October Update - from UBON!!!

Hey everyone - this is a copy of our last email update (sent out earlier on today). If you want to be on our email list, please email us at noomandkaris@gmail.com


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We want to thank you all for your support over the last 2 months as we have been getting used to married life, and at the same time, getting used to taking care of a 16-year-old boy together! We are all going well and have made the move from Chiang Rai to Ubon Ratchatani. We moved on 9th October and the next day went to Noom's village (about 1-2hours away), only just getting back to Ubon today. The drive from Chiang Rai to Ubon was just over 18 hours! Thank God for keeping us safe and providing us with this car just before we moved, so that we could take alot of our belongings with us. We also had a song-teaw (small truck) drive with us, taking the motorbike and some of the bigger wedding gifts we got. At the moment we are staying in a YWAM house with another member of YWAM Ubon, but will be moving into the house we are renting sometime this week!

We had a great time in Noom's village the last couple of weeks. In order to save money on furniture, Noom and Pedro spent most of the time in the village cutting up wood and bamboo to make our own furniture. They both made beds, chairs, and cut wood to put together a table. When I wasn't helping them, I was working on our new idea to raise support: taking photos, loading them onto the computer, editing them and adding motivational quotes or bible verses to get them ready to print off as posters and postcards. If everything works out, we hope to sell these in both Thailand and Australia to raise support for our ministry (those of you Aussies, make sure you're ready to buy some next year when we visit!!). Please pray for us to be able to have some starting money to print off these pictures.

We would like to ask you all to pray for us in a couple of other things too. At the moment, we are praying about buying some cows or sheep and breeding them to also raise support for our ministry. This is a very thai-style thing that people in the villages do to raise money. Of course, if God gave us the go-ahead for this, we would need some money to start off (to buy the cows and sheep) and then it would be a few years of taking good care of them before we could start breeding, so we would also need a volunteer to help us take care of them (we would keep them on Noom's family's property in his village, about 2 hours from where we live).

The other thing is that we are praying about buying the house we're renting. At the moment, we are renting 3,000baht per month (about $110 AU per month) but if we wanted to buy it, it just means we would pay 6,000baht per month ($220 AU) and after 9-10 years, all the money would be payed off. At this stage, if we keep renting we will pay 3,000baht per month and probably stay in it for 9-10 years, so there is no difference on the time, just double the money! We have a plan to move to the village in 10 more years, and if we had a house in Ubon when we move to the village, we could rent it out to someone which would also help with our support, or use it as a missionary house for missionairies to stay in. This house is a perfect house and in a great location. The option has come up for buying it (instead of renting) because there is someone else who wants to buy it. If we decided to buy it, which (as we said before) would just mean paying $220 per month instead of $110, it would be a big step of faith because at the moment we are only just scraping by with the money that we have. But if God says yes, we'll trust Him. So we have alot of praying to do! Please pray for us in making this decision - that God would make His answer clear in His perfect timing, that He would open and close doors to show us the way.

THANKYOU SO MUCH for your support through prayer, encouragement, donations, and committed monthly support. Thankyou for caring for the Thai people as much as God does!! And thankyou for being a missionary (no matter where you are) by partnering with us in our vision for this land.

We would love to hear an update from each and every one of you :-)

God bless you all!

Love Karis and Noom