A lot of new things are happening in our life over here in Thailand.  The biggest new thing is that as of this Saturday Nov. 29th we will have a new member in our house hold.  I wont go into much detail now other than he is a seventeen year old orphan who Prang and I know pretty well.  He no longer has anywhere to go and it’s either our house or juvenilehall.  This is basically his last chance to show he can be responsible enough to be on his own as a man soon.  We spent some time with him tonight eating out and bowling together.  We all had fun and are looking forward to our new life together.  Hopefully this will be what he needs to get it into his head that he’s got to get his act together before he’s own his own is a year or so.  God knows where I was at his age and that wasn’t too long ago.   So I’ve got heaps of hope for him.
Secondly, thanks to a generous investor whom I have yet to meet and is a friend of Adam’s has committed a big chunck of money to help get our rice mill project up and running.  You can read more about this project by clicking on the link.  As of now we are working out the details about the electrical service and should be able to have the main machine up and running within the next month.  I’ll keep everyone posted as things progress.  We hope for this to be something the village can really benefit from.

On top of everything else I have ben busy with many other things including maintenance at Im Jai, fixing water pumps, managing the care of a new soccer field, planting vegetables,  paid electrical jobs, our lawn care business and even built a new dinning table for our house.  This week we will have Thanksgiving with some 25 people or more incuding the Heine’s, go to a friends wedding and pick up our new house member.  Life seems busy at the moment but we are happy and doing well.  Please keep Abigail in your prayers.  She came down with the same bronchial infection thing that she keeps getting.  We believe that it may be from allergies but we aren’t sure yet.  All we know is that it has accrued three times in the past two months and it’s really hard on her because she looses the ability to breath well.  Pray for her, we are doing what we can to make sure she stays healthy.  Also check out our new pages on the right hand side.  “House builds” and “Videos.”

Our dog Steak.  Who is only just over one year old just had seven puppies the other night.  So now we have a bunch of “Steaklets.”  Sometime late in the night or early in the morning I was woken by our dog screaming.  I went out to check on it and there she was with three puppies in her hole under the house which she dug a week ago.  So I went back to bed relieved thinking to my self, “Ok only three; I can handle that.”  But to my surprise in the morning when I woke up there were seven!  Seven!  What the heck are we going to do with seven puppies!  We are looking for homes and giving them away for free.  We already have a home for one.  We just don’t want a bunch of ”steaklets” running around when we already have three dogs as it is.  You can check out more photos by going to the ”most recent photos” link.

After Prang not being granted a visa into the United States “moving forward” has become the attitude we are being forced to maintain.  Though she took it rather hard at first, she snapped back into her usual happy, peaceful self in no time.  We are both convinced that Thailand is our home and we are happy to be here.  Though it would have been good to visit everyone and have everyone meet Prang and Abigail, we still haven’t given up hope.  Though trying to get Prang to go back into the US Consulate is going to be really hard.  She never wants to even look at it again.  But I haven’t given up and I am researching a little bit more and will try and apply for a green card for her.  It’s a long and expensive process with a few initial set backs.  One is I don’t have a real official job or a set income so proving that I can support her in America is close to impossible.  Hopefully I can pull some strings or someone can step in for me and we will be able to get things moving.  I’m still not sure if we have to live in the U.S. and wait for the green card or not.  Again I’ll keep everyone up to date on what happens.  For now I’ve been catching up on some of my work at Im Jai and started “raising” (I don’t know if that’s the right word to use or not) mushrooms at home.  It only took 18 dollars to build the mushroom hut and another 11 dollars to buy the bags the mushrooms grow in.  We’ve got a total of 100 bags that will apparently grow mushrooms for three or four months.  This should be enough for not just our house but Adam and Cindy’s as well as another friend’s house just down the street who are fostering orphans.  I’ve also been planting various vegetables and just trying to become more and more self sufficient.  I am still looking around for a rice field to rent and am still trying to get a rice mill started soon in the village.  You can read more about that by clicking on the rice mill link and you can see plenty of pictures by clicking on the recent pictures link.

So we finally have a nice soccer field for the kids to play soccer on at Im Jai House. When Im Jai was first built the contractor promissed they would put in a soccer field for free but never did. So thanks to a generous sponser we finally have a soccer field after almost three years. I’ve ben busy making sure that someone takes care of the grass and that the sprikler system is kept up and running. Last week I brought in two eight meter, cement lighting poles and dropped them a meter deep in the ground and then poured concrete. Soon I’ll have to climb up to the top and mount some spot lights for the late night games. Click here for more photos.
    

I was able to get up a tree and get a some what decent shot on the houses.  Though it was a bit sketchy trying to get to the tree which is outside our wall in the thick thorn bush of a jungle.  Prang and I are very happy to be in our new house.  We also feel blessed beyond words to be able to have a house.  It’s amazing to see what once was a dream or vision materialize into something.  It’s also nice having Adam and Cindy right next door to us.  We are able to spend a lot of time together.  Our kids seem to enjoy it as well.

I am currently working on creating a sort of new blog/website.  In no time at all there will be more here for you to see.  For now you can go to this link http://www.photoblog.com/snabott/ to view pictues if you like.

Sean