there forever either. Basically, we have no plans. We’re just gonna go and see what happens.
3. Why are you going? I’ll write up the long answer to this question in the next week or two. The short answer is that we are going to Thailand to start an orphanage and to see what else God has in store for us, because God told us to (I’ll definitely go into what I mean by that later too). It is a Buddhist nation (much more so than America is a Christian nation – 95% of it is Buddhist and the king constitutionally has to be), and at the same time it is an open nation. So the opportunity is ripe and there’s lots to do.
4. How will you earn money? In the long run, support from our friends and family will probably be our primary income. We are looking into renting out our condo in Clairemont (the part we are “looking into” is getting someone to be a property manager for us), which would provide a nice steady source of income. Thanks (again) to the Internet, I can also do some work from over there. Not “real work” (in the sense that I do it now), but I could do freelance programming or writing as needed and get paid that way. The nice thing is that the cost of living is much cheaper in Thailand. So for Cindy and I to raise enough money for ourselves will not be all that difficult. However, an orphanage has a budget that is beyond what I have attempted to make myself, but if God’s called us then He’ll provide it.
5. What will you do when you first get there? There will be a decent amount of time in between when we arrive there for the first time and when we actually have an orphanage to run. In the meantime, we expect to be primarily learning the language and working with Im Jai House – a Christian orphanage that we spent much of our time with during our trip. We may also teach English or work with the local churches (indigenous, international, or both). But when we first get there, we will just be settling. God only knows how long that will take.
6. What are you doing with all of your stuff? Some of it we’ll bring, some of it may stay in the condo to furnish it, and the rest we will either sell or give away. For those of you that read Cindy’s comments on the last post (maybe one day she’ll do her own posts), you have heard that we are already in the process of giving stuff away. There are a number of items currently on our dining table that fall into the category of “Things We Will Give Away No Matter What”. These items constitute the first wave, and there are some good things on that table – some of my older CD’s (mainly some grunge/alternative stuff from the 90’s), a GameBoy Advance (that was previously given away and returned, due to no fault in the GBA itself), some books, picture frames, a tennis racket… Tell you what, I’ll figure out how to get pictures onto this weblog and just show you what’s there so far. It’s all free, though we will always accept donations of course ;-).

Of course, if you have anymore questions, feel free to ask us. We’re happy to answer any and all questions, and I’m happy to post them here as well. In fact, your questions give me a good idea of what you want to hear about so ask away :-)

Normally I’m avidly against weblogs, but it occurred to me that this might be the best way to keep people updated that wanted to be updated – without the annoyance of mass e-mails (e.g. if someone changes their address, I don’t need to know about it), and with interesting features like pictures and links coupled with the ability to post as much as I want without annoying anybody. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like it.

The problem is, I have a tendency to be long-winded.

At the moment, the purpose of this log is to update all of you on our current status regarding Thailand – the call, the details, the move, and later on the orphanage. Soon I’ll post how we got to where we are for those of you who are interested and haven’t heard it yet. Over time, we’ll also post prayer requests, needs (financial and otherwise), and other fun stuff (for example, we’ll tell you when we start giving stuff away).

Oh, and Itsara is anglicized Thai for “freedom”. I liked it. Maybe it’ll be the name of our orphanage. Or maybe of one of our children. For now, it’s the name of our weblog. How’s that for anti-climax?