Ric and Sharon Bruce On a journey with you to Thailand Sharon picked the color scheme on this one. 
Let us know what you think in the comments below. If you need to download it grab it in our dropbox here. You can see it on Issuu.com, in our library here.
Posts Tagged ‘news’
February Already?
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, February 2nd, 2013Nothing says February like the Superbowl, college basketball and snow on the ground. Or, in our case, Chiang Mai’s annual flower festival, the MK home-school conference and the English Premier League. However you mark the season we’re excited to be able to report progress toward our goals in several key areas:
- God provided a place for us to stay in the village we’ll be working in. It will be newly constructed just for us! This is a huge answer to prayer
- Just 30 lessons to go in our language program in Chiang Mai! Having completing 370 lessons so far 30 more feels like a breeze.
- We’ve enjoyed great team-building activities with our future co-workers and are currently hammering out the purpose, vision and strategy statements that will guide our partnership.
Thank-you for your continued prayers!
Encouraged in the Lord, Ric and Sharon
What’s New
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Wednesday, July 6th, 2011We’ve been busy digging into Thai language and culture as usual with a little twist: we had old friends visit for five days this week. It was great to see life here in Thailand through their eyes and enjoy a short time of mutual encouragement with them. We’ll be posting pictures of some of our adventures soon.
In the meantime we wanted to let you know that important things have been happening here in Thailand during the past week. If you’re interested the best source of information is the Bangkok Post. As a side note we’d like to remind you to please avoid making any political statements or leaving political comments on our blog.
We celebrated our first fourth of July in Thailand by eating donuts and by watching an American movie with our friends. We hope and pray you each enjoyed the long weekend. Thank-you for your love and support. -Ric and Sharon
Have a Seat
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Sunday, June 26th, 2011
This week I’ve been following a story in the Bangkok Post about a unique cultural phenomenon here in Thailand called “pubpeab.” It’s basically Thailand’s version of “planking“. Lying flat on your face in public just doesn’t fit well culturally so people take pictures of themselves in religious “pubpeab” poses in places all over the world and post them to Facebook.
So this week I’ve been thinking about the culture of sitting. (more…)
Big Results at the Big Ticket
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Friday, June 25th, 2010Today marked the first official day of the festival. Hundreds of people will remember it as the day they experienced tribal missions for the first time. Some came back three times, eager to learn more.
Josiah, who grew up in Papua New Guinea, is my partner. Because he is acting like a tribal person he has to wake up early and endure over an hour of makeup and costume prep before he’s ready for visitors. My job is to act as a guide as people visit him in his hut, which we’ve set up inside our tent at the festival. Josiah speaks only a New Guinean language called Kaulong inside the hut.
I model culturally appropriate behavior and help the guests with words and phrases if they get stuck. The visitors have the simple objective of getting four words in Kaulong: hammock, banana, tree, and pot. I try to push each small group of visitors that comes through to get outside their comfort zone and to engage Josiah in a conversation. Some groups need a lot of help to overcome shyness and some are so eager they offend Josiah’s tribal sensibilities. People leave completely different, amazed that 2500 people groups have yet to hear the Good News. It’s cool. Please pray for clarity, unity on our team, and changed lives.
Hello and Goodbye: Maryland
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009We’ve been in Baltimore, Maryland for three days now and are having a great missions conference with a church here. Each night this week we are standing at a table in the back of the auditorium answering questions about our ministry and passing out materials we have made. The people we’ve met have wonderful questions and make us feel right at home here.
This is just the first stop on a very long route that will take us from Michigan to Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Arizona before we head back to Michigan for the winter. Please pray for safety in travel and for our meetings. We desire to be clear, helpful, and informative during this time and we always seek to be a blessing to those we visit. We will be posting pictures in the next few days of our time here.
Thailand
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Thailand: the land of smiles
If you haven’t heard by now then let me be the first to tell you: Sharon and I are now headed toward Thailand. We recently discovered that NTM will no longer be expanding the field of Cambodia under the current arrangement, leaving us with a tough decision: to pursue Cambodia with another mission or choose another field. After talking with our home churches, seeking wise council, and meeting with missionaries from Thailand we decided to begin pursuing ministry in Southeast Asia via Thailand.
Thailand is a natural choice for many reasons including its close proximity to Cambodia. Thai culture is similar in many ways to Cambodian culture and the minority people groups within the country are numerous.
It’s been great to see how the body of Christ has come around us to help us make this decision and support us during this time. Continue to pray for us as we sort through the implications of this change and seek to keep all of you up to date with the latest!
What is Linguistics?
Posted by Ric and Sharon on Friday, August 21st, 2009Tomorrow we head to Missouri and then Oklahoma, where Sharon will analyze the Cherokee language through data gathered with a language helper. She will spend two months gathering data and analyzing it, then about three weeks writing a hefty paper about what she did. She explains the process and the specifics here:
