Terry Gibbs, Wycliffe Bible Translators
Thank you for you prayers and financial support. A special thank you for a gift from an anonymous person that was designated for paying off some debts.
Thing have been fairly quiet around the Linguistic Department. But a student put a plastic sheet into the student laser printer which immediately bonded to the fuser unit and jammed the printer. I had to take it to the HP repair center in town which then took 3 weeks to repair the unit. The other students really missed the printer since it gets heavy use each morning just before class time. The Thesis Defense date of 3 student has been changed from mid December to the first week of November, so it seems that I’ll be helping the 3 of them at the same time with completion of their Thesis. If all goes well, they should be able to complete this before the end of this semester on Dec 18. If something delays someone, then they will need to Register for the next Semester and pay all of the frees just to work a few more weeks on their Thesis. I took a weekend out of town to visit Chiang Dao about about an hour and a half North of here. It has a nice cave system in a fairly tall mountain. It was good to have a break.
November 1 to February 28 is our official ‘High Season’ here when large numbers of people come to Thailand for a vacation. We typically have temperatures of 85° both day and night with humidity around 20 to 30 percent. The additional traffic makes it difficult to drive in town.
I continue to walk around, and talk to people … I met a girl from Norway who spoke very good English. She was with a tour group of 12, but 9 went somewhere, and 2 others went off another way, so she sitting was alone. We talked a short while. She was a trained pharmacist and was here on Holiday with the tour group. It turned she was a Christian, so I encouraged her to spread her faith as she interacted with other people in her line of work.
Just after that I met an older man who was from Sweden. He was here alone on holiday while his wife was back home working. She would not retire for several more years so she was not able to come with him. It turned out he was a confirmed atheist, so we got into some direct conversation, but we ended on friendly terms. It’s amazing what people cannot see around themselves. The handy work of His creation is self evident.
I met a guy from Ireland who was Catholic, but living here now. He felt no further need for having a religious faith.
I met a well educated African-American man from New York, who had 2 degrees and had spent many years in academia before moving here. He had pretty much lost his way with no real plans for the rest of his life.
I met another fellow who was from the US who was a confirmed Buddhist. But as we talked he kept completing my Scripture verses as I was trying explain what the Bible said. So I fairly quickly began asking him more about himself. He said he use to be a Christian, but was living here now and had found the benefits of being a Buddhist. After a while he ended our conversation with the comment that it was time for him to meet up with his Thai girlfriend. I assumed that she may have had some influence on him regarding his Christian faith.
Sitting in the covered area outside of a restaurant, it was not hard to miss a large Harley Davidson motorcycle come into the parking lot. The guy came in and sat down, then a few minutes late another guy walked in and sat with him. I let them talk a bit, then having owned a Harley for several years, I used that as an entry point to introduce myself. I talked to both of them for a short time, and left the conversation with the idea we would meet here again. I felt that I should not disrupt their conversation, but I wanted to have an entry point for a later discussion with the Harley guy. As I stood up leave, the Harley guy also stood up and being much bigger that I was, gave me a bear hug, and said lets talk again sometime.