Still Waiting!

Currently Listening Mighty to Save By Hillsong see related

I created a Slide Show! Check it out!

I really miss all my kids at House of Grace!

Saying Goodbye and Hello

Greetings from the Northeastern United States!  Well I have been home exactly 1 month now and am finally getting an update done.  Sorry to take so long.  I have been busy trying to get settled and just readjust to life in America. 

Saying goodbye to the people who had been my family for the last 2 years was not easy.  I shed many tears and questioned whether or not I should stay many times.  But I finished this part of my life-race well and am moving on to the next leg.  The hardest part was saying good-bye to all the kids and young people I had become so close to and of course to my friend Pissamay and grandma and grandpa who lived next door.  They will always be a part of my life and I will go back and visit.

It was nice as I was given several farewell hugs and warm words and lovely gifts to remember everyone by.  One of the most special events was when House of Grace threw me a farewell party along with the local churches.  They danced traditional dances in my honor and pastor Pramote from Canaan church shared a wonderful word.  I was then presented with some beautiful gifts including a banner signed by every one of our kids at House of Grace.  It was a big tissue night, but a night I will cherish forever.

On Monday April 3^rd Carol, Laurel, Gidget and I drove to Chiang Mai.  We visited with Missionaries Mark and Janie Durene, this is an awesome couple who were and are great friends to me.  Then on Tuesday the 4^th we went to our Friends the Fletcher’s (Rhema Missionaries) to relax for the afternoon and let Gidget run.  Then at

6pm it was off to the airport.  Upon arrival the airline informed me that I needed an export license to get the dog out of the country (they didn’t tell me that the 3 times I went to their office to arrange this trip) and that they were going to quarantine Gidget in Bangkok.  I said “NO”.  So they flew us to BKK and postponed our flight a day.  Thanks to Deanna, Chelsea, and Niina (Missionaries in BKK) Gidget and I were able to sleep in a nice warm bed (not the airport floor) and have transportation to get the right paperwork.  So Gidget and I flew out on the 5^th and arrived in the US on the 6^th.  No problems stateside!  God is good!   

So Gidget and I are here and Gidget is adjusting to life in America.  I think she is bored not having any lizards to chase.  She checks the walls wherever we go.  However she has discovered squirrels and chipmunks and would give anything to get a hold of one.  She has also now learned what a vacuum is and it was funny to watch her first encounter.  However she does not like our dog Dudley very much and she has beaten the poor old dog several times!

God’s timing is amazing!  Upon my arrival home I was asked by the director of the ESL program at my church to come and meet one of their students who had only been there about 2 months.  Her name is Siriporn and she is from Bangkok.  She is working as an Au Pair and has been in the US for 3 months now.  So I went and met her and we had fun talking in Thai with one another.  She was living a lonely existence here and so it was fun for her to make a new friend and nice for me to have a Thai person to relate to on this side.  Siriporn (nickname: AOY) is from a strong Buddhist family in Bangkok area and is planning to be stateside for 1 year.  I invited her to a young adult night at the church and she came and really enjoyed the music.  So I invited her to church with me and she enjoys it, as a matter of fact she brought another Thai AU Pair (Goy) with her last week.  It is funny, each week I show up at church with another Thai Person.  Please pray for these girls and for me as I build relationship with them.  They are looking at God as just one more God to believe in.  Please pray for wisdom for me as I witness to them.  They have been drawn to the church by the music and how loving and friendly the people are.  But I want to introduce them to someone more friendly and loving than anyone they have ever known, Jesus Christ.

Siriporn will be moving to work with a new family in early June and will be more than an hour away from where I am.  God knew this and maybe this is why he had me come home 6 weeks early so I would have this time to share the Lord with her before she is too far away to spend a lot of time with. 

God has been so good and so faithful.  His timing is perfect.  I have been home in time to meet Siriporn and Goy and be a friend to them and be able to relate to them having lived in their country.  I also got home in time to see my friend Greg before he died last week.  Greg fought a 10 year battle with heart problems and cancer and he died last Sunday at age 49.  I had the privilege of speaking at his funeral on Thursday.  I do not know where Greg was with the Lord when he died but God knows.  Greg was too shy to pray with me or anyone else but he may have prayed on his own.  Please keep his family (brother, sister, nieces and nephews) in your prayers.

Last week at the wake and funeral for Greg I found myself face to face with people I have not seen in over 10 years.  They are people I knew before I got saved.  I have always worked to avoid these people but here I was in their midst.  I was able to come face to face with my past and not flinch.  God has brought me so far in my life to a place where my past is gone and the experiences are something to use to reach others but the person who lived them is not here anymore.  I was able to share my faith with many people last week, people who knew the “old” Penny.  It was nice to hear them say, “wow, you’re so different”.  Yes I am! 

Well, I think that pretty much brings you up to date as to where I am now.  THANK YOU so much for all your love prayers and support.  Please pray for me as I look at the future and several different options before me.  Also pray as I am planning to take my licensing test by the end of this month. 

You have been my support in every way for the last 2 years.  Thank you for taking this journey with me and I pray that we will continue this journey through life together.

May God Bless you all abundantly!

To Know Him and To Make Him Known,

Penny Lemin

PRAYER REQUEST…

Please pray…

1. That I will do well on my license to Preach test and interview

2. For mine and Gidget’s adjustment to the U.S

3. For direction for the future

4. For the kids at House of Grace

5. For Pissamay and her family

6. For Thailand and the missionaries serving there

7. For Siriporn and Goy

Currently Reading Traveling Light: Modern Meditations on St. Paul's Letter of Freedom By Eugene H. Peterson see related

Testify to Love

March 2006 Newsletter

Finally I am getting an update posted (life has been very busy!).  Please note this is only part 1 of 2.  I hope you enjoy.

 

Sawatdee Kha!

Hello from a very hot Chiang Kham!  This is my last newsletter from Thailand.  Can you believe it?  My 2 year term is coming to an end and I will be returning to the USA arriving on April 5^th (next week!).  Praise the Lord my dog, Gidget, is coming with me!

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!

MISSIONS = CHANGE AND FLEXIBILITY

Be prepared for anything when you work with kids!

Many of you have either taken short-term missions trips or are missionaries yourself.  But for those of you who have not you must know that when you are in missions in any form you are always dealing with change and therefore always need to be flexible! 

In my last newsletter I talked about how I had really not been working at the orphanage and had been doing more community outreach through preaching and teaching.  Well, back in January we had some of our teens (boys) at House of Grace get into a bit of trouble and we then realized that we needed to take strong action to try and bring some discipline into their lives that would be effective in turning their lives around.  Basically these boys were not living for Christ and we needed to do everything we could to love them back.  SO, I dropped everything I was doing to be part of a time of working with these young boys.  The situation was serious enough that as soon as I found out and the staff met I immediately contacted my students and cancelled all of my English classes except for the small group that has been meeting at my house for almost a year now.  Needless to say this did not make very many people happy but I was and am not willing to let any of our kids live in sin. 

Discipline.

We quickly began to work with these boys.  They lost all privileges.  The only time we trusted them to be alone was when they were sleeping or in the restroom.  They needed to earn back our trust.  I must say this was a new way of doing things for our Thai staff but it was necessary.  So every morning (7 days a week) at 5:30am either I or Laurel waited outside the boy’s dorm for the boys to come out and we escorted them wherever they went and they could do nothing without politely asking.   We stayed with them until they went to bed at 9pm.  For some this program was so new to the culture that it did not fully succeed but it did bring about some changes, for one of our boys he chose to leave House of Grace.  May was allowed to choose whether he wanted to stay and try to change and follow the Lord or go live with his adult brother.  Unfortunately, he chose to leave and to walk away from God.  Please pray for May!

But even though we have one who has walked away we have one who has been changed.  Let me tell you about Thong.  He is a young boy who was one of the first children received at House of Grace when it was opened 8 years ago.  He lost both of his parents to AIDS.  He came from a very poor family.  He had some difficult times and over the years has had difficulty with stealing which is common with kids who come from poor families.  Thong was part of our discipline program and at first was very difficult to work with and very angry.  But over time and constantly being stern and yet loving he began to soften and we slowly watched his heart change.  Then back in February we had a team come from Oklahoma (Laurel’s home church) and Laurel and I got the idea to pair up each one of our teenage boys with one of the men on the team to be their mentor for the next week.

We paired Thong with a man named David and they worked together all week. 

Thong did great trying to practice his little English.  And Dave just loved on him and when they tiled the bathrooms he let Thong do the work with no criticism and just kept encouraging him. 

Thong got to spend time with a godly man  that changed this young boy forever!  Thong is now interested in going into the ministry.  He still has some things to work on his life (don’t we all!) but he is changed!  It was worth dropping everything to see Thong changed.  (Dave and Thong are now staying in touch through email and it is great that through modern technology he is still being mentored by this awesome man of God).

Our other boys they are doing ok.  The Staff decided to stop the discipline program at the end of February for various reasons but we are seeing some of the fruit of that time, but we need to keep praying for these boys because they are at very vulnerable ages and are making life decisions.

Now what?

Well, now with the discipline program ended I was left with nothing to be doing.  I only had my one English class left.  To start up all my classes would have been starting all over because I had ended so abruptly in a culture where that is not exactly favored and those relationships were now lost.  And knowing I only had a few more months left it would not have been accomplishing anything because I would have had to rebuild those lost relationships and that takes much time that I did not have.  So in light of this, it seemed my work here in Thailand was coming to an end.  And so after discussing things with my Area Director it was decided that it would be acceptable for me to leave the field 6 weeks early.  No there is no problem, it is simply my time is ended.  Now I am starting the goodbyes and that is hard but I will tell you about those in a later update.

(In section 3 you will find the details of my return to the states and some vital prayer requests.)

 

What Next?   “For I know the plans I have for you” says the Lord

Well, it looks like I will be leaving missions for a while.   I know that sounds crazy if you know anything about me and how my passion is missions. My heart will always be in missions but I know the Lord is leading me to a season (however long that may be) of ministering at home (The USA is a mission field too).  Also, the Lord is leading me to get my degree and so I am planning to apply to do so through Global University.  I plan to earn my Bachelor’s degree with a dual major (Bible/Pastoral Ministries and Christian Education).  God has also laid a vision for ministry on my heart and He is calling me back to America to walk it out for a while.  Someday I may be back out in the foreign field as an appointed missionary but right now God has some things for me to learn by ministering at home.  But God has many things in store for me to do and I will be sharing those as the Lord leads.  Please pray as my transition will not be an easy one.   I have really settled into my small village life and I enjoy it.  Chiang Kham is not like anywhere in America.