Happy News, Year?

So since last we posted, we have become road warriors once again, or maybe we have graduated into Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hQC3nkftrk&eurl

Anyways, we traveled down to Pattaya. But on the way we stopped by the Detroit of the East (who knew!) and hung out with some good family friends, the Herrmanns:
We stayed up late after the kids passed out and played speed scrabble and Euchre! It was a lot of fun being around people (and teaching them facebook and talking about apple computers) from home even if it was for like 16 hours.

Then it was down to Pattaya. We showed up at this orphanage and it completely broke our hearts what these children have gone through and where they have come from. Pattaya is a much smaller city then Bangkok but the amount of sex industry workers is unbelievable. So you can imagine the backgrounds of these children and the necessity of the work that is being done at the Mercy House. They sent us to the backyard with a weedwacker, extension chord, hedge clippers, and a bucket. The backyard of the home was in bad need of edging and poisonous snakes had begun to sneak into the yard beneath the concrete fence and were making homes in the edge growth. We killed no snakes, but many weeds.

We headed downtown to beat the party crowd, find a guesthouse, and set up our plan for the water bottle distribution center, but ran into some problems. No inexpensive guesthouses were available (who would have thought on New Years Eve in party central, Thailand). By 4:30 we had wondered all over and exhausted ourselves trying to find a place. We were warned by many people about Pattaya. Many missionaries, Thailand residents (foreign and Thai), and even our travel books told us that it was a dark place. And by 4:30 that day, we really felt it. I sat down to eat some KaPaoGai and Oliver and I started sharing what we were thinking and seeing in this place. Oliver couldn't even eat he was so disgusted (okay may he was a little sick). I think I saw more old foreign males on the street then Thai males, and many had a very young Thai girl on their arm, and this is from 2:00 to 4:30 in the afternoon!

I may butcher these statistics so please look them up for yourself somewhere (Google it or something), Thailand's economy is based mainly around tourism. Anyone can see this, it is a beautiful place and people should vacation there. But of those tourists 62% are unaccompanied males. I don't know how many of those males are involved in sex tourism, but that is a lot of men traveling to a country alone. I hope there is a group somewhere in internetland that is Thailand Tourists Against Sex Trafficking or a group along those lines (again Google it or something). We made the decision that because of the atmosphere, tiredness of our bodies, lack of a room, weirdness of stomach, and a funny feeling in our spirit, that it would be best to get back to Bangkok. We did and both were fast asleep when the clock struck 2009. Now, five days into the new year, I am in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Crazy days it has been. We went taxi, to train, to tuk-tuk, to foot, to bus, to taxi, to tuk-tuk, to moto, to foot, and to new contact! We met lots of great people along the way, and definitely had some American personal space boundaries broken. This is us in a Thai tuk-tuk, with Rob from Oklahoma:

Cambodia is a very different place from Thailand, mainly Cambodia has real coffee; being a French colony at one point coffee and bread are abundant. Cambodia is very behind its economically booming neighbor, but we are taking to this place quite well, even driving around in it at night:
We met some friends at church and our contact convinced us to just take the car and meet them. We got wildly lost, but Oliver felt like he was back behind the wheel of old Mother Mayleye. Gotta love Toyota Camry hatchbacks (Oliver's 1994 & Mordegi's 1985!)

This is Mordegi, he is one of the most hardcore guys I know. We are living in the upper room in his house and it has been a blast. This is basically what goes on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD2CnLL8WnE

Yes, and after some muddin' he sets up a medical clinic in a village, and shares the Gospel. Since we don't know how to do medical stuff, we mostly play with kids and help him get organized:

We even tried to organize a game of baseball (with a stick and what looked like petrified cow dung), we failed, but the kids had a blast.

Oliver and I have this ongoing competition over who's home schools have more apparel in Asia. So far Texas Longhorns: 2, Michigan Wolverines: 0... It is just that type of year. No one, even in the 3rd world, wants to rep U of M!
Alright till next time, we love you guys! And please keep praying. And, to our moms...we love you!

-Josh