Pinnochio

John and I have been feeling really lonely for some fellowship with other believers. I know a lot of you have been praying for that, and we want to say thank you. We were feeling especially low last week, and were asking God to help us find a church and meet some other Christians. He answered our prayers through Pinnochio. Not the Disney movie, but the small Italian restaurant on Sukothai Rd. Friday, we decided we were sick of phad thai, som tham, and random meat on a stick, so we went to this nice Italian place that we heard about from various people. The pizza was delicious, we had actual dressing on our salad, and the best part was what happened next.
In the same restaurant, there was a large group of people meeting for a party. We heard them playing games and stuff, but when they started praying, we really started paying attention. At the end of our meal, we walked over and asked them if they were from a church in the area. As it turns out, they were a group of OMF missionaries, some of whom have been in Thailand for 25 years! We exchanged emails, and asked where they all went to church. What a nice surprise and an answer to prayer!!

As it turns out, there is an International church about 25 minutes from us, much closer than downtown Bangkok. We called a couple of the ladies that we met on Friday, and went to church with them on Sunday morning. It was so wonderful! We met several people after church, and connected with a small group leader. Yesterday, we took a taxi back to that neighborhood and went to a small group where we got to meet other English-speaking people from the church. Some were older, retired ex-pats, others were young people working with kids with disabilities in an orphanage. We are so grateful!! Thank you for your prayers.

We've had a lot of fun exploring our neighborhood and the area around here. We love our little suburb; we have everything within blocks of our house: restaurants, massage places, a market with clothing, electronics, movies, housewares, paintings, etc, work, laundry, Internet cafes, and everything else. If we really want to go farther, we jump on a song thaew for a few minutes and have a whole new set of shops to explore; we even have an English bookstore with cheap books for teachers. A 15 minute walk from our house brings us to a place called Impact Stadium, a HUGE, HUGE conference hall that always has some exhibition or other.

A couple of weekends ago, we went to see the OTOP festival, a huge exhibition promoting handicrafts from all over Thailand. It was a great place to start buying Christmas presents, and maybe a couple things for ourselves, too.

We have also discovered our favorite restaurant. It's called Siriwan, and it has the best Thai food around for a pretty reasonable price. It's only open for lunch, though, so our new Saturday ritual is to sleep in for a while, and then get up and go to Siriwan. Here is our promise: if any of you come out to visit us in Thailand, we will treat you to a delicious, filling meal at Siriwan. So come!!