The Olivers In Thailand

We are now back in Chiang Mai having had the opportunity to visit the UK for 7 weeks.

Push-me-pull-you at Bangkok airport

It was a great opportunity to catch up with family, friends and Church and to share a little about what we are doing in Thailand.

Here are some of the things we got up too:

Padded Cell at the Wests

We were extremely privileged to be able to stay with our good friends the West family. Their house is affectionately dubbed - "the padded cell" after they accommodated a student who entered his address in someone else's visitors book as "the padded cell at the Wests". We must say that we appreciated the hospitality more than the student and even though in the midst of various DIY projects - to us the accommodation was 5-star with a ++ for the company!

The children enjoyed endless hours on the trampoline.

The Oliver Family Get Together

The annual Oliver family get together at Adrian's brother's house was a great opportunity to catch up with Aunties Uncles and cousins.

The Oliver Clan

The Beach

A highlight is visiting the beach. Although there are more pebbles than sand, our home beach has huge character and holds many happy memories for us.

The Great British Chip!

Fly a Kite

Portsmouth With Granny and Grandad

We were treated to a fabulous family day out in Portsmouth with Adrian's parents. We visited the submarine museum and the Spinnaker Tower.

With Granny and Granddad near the Spinnaker Tower

Food, food and more food ...

We enjoyed some lovely family meals with Granny & Grandad and Nanny. We were also invited to to eat in the homes of many friends. We probably gained some extra ounces (or pounds!).

Mmmmm! Granny's cooking!

St Margaret's School

We gave presentations about the children's home at hoay Maw to both year 3 classes and a year 5 class. The children were very attentive and asked some searching questions expressing their desire to be people who can make a difference. It was a great blessing when the year 3 classes gave money towards mosquito nets for the children instead of receiving an end-of-year gift for themselves.

Home Groups

We appreciated the opportunity to share at some of the small groups at our home church (Arun Community Church).

Powerpack at Kingdom Faith

A great opportunity for us all to work on team with the children's groups and meet up with old friends on team. More details ...

Camping

Measuring Up

It has become an annual tradition to chart the height of each of the children on the back of the grand-parents pantry door ...

Last week, our family attended Kingdom Faith, a Christian church conference, in Peterborough where we helped out with the Powerpack children groups.

Jenny, Adrian, Tom and Jessica (part time) helped with the 7 to 9 year olds in "Powerpack", while David helped with the 5 to 6 year olds in "Livewires".

This year's Powerpack mission focus was the orphanage in Hoay Maw - in particular, the educational needs of the 77 children.

During the week, Adrian and Jenny presented to the "Powerpack" group about the Hoay Maw children's home, with particular attention to the children's education, as we were wanting to raise money to help the orphans attend school.

• Monday - introduction to Hoay Maw
• Tuesday - about the facilities and where the children come from
• Wednesday - pigs and vegetables
• Thursday - schooling
• Friday - summary

At the end of the week, the children and their families raises £268.03, which will go towards the educational costs of the children. Exact details of how the money will be spend will be published later.

Thank you!

We are also starting up a sponsorship programme for the children of Hoay Maw to cover the ongoing costs of the children - more details to follow (to include sponsoring the cost of a child's toothpaste...)

Adrian

No - not ours - ours is April 4th...

During the summer, we received a message via our Flickr photograph gallery by a someone working on a film for the BBC Short Films Network asking whether they could use the above photograph in their production.

The photograph above is old Jenny's late grandparents, Tom & Joan Clifton. Initially I had labelled the photograph as their Golden (50th) wedding anniversary, as at my age, memories blur. All I remember was that I took the photograph in 1991. However it turned out that it was in fact their Diamond (60th) wedding anniversary. No wonder I could not remember...

The Clifton family, pre-"Uncle David"

Anyway, having checked with the family, we were delighted to be able to give permission. But there was one small problem - they needed a much better scan of the photograph (was originally taken using old Photo 1.0 technology - "FILM"...). We searched and searched in the time available while we were home in the UK for the summer, but failed to local the original - somewhere in the loft...

So unfortunately it was likely that this photograph would not be able to be included in the film. Never mind.

Anyway, the film has now been finished - see here - "50 Years and a Few Puss Kittens Wiser".

Am not sure whether the photograph is or is not included, as our internet connection out here in Thailand is a bit too slow currently - see for yourself. What we could see of the film we enjoyed - well done Anastasia

Before and after any major event, make sure you measure the children!

Prior to us leaving to Chiang Mai in 2006, the children's height was marked on the "children's height door". Below you can clearly see the increase in height in the last 12 months.

Obviously adults were not measured, as they would show a decrease in height. Grey hair count is certainly not recorded! Well, unless plotted on a logarithmic scale...that would be a simple straight line.

Weight is also not measured for certain adults. That leg of lamb tonight would not have helped!

Tomorrow evening we fly off back to Chiang Mai, arriving Friday evening.

Children are back to school next Tuesday - they are sad to leave their UK friends, but excited to be able to get back together with their Chiang Mai friends after a long summer's separation...

Plans for the coming year are (in no particular order):

• Release PocketWeather V2 and other further developments
• Wa Bible Typesetting and support the release for next April
• West Sussex NHW Website updates (yes, I am also the postmaster for that...no escape...)
• Fix bugs in iTools OPC Server (EuroMBus) following switch to new compiler, and any other work Eurotherm passes our way
• Support our "friends from the golden triangle region"
• Complete the establishment of the pig farm up at Hoay Maw
• Monitoring and reviewing the ongoing development at Hoay Maw

We had a great time at Powerpack and we are hopeful that we may get a visit during the year ...

Back to packing - and getting PW V2 Beta 2 out...

Convince your friendly church pastor, in this case, David Thatcher from Arun Community Church, to enter "innocent" spaceship.

Invite the pastor's wife, in this case, Heather Thatcher, to come and pull on an "innocent" string.

"Oh - did I do something wrong?"

All over the pastor's Sunday best...

If the pastor is still up for it, get him to do the actions to the next worship song

Today was our last Sunday at Arun Community Church prior to us returning to Chiang Mai, Thailand this Thursday. We were privileged to be able to briefly share what we have been up to during the last year, and what we are hoping to be involved with during the coming year. We showed a brief video we produced last April, which is also below

We look forward to being able to share with all our family and friends our coming year of adventures in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Watch this space!

Always choose the summer to camp in England - you are always guaranteed fine weather...

Bring you personal chef

Don't forget the essentials - sleeping bag, lamp, and laptop...

Jenny working on PocketWeather

We are up at Peterborough camping on the East of England Show ground at the Kingdom Faith Camp working with PowerPack, which was running the 7-9 year old childrens program. We all had a fantastic time, with Jenny, Tom and myself leading groups, with David and Jessica attending the "GoGen" program for the older children.

The week ended on Friday evening when we paraded into the main event hall in front of some 4000 people.

PowerPack will be attending the GrapeVine event later this month. Unfortunately we will be missing this as we are heading back to Chiang Mai this Thursday.