48 Days...

Right now I am reading Dan Miller's book 48 Days to the Work You Love. So far it has been incredible. Gabe and I are trying to read a chapter a night together before we go to sleep. Some of our best friends in this whole world, Cody and Jamie Vandermeulen, are reading the book along with us even though we are on opposite sides of the globe. They are just reading it together at night us like us. But, hey, at least it makes us feel a little bit like we are home. Anyways, even though we are only on Chapter 5, I can honestly say I would highly recommend to book to almost everyone...or at least anyone who wants to wake up every morning and know that they are doing the work they love :). Maybe I will write yall a book report after I am done the book...or maybe I want yall to just read it for yourselves because it's life-changing. Big thanks to Dave Ramsey for the book recommendation. I love it when people suggest great books and I love suggesting great books! Later yall!

Love,

Dawn

More Tiger Zoo

SriRacha Tiger Zoo

So we finally got to go the main attraction here in SriRacha, the tiger zoo. Seriously, when you google search SriRacha, Thailand and search for blogs with this, there are only two things that you usually read about, the famous SriRacha chilli sauce & the SriRacha Tiger Zoo. Our town is not a very big one here in Thailand, but we thoroughly enjoy it here. Anyways, we thought the Tiger Zoo was a nice little day adventure. Sailor loved it, of course. We got to see a crocodile show, a tiger show and an elephant show, which I am posting some videos of. The most interesting part of the trip was seeing the hundreds of crocodiles. We don't get very many outings around here, so this was actually quite a treat.

Thanks Mom and Dad for bringing us! 

More Videos :)

Okay, so I have gotten the hang of this loading videos stuff. I used to try to load videos, but I didn't know I was supposed to convert them to a smaller size before loading, and I would wait hours and nothing would happen. Now that I know what I am doing, you guys will be seeing a lot more videos from us. Yay! I hope you enjoy. These two videos are just short ones that I took at church one night when Gabe was playing guitar and our missionary friend Joel Reimer was leading. Not the best quality, but I love to see my handsome husband with a guitar in his arms making sweet music for the Lord! :)

Love, Dawn

Silly Sailor

Sailor likes to make videos. I think the end of this one is cute.

Pictures

Sailor Sleeping

Updates...

Hey yall! 

It's like I think of ten things everyday that I want to write here on our blog, but as soon as I sit down at my computer to write, I forget them. Ha. Lord, please help me with that :)

So first off, I want to say thank you to our sweet friends and family back home who really tried to make Christmas special for us here on the other side of the world. We received a couple great packages filled with all sorts of goodies. We would run to check the mail everyday just waiting for our packages to come. They were so special! Oh, and the cajun seasonings and chocolate are already almost gone...haha. Also, we want to thank you guys for all the added extra support during the holiday season. I have to be honest and say that I thought people might forget about us during the month of December because of the holidays and the economy, but it seems that just the opposite happened. You guys are the best! I don't believe that the Lord Almighty is swayed by the economic predictions and you guys prove that. You are blessed by the Lord even when everyone else around you is running around thinking the sky is falling. You are blessed coming in & blessed going out!!! 

We are still doing good here in Thailand. There were a couple tough days for us during the holidays just with missing home and all, but it's back to school and work for Gabe and me now. We have lots of trips and things coming up to keep us busy and focused. In two weeks we are going to meet Gabe's parents in Bangkok, Thailand (the capitol city) to stay for a couple days. That's exciting for me because I have never had a real trip to Bangkok before and you can't live in Thailand but never visit Bangkok. Then, the first week in February we are going back to Cambodia to do our visa run and spend a couple nights with our missionary friend there. Gabe and I look forward to these visa runs. I think it's because the people there in Cambodia are just so precious. Anyways, the week after Cambodia, Gabe leaves for his two week missions trip into Northern Thailand. We are not too sure of the details of this trip yet, but we should find out more soon from Pastor Al. 

Let's see, what else is new? Oh, I have recently realized what an amazing gift and opportunity it is for me to be a stay at home mom. I was at home with Sailor this week and I just knew that it was time for me to get out of the same old boring housewife mindset. I have a great setup to be an amazing woman of prayer, to teach my child lasting truths about the Lord and to reach out to people around our neighborhood. I am a housewife-missionary, and I couldn't be happier about what I am feeling called to do! :) Yes indeed, my prayer life is about to reach whole new heights!!! Wooohooo! And I have decided to take my love for personal finance and someway, somehow that the Lord leads me, use it to reach out to people even here in Thailand. God gives us passions and giftings and they are not meant to be wasted.

We hope yall back home are doing great and we would love to hear from you. Leave us some comments on here, email us at gabeanddawn@gmail.com, look for us on Skype (dawnagio & garbagio) or you can just call us anytime at 985-635-4123. Remember the time difference though (just think 12 hours ahead of you) and if we don't answer, just leave a message and we will call you back. We love you guys!

Love, Dawn & Gabe

MERRY CHRISTMAS & Happy New Year!

Hey guys! We just wanted to write a quick note to say that we miss yall back home. The holidays are quite tough at times when many of  the people we love are so far away.  We haven't had internet in the last five days or so, so we are sorry that we weren't able to call any of you and wish you a Happy New Year. We were thinking about you though, know that for sure. We will be calling and writing you guys as soon as we have better access to the internet. We LOVE You dearly! 

Love, Gabe, Dawn and Sailor

Life and Everything In It...

So hey guys! I haven't written on here in a while. Gabe has, but not me. I thought I would just share some of my thoughts. It's nice to get them out sometimes. Right? Everything is going great here. I do seem to say that a lot, but that's okay because I'm just glad I still like it here. Ha.

Gabe is in his last two weeks of class for the semester and I am finishing up my last two weeks of teaching English. I have to say that teaching English has been quite a challenge this semester. I love the students, but I haven't felt really great about the English teaching part. Maybe when I get better at it I will enjoy it more. I did tell Gabe that there are many things that I am very passionate about and would love to teach (like finance and marriage and art and other stuff) but I just don't feel passionate about English yet. But God can make me passionate about it if that's what he wants me to do for now. Thank You Lord!

So Gabe is taking New Testament Survey for the next two weeks, and then the week of Christmas is just an all out outreach week. I am pretty sure he and his classmates will be ministering all over the city. There are some places I will go with him to minister, but some places just aren't suitable for Sailor and I to go. I think he will spend a couple days painting and ministering at a Thai prison. Then another day we will be going to the local embassy and other government offices to bring cookies and sing Christmas carols. Christmas night the church is doing a big worship service and message at the local mall. Gabe will be playing bass in the worship service. The next day Gabe will be going with his classmates to a local youth detention center. And then we will round off the week at the Thai hospital here in Sriracha where the students and staff will be bringing presents and singing Christmas carols to the sick kids. Yeah, what a week that will be. I believe we will have a lot more to share with you after the week is over. Whew!

So I know I told some of you, but we did go to Cambodia a couple weekends ago. That was quite an experience. Even though it was not the most comfortable place to be, I still find myself thinking often about going back to help out the ministry there. Gabe said maybe we should spend a month or so there this summer, but I said I would rather one to two weeks at the most. Ha. We have to go there for another weekend this February when we do our visa run, and then I think we may go for a week or two in May to help out. The young missionary that is there is a great guy, Joel Reimer, but he is pretty much alone. He does have a nice team of Cambodians helping him, but no westerners. He definitely has our support and prayers.

I have heard that many of you back home have been getting things together to send us for Christmas and I just want to say that you guys really blow us away. I honestly have no idea why you guys love us so much. It just doesn't make sense to me. But we Thank God all the time that we have such amazing friends and family back home. I just want to cry right now. I talk about you guys ALL THE TIME and I really think that the people here think we are making some of you guys up. But you are all real and are all amazing people in our lives. I feel like God truly touches us through you guys. WOW! There is no possible way to thank yall enough for all your support and blessings and prayers and messages. It's just so exciting to think that we get to spend our whole lives with you guys as our loved ones and then we get to spend all of eternity with you too! PRAISE GOD! HALLELUJAH! THANK YOU JESUS!

Love, Dawn

Oh, and one last thing. We figured out what we are going to do when we get our Christmas packages from home. We are going to let another friend of ours here open the package and put Gabe's gifts in one bag and my gifts in another. Then she will give Gabe my bag of gifts and give me Gabe's bag of gifts and we will wrap them for eachother. Sailor's we will just both wrap. It will just be a little extra thing we can do to make Christmas feel special even though we are so far from home. We will be sure to video tape a message for everyone, so stay tuned. :)

WE LOVE YALL!

Motorbikes!

I never imagined I would be so excited about driving a motorbike. We bought our first motorbike not long after we got here to Thailand. We were just using Thai public transportation at first, which is pretty cheap in American standards, but it was costing us quite a bit here. So we decided we should go ahead and get our own transportation, a motorbike. 

I would guess that most of the families here that drive own a motorbike. When we went looking we found a nice used one pretty fast for the price we wanted. It only cost us a couple hundred bucks and we figured we would save that easy within the first couple months of having the bike. That's because we were figuring we were spending over $100 a month on public transportation and now it is only costing us about $4 a week for gas in our bike...unbelieveable! Also, it only cost us $9 for good coverage insurance on our bike for the whole year...also unbelieveable!

Anyways, now we do have transportation. You should see all three of us Americans on our motorbike together. I am sure it is quite a sight. If you notice in the picture at the top, we do even have a baby seat for Sailor on the bike. And, I promise you that we do wear our helmets all the time. We don't leave home without them. 

The pictures below are of Sailor trying out a mini motorbike at the store. She loves bikes now and we could hardly get her off of this one. Don't worry though, we won't be getting her her own real little motorbike. This little one does happen to cost almost as much as our big one did...haha. No way jose'.

Why Not Decorate?

Okay, so when we moved into our rental house at the end of August it didn't take me long to get tired of looking around at a completely empty house with white walls. We didn't have the money to buy much furniture or decorations but I knew that a little paint would go a long way. It all started with me drawing the owl on our bedroom wall with a Sharpie marker while Gabe took a nap with Sailor...haha...Gabe woke up from his nap with an owl staring at him. And so then I went out and bought a little paint and started making my own wall decorations. I figured why not, this is our home for now and we need to make it feel like home. If you come visit us here in Thailand, who knows what else will be drawn on our walls :)

Love You!

English Students

Pictures from top:

1. Sang and Wan

A sweet newlywed couple from my class

2. Judy and me

Judy is a Burmese girl (Myanmar) who

is a 4th year graduating student. And for 

her final project she started a Children's

home on the Thailand/Myanmar border.

Pretty amazing!

3. Cina, Sophia, Tee and Judy

Three Vietnamese girls and one Burmese girl

4. Som Chai and Abayneh 

are from Thailand and Ethiopia

English Class

Pictures from top:

1. Mark and Daniel 

from Thailand and Myanmar

2. Jenny, Wan and Joy

from Vietnam and Thailand

3. My whole class

I just thought I would share a few pictures of my English class with you guys. I volunteer at the Bible college for a couple hours three days a week & I teach an English class to the students. I am working on my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate right now, so this class is giving me a feel for teaching English.

It's pretty amazing because I have students from four different countries in my class. They are from Thailand, Vietnam, Ethiopia, & Myanmar. Of course they all speak very different first languages, so when they come together they have to speak English to understand each other. 

It's quite challenging at times because it seems that I am quite limited in resources and quite new to this too, but it's so rewarding to get to know these people. Most of the students are around my age so outside of class we get along great as friends. 

I hope you enjoy their beautiful faces! They seemed excited that their pictures would be on our blog for you guys in America to see!

Our Home

Hello everyone, I want to apologize for not having updated our blog. Well everything is going good over here. Dawn is teaching English to my classmates, which is kind of funny but great. Bible college is a great place to be. You get to be focused on the word, and develop a firm foundation in your Christianity. This is a picture of our new house, we are happy to be in it, and it is the biggest house we have ever lived in. We got a great deal on this rental home and  it is only $200 a month, what a blessing from God. Three bedrooms, two baths, which is great for when people need to stay over. It was completely empty when we moved in. There was only one small AC unit in the smallest bedroom, but nothing else. My parents have helped us get some of the big things we needed and some people from the local church gave us some things too. We do have some other pictures of it, so I might have to post some more on here. This place is very cool, but I did catch myself thinking I want to go back home the other day. Me and Dawn appreciate and miss all of you, yall have been amazing to us, and we couldn't have done it without yall's help and support. Sailor is doing just fine, her speech is starting to make sense. She did just recover from some little bug she had. It is hard to see your little girl go through sickness, but she it completely healed now, thank you Jesus. We found out the other day that she is terrified of chickens!!! It was the most hilarious thing ever. Whenever we are in public everyone stares at Sailor. I hope its because they think she is so cute, but she gets fed by random people everywhere we go. Of course she lets them know she wants it, and they are pleased to give it to her. Thai culture is very pleasant to be around, I haven't gotten to learn the language as fast I would like to though, but I do know a few words. Me and Dawn miss you guys very much and I am actually going to try and fly Dawn, and Sailor back for Grace and Jame's wedding. I am not making any promises though, but hopefully they will be able to make it. Well let's see if anything else exciting has happened, we do have a motorbike, for those of you who don't know that. Oh yes, also I am working with their TV show that airs in Canada. It is very cool, and I am learning what I have always wanted to. So God is good, and His blessings are for us, who are in righteousness with Him. We love everyone of you, and miss you very much. I can't wait until someone comes to visit. PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS, WE LOVE TO SEE WHO IS READING OUR BLOGS, THANKS!!!!!!!