Terry Gibbs – Wycliffe Bible Translators
Thank you for your prayers this past month and your financial support of my work here.
I was at Chris and Jamie’s house in Colorado Springs, Colorado for Christmas. Some days we had highs of 17 ° each day. During my time there I also worked on a teaching outline for Speech Analyzer for use when I returned to Thailand.
I had previously made comments regarding my house renters in the U.S. who had stopped paying rent and were not willing to move out. In September I contacted a lawyer friend at church there regarding him serving an eviction notice to the renters. Three weeks later he said he did not have time to help me, but had forwarded my request to a lawyer friend. That person did not contact me and I was not able to get him by phone. I took these two events to be the Lord saying to continue to wait and not press the rental issue.
On January 6 I flew to Waxhaw and spent a couple of weeks there. I’m thankful that I was able to resolve the rental problems. The husband has now been served a court restraining order and may not return to the house for one year. I’ve arranged with his wife that she and her children can stay at the house until June 1. She’s paid December and January rent and will now be able to pay each month. I was not successful in contacting her husband regarding the rent that was not paid for August-November. However by your kindness one of you provided an extra gift in September and a different person provided a gift in November and these two gifts covered the August-November rent. I feel that God honored my patience through each of you by your prayers and gifts.
My flight path back to Thailand was from Charlotte to Newark, NJ then non-stop to Beijing, China and then Chiang Mai. The flight from Newark was three hours late leaving, which caused me to miss my 6pm contention in Beijing. So United put me up in a hotel for the night. Since the flight was at 6pm the next day, I decided to go into the city the next morning and see the Imperial Palace (Forbidden City). Construction of it began in 1406. It covers 180 acres, and has 980 building inside a fortified 30 foot high stone wall that surrounds the city. There are about 1.8 million artifacts in various buildings including ornate works of art and bronze and there are about 350,000 vases and ceramic items. It would take weeks to see everything. Here is one of the many ‘Gates’ that lead up to the main inner city Gate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City#mediaviewer/File:Forbidden_City_Courtyard.jpg
Since my return, I’ve been helping students at Payap each day this past week. I have been able to arrange for a new Maebaan (house help) who will come two mornings each week, when I am not here, to cook Thai food (and put it in the refrigerator) and wash and iron my white shirts and dress pants for work. She’s in her mid-30’s, married and has two children (age 12 and 4). She has come highly recommended and as is common here in need of more income to make ends meet. I will give her the house keys tomorrow. She will leave a note showing how much she spends buying food and then I’ll leave the money on the dining room table for her to get the next time she comes. I’m thankful for living in a safe place in this world of ours.
I must not forget to thank two of you for special financial gifts this past year that have made a real difference, and this recent Christmas trip to the U.S. was provided to me free of charge by one of you. May the Lord bless all of you. Continue to pray that I will be able to fix computer that I need to completely disassemble, and other computers that have software problems. I started to teach the use of Speech analyzer last Friday. This introductory class was Part 1 of the 3 parts, which I will continue to teach this coming week. The hand out, in PDF format, of Part 1 consisted mostly of screen shots that show non-native speakers of English where to click and then a brief comment in English as to what to expect; it was 49 pages long.