Greetings from Thailand!  

It has been a wild few months.  We experienced multiple floods---one being the worst in our city's history, multiple weddings, and multiple funerals.  

We feel emotionally tired.  

I can't remember where I first heard it, but my Mom reminded me that life happens not so much in mountains and valleys, but in parallel tracks.  Joy and sorrow traveling together.  

No matter what major events crash into our lives, we still have at the same time our regular responsibilities and work.  

Dishes need done.  We still drive to work in the morning and come home in the evening.  Laundry, cooking, school, homework, it all goes on and on.  

Chiang Mai experienced two separate floods.  The second, being the largest in our city's history.  Our own home was flooded, cleaned up, and then flooded again and worse than the first time.  

But we were fortunate compared to many of our neighbors.   
Many people had several feet of water fill their homes and destroy much of their possessions.

The city is still cleaning up and recovering.  Faithful Heart donated food, cleaning supplies, and sent out some crews to help clean up.  Our Thai church did a great job of serving their neighbors and helping people in a time of crisis.  

Some days we were the helpers, and other days we were the helped.  It was humbling and made us so grateful for the love of friends.  

Shortly after the floods, I was asked to participate in a wedding for a couple from our church.  

This Saturday I will give the message at a wedding for one of our staff at Faithful Heart, Ploy. 
We are all excited for her to begin this new adventure.    

In between the weddings, tragedy struck the Grace International School community. 
The younger son of the superintendent was killed in a motorcycle accident.  His name was Jon.  He was a senior, and a very kind hearted young man.  He spent his last day helping another foundation here clean up from the flood.  

This week, another family from the school lost their estranged father to suicide.  

What do we do with all that?

How should we feel?

In the past two weeks at Faithful Heart, in addition to our flood efforts, we have helped with an abandoned baby at a local hospital, taken all our kids ice skating, and had our annual interviews with all our boys.  

One thing living in Asia has taught me is to be strong like bamboo, not like cement. 
Bend and flex with life's trials, rather than crack and break.  

As a follower of Jesus, it is an opportunity to bring everything to Him.  

To say, in effect, I cannot carry all of this.  I cannot process it all. 
The joys and the sorrows are sometimes just too much and too many to deal with.  

There is an old word we don't use much anymore. 
It's providence.  

Providence is the idea that everything that is happening is somehow within God's scope and plan for good.  This is most helpful, when it is most difficult.  

It is precisely when life seems brutal and terrible that we need to have hope for good.  

But it is also for the good things in life too, not only the funerals, but the weddings.  

Because good that is in vain is not much good.  

Providence puts everything into the frame, into perspective.  It may not make sense, it may not be complete, but it is the possibility of a vision of a good future.  

I have been using a prayer guide I got from a local Jesuit spiritual retreat center here in Chiang Mai.  It is from St. Ignatius and its called the Daily Examen.  

Let me share some parts that have been especially helpful for me these past months:

"God's creative plan gently and infallibly reveals itself more authentically in the external events of our lives than in what we construe through our own discernments.  God enters into the very act of our creative struggle--like a mother in childbirth, or like artists bringing forth their labor of love.  For the most part our struggle is not with God but with expectations of ourselves and of others. ..

...the other approach is to do whatever is possible to change the situation, but to avoid dwelling on expectations.  We watch and wait for events to unfold in God's creative time. When we notice something that needs our response or intervention, we should plan and act accordingly.  The events are there for us to shape, events that will need our energy...

...Do I watch and wait with Christian hope?  Do I believe that God is laboring for me in and through my difficulties?  Do I practice the sacrament of the present moment?  A person of faith in God always sees him acting behind happenings which bewilder our senses.  We must be active in all that the present moment demands of us, but in everything else remain passive and abandoned and do nothing but peacefully await the promptings of God.  The daily schedule, doing what needs to be done, brings with it its only healing power."  

So in the midst of weddings, funerals, and floods, we look for God's good plan.  We wait in Christian hope and expectation.  But we limit our expectations of others and circumstances.  

We do what we can, and leave the rest to Him. 
We remain in the present moment, ready to do what is needed. 
We trust that God is laboring for us and we wait peacefully. 
We continue the daily work He has called us to, and find healing there as well.  

We are all experience our own version of weddings, funerals, and floods. 
Life is hard. 
But God is good. 

May we wait for Him in hope.  

Love, 

Matt, Audrey, Ezra, and Sienna

We have carefully tended the garden of our selfishness. 
We have demanded and craved, recklessly sought all we desired, and we have it! 
Our heart’s desire and misery.
We have emancipated ourselves from You, only to fall prey to every other master,
to the tyranny of self.  

Who can be found for us to blame?
Who can we accuse for this fruit of our own labor?
We feel no shame, we have forgotten how to blush. 
We rage at those who would caution us in our folly.
We curse and denounce all who try to restrain our stumbling to slaughter.  

We cultivate greed with tenderness, indulging ourselves
until we are swollen and staggering.
This is happiness.  This is my way.
We flee from silence and stillness afraid of what we may find.
We shudder in terror of ourselves

The torrent of our words drowns out thought.
The rage of our anger and insecurity pours forth.
In this wave, wisdom is washed away.
This way seems right to us, we care not that its end is death.  

For it is seeming, not being, which counts in this nation. 
What is truth here? 
A tool.  A weapon.  A power.
Not to overthrow oppression, but to change oppressors.   
We do not serve truth; truth serves us and our ends.  

We have torn down.
We have clawed our way free.
We have stormed to the heights. 
Now we sit amidst the rubble our hands have made.

With righteous pride, we destroy ourselves, our families, our nations.
But we shall win! 
For we are the wise, the right.
This one sacred truth we never assail.

Come let us celebrate the victory of our folly! 
For we don’t realize we ought to grieve.
We would rather be victorious among the ashes, than humble among the heavens.  

Come, let us lie to ourselves and to each other.
Let us believe that darkness can be light, that evil can be good, that bitter is sweet. 
For God is a delusion; we shall save ourselves. 
Let us believe! 
For we no longer believe in anything.  

Shall evil come openly, or as an angel of light?
Which evil shall triumph?
Shall it be the Lesser or the Greater?

Shall we sing to celebrate Our evil’s victory?
Shall we grieve the victory of Their evil?

Should we not rather mourn evil in all its guises?
Shall we not grieve that it has come to this?

When we have destroyed what wiser hands have made,
perhaps we shall remember you.
When we have laid in the miserable bed we have made,
perhaps we shall look for better.
When we have eaten the fruit of our way, and tasted its bitterness,
perhaps we shall hunger anew for your way.  

For there is Hope.
There is a better way.
But it is not found among these peddlers of words.  

Whichever evil shall prevail, we shall mourn.
This new religion of politics is a poor one, and is not ours.
Our Hope resides not there.  

While we mourn, yet shall we hope. 
Whichever evil shall govern us for the present, the Son shall rise over us and all shall be well.  

Until then, we join hands with any to do good, and none to do evil.
Our allegiance shall not be partisan or wholesale, but of Christ and His kingdom.  

Internet safety training at a local school

Two cute soccer stars

Staff meeting's newest and cutest member at Faithful Heart

Greetings from Thailand!

And welcome back to our series on building a better life. 
Today, we are looking at the stage of life where we spend the majority of our lives: the mundane middle.  

Yes, we tend to remember life mostly by the peaks and valleys, but it is the often the uneventful time in the middle where the most growth happens.  

For one, we can't live always on the highs, and we wouldn't want to always live in the lows.  

As a confessed adrenaline junkie, I love to go big, go fast, go fun. 
But it took me a while to realize I also really enjoy going quietly, simply, and peacefully.  

I like cliff jumping with friends and reading a book alone.  

Most of us are wired this way. 

We like the balance of adventure, work, and relaxation---though perhaps depending on our individual personalities, we may prefer different ratios of each.   

A large part of my purpose for this blog, is to figure out how to flourish and keep growing no matter what season of life we are in.  

Church hair team

Ez doing his dishes

Sienna's first day of school, Dad struggled

I want to enjoy every season of my life, and become a better person through every season of my life.  

And I want you to too.  

Since most of our lives are lived in the "mundane middle" it is worth taking time to consider how we can flourish in that season of life.  

I will turn 40 next year, and by most considerations, I am in the middle stage of my life. 

I've been paying bills and taxes for decades now.  (Yay adulting!)
I have a host of responsibilities and spend most of my waking hours working.  

Welcome to midlife! 

Khaki pants, white new balance tennis shoes, and excitement over a new mower.   

For most of us, the big adventures were in our teens and twenties. 
We looked to others like our parents for stability, so we could venture out into that unknown. 
Now, we are the stability for others so they can venture out.  

The mundane middle of life does not get a good rap, and perhaps it would make a boring movie. 
But that is no reason it has to be bad.  

The term midlife crisis came about because people couldn't discover how to flourish in the middle of life.  

In contrast to the many Peter Pan type stories, I do not believe childhood is or should be, the best part of your life.  

Yes, being a mature adult has its downsides (think bills, taxes, crappy jobs).  
But it is also amazing to be a healthy adult.  

New bookshelves were fun to make, bottom shelf has the best book

Giant inflatables are always a hit

More internet safety training

In the first part of our lives, we had very little part in our own formation. 

We were largely the result of the ideas and impacts of others.  

Only when we become adults, do we get to take a real role in forming ourselves, and choosing the kind of people we want to be, the kind of life we want to live.  

Some of the best growth comes in the middle of life.  
We aren't quite as stupid as we used to be, and we aren't yet quite as timid as we may one day be.  

We have experienced enough of life to not be novices any more.  

Part of our perception problem is that we often feel like we are compelled by circumstances to live a life we didn't choose, rather than one we have chosen for ourselves. 

This can lead many people to become cynical and bitter.  
No matter where we are in life, our goal ought to be to become better, not bitter.  

Mundane midlife is hard.  

We work because we need money to live. 
We give up hobbies because we have kids with hobbies. 
We pursue fewer adventures because we have less energy and free time.  

But that doesn't mean it can be a rich, fruitful, and enjoyable season of life.  

Ezra pondering the mysteries of life

Love these two!

Maybe a future meme

How can we flourish during the mundane middle of life?  

1.  Realize that joy does not depend on dopamine

The mundane parts of life force us to withdraw from our dependence on constant dopamine to experience happiness.  

There is an old saying that the practice of finding joy, finding contentment in the present moment is a form of sacrament (receiving good from God).  

But it takes practice to learn.  

Like most of you, the moment nothing is happening, I reach for my phone to see something happening somewhere.  

We need to be weaned off the need for constant dopamine.  
We all know friends who seem addicted to drama, and their lives are chaos.  

A beautiful sunset, a bonfire, mountains, the ocean---these still speak to us, reminding us that joy does require dopamine.    

If we can learn to be content, even joyful without constant external stimulus, we can learn to be happy more often with less. 
That is one of the secrets of a good life.  

2.  Learn to persevere

Some of the best things in life take work and time.  

Parenting isn't easy, but its the best thing in the world.

Marriage isn't easy, but it can be incredible to experience real intimacy and share your life with another person.  

For anything like that though, you have to learn to stick with stuff.  

If you walk away and quit every time its hard or you don't feel like doing the work, you will never enjoy the rewards.   

How we respond to life when it isn't going the way we want, determines whether we grow better or bitter. Perseverance is simple the ability to keep going.  

Perseverance is the difference between stuck, and en route to your goals.  
So long as we are moving through the middle of life, we are not stuck.

We love Jay and Pring

Grace International School crew

3.  Use the Quiet, Slower Pace to do Some Serious Thinking

Doing whatever you feel like, when you feel like it is not freedom, it's chaos.
  
Doing what you sometimes don't want to do, to reach the goals you really want is real freedom.  

The quieter middle of life allows to to reflect and think, not just react to life.  

It's the halftime break to think about what we have learned about life so far, what we want more of, and what we want less of in the future.  

I spent a lot of my life mopping floors, driving trucks, and thinking. 
Those long hours helped developed the thinking that led to many of the good things in my life now.  

It taught me not to react or decide based on how I feel in the moment, but to consider the whole of my life.   

When life is coming at you a million miles an hour, often the best we can manage is to simply react.  
But to live well, we need time to think.  

Take the mundane moments in the middle of your life to reflect on where you have been, what you have learned, and where you are heading.  

4.  Never stop learning

One of the miracles of books, is that they can take us to other worlds, without ever leaving our room. 

It is not so much about where we are, or even what is happening around us, but what is happening in us that maters.  

We don't always have much control over the first two, but we can do a lot with the 3rd.  

Learn a new language.
Listen to an educational podcast.
Develop a new skill, or hone an old one.
Learn to play the piano.
Learn carpentry.
Learn how to code. 
Buy an old motorcycle and rehab it.  

Boredom is easily remedied.  

Just make sure the ways you are addressing boredom are helping you grow.      

If there is one element essential to happiness in life, it might be growth.  

So long as we are growing, we can enjoy almost anything and endure almost anything. 
If we are not growing, it is difficult to enjoy anything.  

May we grow better together.  

With lots of love, 

Matt, Audrey, Ezra, and Sienna

Date Night!

Friends

Pickup trucks are for parties

Greetings from Thailand!  

I apologize for the unusually long gap since our last blog.  

It has been a full season of life, with lots of highs and some lows too.  We were able to visit family and donors in Colorado for the past several weeks, and it was a wonderful time.  But it has been really good to be back in Thailand, and in our normal rhythms of life.  

If you have never experienced jet lag, let me give you a little window into what it is like.

• Leaving a sweet Thai tea on the counter overnight.  Ezra takes a drink in the morning and we all jump when a gecko swims in the cup he just drank out of.  
  
  
• Getting out of bed in the morning, and going to the bathroom, then hearing Audrey scream and finding a large scorpion walking around.  
  
  
• Audrey so tired she accidentally put a red linen shirt in the laundry with her new white clothes from the US, and dyed them all pink.  
  
  
• Audrey, still very tired, dying her hair to match her highlights she spent hours doing, accidentally using the wrong dye and turning her hair a color she hates.  

Welcome to jet lag in the tropics! 

What does that have to do with the coming of God's Kingdom in our world?

It turns out, lots of things in life don't happen the way we expect or intend.  (Can I get an Amen?)

But here is the important part, that doesn't mean God's Kingdom isn't still coming. 
Just because it doesn't go as we expect or plan, doesn't mean that God's work is hindered.  

I am tempted to go off on a tangent about history and politics, but I will reign it in for now, and talk about how we see this in our ministry here in Thailand.  

One of the things I have been trying to do is spend 10 minutes every day praying;
forcing myself to be still, to listen, and to bring all my stress and concerns to God.  

One of the results has been a greater awareness of all the things God is doing around us. 
It isn't just in the big, grand events that we see God and His Kingdom coming.  

It is in all the little things too.  

Jesus prayed that the Kingdom would come on earth as it was in heaven, and then he ate breakfast with his small group of friends.  

One of the difficult things about trying to do ministry long term in another country and culture, is that we are constantly being challenged and changed.  

Which leads us to continually reflect on the work we are trying to do; what we are doing, and how we are trying to do it.  

Is this helping?
Is this working?
Are people's lives getting better?
Are we hindering or helping?

I sometimes have to remind myself that I don't bring the Kingdom, I participate in the Kingdom. 

I remember on my Dad's desk in his office at church, he had a saying printed that read:

"I will build my church... -Jesus"

The emphasis was on the I, and the MY.  

It was a way my Dad reminded himself he was in charge of serving the church, and God was in charge of building the church.  

The same is true in the church and the kingdom.  

This is tremendously comforting. 

We are not called to produce change, but to be faithful. 
More than that, the change is coming, it is happening, the Kingdom of God is coming all around us, all the time, even if we don't see it.  

Because it does not rest on human wisdom, energy, or power, but on God.  

Some seasons of ministry feel like harvest time. 
We can see God doing great things, answering prayers, working wonders, changing hearts. 

But other seasons of ministry can feel like planting time. 
The ground looks barren, we toil but see nothing, we water, but see nothing and we begin to wonder; is this working?  

Jesus' prayer was not a request for God to do something he wasn't doing, but a statement of recognition for what He was already doing, and a desire to see it continue, and participate in it himself.  

We might adjust the verb tense like this:

"Keep letting your kingdom come, keep letting your will be done until it is complete."

 What are we seeing at Faithful Heart Foundation in Thailand?

A homeless, orphaned boy finds a home and a family.  

A college graduate thanks us for providing a safe place for them to live and grow before they move out to start a new season of their life.  

A young woman who starts a new job and a new college program, who tells us God has changed her life by bringing her here.  

A young man who has been confused about his sexuality tells us he is understanding God better and going to church every week. 

Helping a poor, disabled family find new ways to grow food and crops on their land so they can provide for themselves and their children.  

One of our social workers receiving a call from a young lady we have helped in the past who is contemplating suicide and taking the time to listen and help her calm down.  

Little things.  

Maybe big things.  

God things.  

We have many decisions we will have to make in the coming months. 
We are just about maxed out with our current resources, both human and financial.  

We need wisdom to know how to proceed.  

We are supporting 60 vulnerable families, with over 100 children every month in our family strengthening project.  

We continue to operate two of our children's homes as well as support two foster families.  

Our college dorm is just about full, and we have another 40 students receiving external scholarships.  

Our landlord has informed us they are trying to sell our office and dorm where we currently reside.  

Our friends at Rise Foundation Asia are trying to purchase our dorm in Mae Rim.  

Our friends at Power Church are trying to purchase a piece of our land in San Sai.  

We need to pray about possibly hiring an additional staff person, and the funds to cover their salary.  

Ona personal note, I have had some chronic health issues for over a year related to my ears, nose, and throat.  I need prayers for a good doctor who can help me figure out what I need to do so I can stay healthy.

At times like these when we have lots of decisions to think about, it gives us great peace to remember that God will accomplish His purposes in us and among us.  

Indeed, He is doing it now.  

His kingdom is coming in thousands of little ways every day.  

When we feel confident.
When we feel uncertain.
When we feel overwhelmed.
When we feel underwhelmed.
When we can see it.
When we can't.  

Praying that we can all see and participate in all the ways God is working in and around us, that His Kingdom may come, and His will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

Thank you for your prayers and support,

With lots of love, 

Matt, Audrey, Ezra, and Sienna Pound