Brethren,

Please forgive the length of this report about the move to Chiang Mai. Before we undertook it we knew at least three things about moving here:

1 It would be a challenge moving existing offices and housing.
2 It would be expensive.
3 We knew it would prove to be a strategic move in many ways.

Indeed all three proved accurate. It was indeed a challenge; terminating the contracts on houses and office, securing trucks to move, packing… then finding suitable office/housing/storage in Chiang Mai.

Indeed, it also proved to be expensive. We knew about most of the costs, but it was those portions that we did not know about that got our attention! In the end, we went over the estimated cost by nearly 2X. It was also necessary to buy an additional vehicle because transportation is more challenging here than in Bangkok. We are very grateful for churches in the USA who helped us with special offerings to make the move and buy a car! We now have a “new” car, a 14 year old Honda! Anyway, it will work nicely for our needs. Please pray as we attempt to sell our light weight passenger van and find a heavier duty vehicle for road trips and hauling people.

The value of the move in the long term has only just begun to be evident. We have access to language helpers that we never dreamed of in Bangkok. As we put the word out what we were looking for, we have actually had to turn two of them away for now until we see where our finances are after fully setting up things. We now have two new locally based co-workers in the office daily.

One matter which was a concern to us is additional housing and transportation for Jeffry and Sarah Evans. They plan to come for at least one year sometime this summer. We were envisioning having to locate another house and outfit it then do something about transportation. Meanwhile, we heard about a missionary leaving the country for two years and she was looking for someone to sub-lease her house. We looked at it and immediately told her we would take it! It is a beautiful, fully furnished place which includes the use of her car for the two years. The price was lower than what we paid in Bangkok for a similar house. $160 per month! What a God we serve! He knows our needs when we only know to fret about something.

At this writing, men are in the office installing wiring and moving the server into a permanent location. Everything should be 100% by the end of next week. Work goes on in several languages, fully set up or not.

Thank you for praying. We are blessed to have God’s people standing with us in these things. The possibilities are endless.

For Souls Still Waiting,

Tom and Krinny Gaudet

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