Welcome to PlaaPlaaPlaa!

So you may be wondering why PlaaPlaaPlaa? What are those strange fish symbols above? What is ปลา and what does it mean? In short, this is a blog site, so surely there's going to be plenty of rambling. Unfortunately BlahBlahBlah was already taken, so I had to settle for the 'Plaa'. But there's actually more to it then just ramblings. The first fish symbol is actually a Christian symbol meaning ICTHUS - a greek acronymn which means "Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour". The other strange letters you see in the last fish is actually the thai word for fish which funnily enough is pronounced "Plaa". So when you put it all together, this site is going to be my ramblings in telling people about how Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Saviour in Thailand (with plenty of good stories about food in between). Happy reading.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Finally, I can look forward to Thailand

Sorry for the couple weeks of silence. To say the last 3 months have been 'busy' i personally think is a bit of an understatement. Since visiting Thailand in July, it's been all systems go...until this weeked. The last of my 'big projects' was the Ignite film festival last weekend. For those who don't know what Ignite is, its a Christian short film festival (bit like a christian tropfest if that helps) that we (my work) started 4 years ago (you can check out details about it at www.ignite.tvs.net.au). Last Saturday was our awards night that was heaps of fun, but also quite a bit of work, which meant i was unfortunately unable to focus on doing any Thailand prep stuff for a bit. But now all that's changed. At last count I have just under 7 weeks before i head off.

While work will be steadily busy until i go, my hope is that from this week i'll be working 4 day weeks which will give me time to get back into language learning, continue to build relationships with Thai friends over in Thailand via email, get my medical checks done, get my visa sorted, start getting into gear for our church short term mission (which will kick off my trip), catch up with friends and family here and sort out lots of other odd bits and pieces that i know will come up. I know the next few weeks are going to fly by and before i know it, i'll be on the plane.

I promise that in the next few weeks i'll also update this blog to include more details of what i hope to be doing next year. Time has prevented me from being able to do so so far, so sorry for those who have been waiting for that.

For those of you who are praying, here are some prayer points i'd appreciate at the moment:
- that i'll be able to start getting back into language learning
- that i'll be able to get all my medicals sorted and that i won't have anything majoryly wrong with me that might prevent me from going
- for work, that they'll be able to find a replacement for me soon
- that i'll be able to spend time with God and in his word and grow in my knowledge of him

thanks guys.

As another quick plug for Ignite, here's a short clip i had to edit up that has a snapshot of every film entered into this years festival (all 49 of them).


Some of the films this year are seriously AWESOME! I'm even keen to see how i can use some of them in Thailand! If you're in ministry and looking for a dvd which has some really good bible based films, i'd recommend you get the Ignite DVD's (sorry for the plug but i wouldn't do it if i didn't believe in the product).