Corporate Prayer

Thursday was Exxon's second annual day of prayer within the company. 35 different work sites across the world joined together on one conference call. Each location had a designated praying leader and 5-7 minutes to pray for specific concerns. The President of Exxon Chemicals and President of the downstream business joined in. Mark and one other Thai Christian at the Sriracha refinery huddled around a phone praying together with many Exxon employees across the globe. Mark said he felt led to mainly pray for the nation of Thailand, that God's name would be glorified here and the people would turn from their idols and worship the one, true, living, God. Ironically, the young engineer Christian, praying at the refinery with Mark is the only Christian in his entire family. Mark said it magnified to him how difficult it must be for someone to turn from their entire heritage, culture and former religion to live for Christ. Mark said it was a powerful experience, one he was glad to take part in. May the name of Christ be high and lifted up within Exxon and every nation!

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The day after the conference we wanted to take advantage of the time that was left of the boys' two week holiday. We took a short 55 minute flight over to Koh Samui, the third largest island in Thailand for some enjoyable family, relaxation time.

We landed at the most beautiful, tropical, airport I have ever seen. We had a lovely hotel on the beach with outdoor jacuzzis. We enjoyed playing cards, watching movies, just being together. We spent one day touring several nearby islands, some inhabited and some not, on a speedboat. Stopping to hike up to the Emerald Lake, a blue lagoon at the top of an island that is a preserve on an island that is entirely a National park. We kayaked around another island. We had lunch at a small fishing island that has about 430 residents, their only electricity is supplied by solar panels, the island children are only offered school until the age of 12 and then they have to go to a bigger island if more education is desired. We had some amazing Thai food and celebrated Nathan's 16th Coming Home Day on October 17th.

It is still somewhat painful to think of those early days when he was so near death but still so amazing how far he has come in the last 16 years. We continually give thanks that God saved him and know that God has special plans for him.

The only thing that could have made our weekend get-away any better was if our Aunt Lola could have been with us as planned. We had thought that she would be here with us but there were issues with her airline ticket and she was unable to be here. We are trusting that this wasn't God's timing for her to visit Thailand and hope He will make a way later for her to visit. We miss her!

Last pictures from the conference. The closing ceremony was really special with King Constatine from Greece speaking on the impact the conference had on him this week. Ethan performed in the choir. I especially loved the conference CD and the parade of flags. Each school representative in their school uniform parading their particular flags. It was just great!
(Just a note about the Fall-themed slideshow. I decorated for Fall a couple of weekends ago and when Nok arrived Monday for work she asked, "Why do you do this?" I tried to explain to her that we have a season in America called 'Fall' and it is my favorite season. That even though we don't have Fall in Thailand I still like to celebrate it and pretend that it is Fall! We are at the end of the rainy season and sometimes when it is raining and I'm looking at the window I can pretend that it is Fall in Thailand and all the pumpkins and fall colors displayed throughout the house help me in my fantasy, which quickly fades once I walk out into the sticky heat!)

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Over the last week the boys' school has been hosting the annual Round Square International Conference for 800 delegates from around the world, doubling our student population in 24 hours. It was a huge effort for our school community and I think it was a very successful conference. Most of the delegates didn't commit to attend until July because of the political unrest in Thailand last Spring so it hindered our planning to some degree , not knowing until we all returned from our summer holiday how many people would be attending.
On Friday and Saturday the delegates began arriving from their pre-conference projects that were distributed all around Southern Asia, from the Hill Tribal area in Northern Thailand to Laos, Cambodia, Koh Phi Phi or the Bangkok area. I was Luggage Control coordinator for most of the day Saturday. Sunday was the official opening day, lunch was an International Flavors theme and I was the Americas coordinator, I've been solicitating chocolate chip cookies, brownies, rice krispie treats, sugar cookies and pimento cheese sandwiches from every American or Canadian Regent's parent over the last few weeks. The bakery supplied 30 vegetarian quiches. (There were many vegetarians attending especially from India.) The Aussies took care of all the grilled meats including hot dogs. The Koreans and Thai parents served up lots of spicy dishes. Europeans took care of pizza, croissant sandwiches, Welsh pies, and scones. We had to supply enough food to feed 1000 people.
It was a huge undertaking for the parent community. We had 200 sugar cookies alone, I made 400 pimento finger sandwiches and they cost me about $75 to prepare, cheese is a very expensive item here! One thing I love about Thailand though is the crustless bread that is available, it sure makes finger sandwiches much easier to compile. 1000 people descended on the food like a pack of locusts and cleared it out within two hours.
Monday and Wednesday were committed to service projects. The delegates along with headmasters, board members, and other adult chaperones were divided between 26 different service projects that our school is associated with. My bakery hosted 25 girls/ladies for a day of baking, basket weaving and origami. We've been planning for some time, securing permission from the prison director, assessing potential dangers of our site (making sure the dogs were secured...remember my dog bite there last Spring.) transportation issues, lunch plans, a lot of prayer on my part...I'm thankful to say that everything went really smoothly and a good time was had by all it seemed. The prison girls seemed to enjoy the day as much as the delegates, it is a rare event for them to have outside visitors, much less from half way around the world!
We had a map and globe available for each delegate to share with the prisoners their names and where they are from. One of my girls admitted that she didn't know the world was round! It was such a great experience for all involved. I think the day had a profound affect on the delegates, the bakery ladies are right at their ages, they are cute, nice, not looking much different from themselves but yet are isolated on the premises, little to do-no school etc. and have very stark sleeping and bathroom facilities.
On Tuesday and Thursday we sold all the baked items that were produced during the service days at the conference, it brought some funds back into the bakery. I also volunteered at the Information desk for several hours on those days. Dustin and Nathan were Barazza leaders and facilitated discussion sessions after keynote speakers. There were many late evenings this last week as they were so involved in the conference.
BUT the best thing has to be this-on the last day of the conference the Hotchkiss School from Conneticut donated $300 to the bakery for the kitchen to be plumbed!! Most people don't realize we don't have indoor plumbing there, the girls have to haul all their dishes to another location, we wash our hands from a large container filled with water that has to be carried into the kitchen and bottled water is used in our recipes. Four girls and a teacher representative from the Hotchkiss school cooked with us on Wednesday and felt led to contribute to our project. It sounds like such a small amount of money to students that pay $45,000/yr to attend their prestigious boarding school but is HUGE here in Thailand. I started crying when they handed me their donation and I can't wait to tell the girls all about it on Wednesday!
I'll post some pics from the closing ceremony later. Here's a few pics of our week.

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