Learning Thai

We're continuing to look into options for longer-term visas and we're thankful for the possbilities that God has led us to so far. Over the next weeks we'll likely need to make some fairly important decisions about what we'll do. Here are some of our options:

1) I could probably get a teaching job at a private Thai elementary school. I have a meeting this Thursday with a representative from the school and someone from the immigration department. The main issue for the school is whether or not I'm currently qualified to teach English. The main issue for me is whether or not I want to become an elementary school teacher.

2) We may be able to renew our current visas. I hope to go to the immigration department tomorrow to find out more about this. The downside to this is that we will soon be finishing up our formal language study and at that point we want to have something meaningful to do - both to have more contact with Thai people and to have a legitimate reason for being here. The upside is that it would give us more time to look for a job.

3) There are a number of Christian ministries that are working in Thailand. We could probably work with one of them and get religious worker visas that way. Some things about this option are very attractive but, as a team, we have reservations about this since we want our presence here to be easily reproducible by the emerging Thai church. If we give the impression that this kind of work can only be done by "professional missioaries" it will be unhelpful in the long run.

4) We've discussed the possibility of starting our own small English teaching/consulting business. This could work very well in the long run, but it will take a lot of time, money, and paperwork to get it started. We would also likely need considerable help from someone with business experience.

We'd really appreciate your prayers for these decisions that we'll need to make. We had a good meeting with the rest of the team tonight, discussing our goals and reaffirming our commitment to doing all that we can to disciple groups of believers that will be able to spread naturally within the Thai culture. We're excited about what God has called us to and we trust that He will lead us to the visa/employment option that would best serve His purposes.

-Tom