1) We are all great!

First I want let everyone know we are doing great! Our travel over the past four days has kept us out of the loop as far as the news goes. We didn't hear anything about the earthquake in Indonesia until about three hours after we arrived in Ao Nang, but more about that in a bit.

Constant travel over the past four days has kept us all going and sleeping. We traveled an hour to Chicago to find out that our plane to Tokyo was already boarding. So without a break we boarded our plane and headed west. International travel in a plane is very nice. All five of us sat in the same row on a huge 777. One of the features of these huge planes is that they have TV monitors in the head rest. This can be a great thing or a bad thing. One of the feautures that is great is that you can choose which in-flight movie you would like to watch. Another feature that isn't so great is that you can choose to keep track of the planes flight plan through a GPS tracker. Although at times it was interesting to see what part of Canada we were over, it could also be very annoying. Especially to Michael who could see that he still had four hours left, trapped on a plane with an 18 month old Japanese boy behind him that had been pulling on his hair for the past 45 minutes. It didn't help that Neal, missing his children was egging the little boy and his brother on.

After 12 hours we landed in Tokyo where Jake just lit up. He started to have flash backs from his trip there three years ago. There were many flights leaving for Bangkok before ours, but we decided to walk around for a while and not hassle with trying to get transfered. Our trip to Bangkok on the gigantic 757 Japan Airliner seemed like minutes compared to the previous leg of out trip. One of the more noticable aspects of this part of our journey was seeing the english language being used less and less. During the inflight announcements they spoke Japanese first, Thai second then english. As our journey wore on this became more an more common.

We arrived in Bangkok at midnight on Monday morning. My passport recieved its first stamp ever! Customs went very quickly and everyone was very excited about not seeing another plane for at least a week. Upon our arrival in Bangkok I sercured transportation to our hotel and the assistance of a travel guide for our time in Bangkok during the day. I had told the boys that once they got outside of the United States that they would have to expect that the rest of the world moved at a slower pace. Our taxi driver did not re-enforce this concept. His rapid speed and dodging large trucks wasn't convincing to the boys that life around here was slow. Our hotel in Bangkok was locate in the "Chinatown" section of the city. This part of town is located smack dab in the center of the old city. I roomed with Michael. I say roomed because we were both so excited that falling asleep was not a part of either of our plans. Our room had a balcany that looked out onto the city from 18 floors above. The city is beautiful at night. Most of the Wat's (Temples) and the Grand Palace were lit up like giant Christmas trees; Huge golden Christmas trees. As the hours pasted we watched the city slowly creep alive. From our vantage point we noticed a market beginning to come alive in the alleys across from our hotel. At six a.m. we ventured across the street in to the Chinatown market. This market is full of tourist junk. What we discerned was that this was a giant wholesale market for vendors to come and buy things at very low prices to sell to tourists. We combed the alleys looking at tons and tons of Hello Kitty mercandise. We made our way back to the hotel where we ate breakfast with the rest of our group.

After breakfast we met our tour guide in the lobby of the hotel. She and our driver would spend the rest of the day karting us around Bangkok until our train left. They took us to the US Embassy where we reported our travel, allowed us to use a bank to exchange our currancy, took us to the train station to pick up our tickets and then to the Royal Palace and the ajoining Wat. At this site we visited the Emerald Buhdda. This is one of the most sacred places in all of Buddhism. Our guide told us that four times a year the King would come and change the clothes of the Buhdda depending on what season it was. All of us marveled at the artistry that seemed to be painstakingly done in honor of this country's God.

We said good-bye to our guides at the train station. We then boarded our car and headed south. I will finish more about our trip tomorrow. We will be taking a speed boat to Ko Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) at 9:00am where we will begin our construction work.

I am sorry that communication was not better over the last two days. It hurt my heart very much to hear that everyone has been so worried about us. We are doing great! Yesterday when news of the earthquake hit this area (before we arrived) we were told that the hotel gathered all the guests in the dining hall for about an hour until they knew everything was going to be alright. Life in Ao Nang was very much back to normal when we arrived. This is a great example of American TV sensationalism. Like I told Renee it is somewhat like after 9/11 when at the drop of a hat we are subject to terrorism alert levels being raised. All I can say is please don't watch Fox news, they are the worst at this. I wanted to cry thinking about all the people back home in our families and church family that were so concerned about our safety. I don't want to make lite of the sitution but when we heard the news our reaction was very different. I was excited. Not because there might have been people in distress and hurt, but because if they were, God had put our team here, at this time, that if something terrible had happened, through the tons of financial and prayer support, this team would have able to respond instantly to the needs. We could not be here without the love of literaly hunderds of people. Tomorrow we are responding to hurting peoples needs in your names.

More to share soon!