Rick and I got to know each other when we were on a summer Walla Walla College/ADRA trip to Borneo in 1992. We married in June of 1994 and three weeks later were on Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Rick taught math and did maintenance for the Seventh-day Adventist K-8 school while I helped in the office. After our year was completed, the clinic invited us to come spend two years working with them. Rick was the maintenance department and helped with a building project and I apprenticed in as an optician in the eye clinic.

We returned to the States in the fall of 1997 and settled in Springfield, OR. Rick is a civil engineer specializing in structures and I am the manager of our home. We now have three happy, healthy kids. Melia just turned 10, Marcus is 8 and Marissa is 5 1/2.

For those of you who are curious about how our family ended up in Thailand, here is a bit of the history behind the call and some of the details:

Jon and Natalie Wood, the founders of "Jesus for Asia" (JFA) are former members of the Eugene, OR church, our home church. They came to Eugene late last summer (2008) and shared some the stories, opportunities, and challenges of their mission in India and throughout Southeast Asia. Jon and Natalie were friends of ours from their time in Eugene in the late 1990's. In fact, it was mostly because of their friendship on our first Sabbath in Eugene that we made the Eugene church our home church. Anyway, during their summer visit, we had just a brief opportunity to talk with them about JFA, as well as express our interest in participating in some sort of mission project. There didn't appear to be anything that we could do that could utilize Rick's skills in structural engineering or construction.

Our family had been contemplating for some time and praying to find God's will for our lives, if indeed, He would allow us to be used in some capacity beyond our roles here in Eugene. With nothing particular in mind, and no prospects for any such opportunity, our only option was to lay our plans before Him and make ourselves

available if and when He presented us with a call. Of course, this is what we should have done from the beginning. We chose to spend several days at a remote mountain-top fire lookout where dedicated ourselves, our family and everything that we own to Him. The call came from Natalie came in late November.

Looking back, I believe God used the intervening time between the Woods' visit in the summer and the call in November to put us in the mindset where we would be willing to leave all behind and go where He called. He did this through the influence of godly friends, inspiring reports from Maranatha, It is Written, and others, of the Gospels' advance around the world, and through the sobering realization of just how fast our earthly savings can vanish at the whim of the stock and real estate markets. Our desire increasingly became to have a chance to participate in the spread of the Gospel and to be able to use the means God had entrusted to us for His work before they became worthless - to lay up treasure in heaven where "moth and rust" do not destroy. Obviously, all of us can do these things wherever we are and, I believe that if we are willing, God will open more doors of opportunity, in whatever form, to participate in as we are faithful.

God called, we answered...now what, how and when? The logistics were staggering when we looked to do them ourselves: we had a house, duplex, two big dogs, and vehicles, besides needing to purchase airline tickets, passports and visas. But when the Lord calls, He provides. We found a wonderful couple to live in our home, a property management company to manage our duplex, amazing friends who took in our two big, socially challenged dogs, cashed in most of what was left of Rick's shrinking retirement plan and purchased open-ended airline tickets (good for one year and supposedly didn't exist), passports (came in eleven days-during the holidays) and visas (overnight). Wow!

After packing up most of the contents of our home, we spent a beautiful Valentine's Sabbath with our church family. Our church family has been praying for a thick hedge of protection around our family. God is good as that hedge has held firm!

We got to spend several weeks with family in California and then flew out of LAX on the 3rd of March, 2009 arriving in Bangkok on the 5th. We were met by an incredible missionary couple who hosted us for several days. Wow. It was rough going from the dead of winter of Oregon to the beginning of the hot season in Thailand! :-)

We went through a time of adjustment. The kids had an especially hard time. It was really hard to be away from home, family, friends, familiar food, pets, our church family and the english language. But, attending Mission Institute that was held in Chiang Mai in April really helped and they have been doing pretty well since then. Having both sets of grandparents visit and treat us to all kinds of fun, touristy activities really helped as well!

Fortunately the cost of living here is relatively low, that is, if you live like a local. We are living in a village of about 50 homes. We own one of the handful of vehicles in the village; everyone else either walks or rides a motorbike. We are renting a small, two-bedroom house for about 45 USD a month.

Rick spends most days working at the studio, getting it acoustically prepared, coordinating work with contractors, overseeing construction, etc. I spend most days at home coordinating and overseeing three children! For more details on the studio project, see our previous blog entry. Also, for additional current updates, go to Facebook.com and look for Judy Bond-Hernandez.

As we think about the potential for projects, such as this studio, to be among the final steps necessary to encircle the globe with the Gospel, we can't help but feel proud that we are a small part of it!

When you pray the "radical" prayer, hang on for the ride! Our airline tickets expire 3 March 2010 and our plan is to return to our home, church and income source, but I am reminded of the quote:

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans..."

All Asia Studio

The All-Asia Studio is a project in northern Thailand by Jesus For Asia(Jesus4asia.org), a supporting ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Currently under construction, this studio will be a full television programming and music production facility, with programming capable of reaching 60% of the world's population, via satellite.

Our family has been here in Thailand since March, overseeing and coordinating its construction and planning and researching all the various construction elements that go into such a building. Working through a translator has been a challenge - trying to describe various construction techniques to Thai workers not familiar with the ways of doing things as we do in the US, and then not knowing if the message is getting through to them until after they're done. But despite these difficulties, and the perpetual state of being out of money, the project has moved forward, non-stop, as a result of a lot of prayer.

The exterior of the studio is now basically completed, and the interior framing is mostly done as well - just a ceiling, some acoustic wall treatments, carpeting, and air-conditioning are left to install. After that, we'll be ready to build the sets, cabinetry, and furniture and start installing the electronic equipment.

The goals for the studio are three-fold: First of all, it will provide a location where pastors or lay evangelists from nearby or more distant locations can come and record a sermon or evangelistic series in their own language. The need for this capability is obvious when we consider that in northern Thailand alone, there are at least 36 different languages, many of them unreached. When we include the rest of Thailand, as well as the surrounding southeast Asian countries, the need for the gospel to be recorded in local languages is tremendous. Most have no recorded gospel presentation of any kind. With this facility, a local from each language group can come and record a presentation which they can then take back with them as DVDs or VCDs and share with their people.

The second goal for the studio is to provide a convenient location to produce satellite television programming in as many of the language groups covered by the satellite as possible. Remarkably, there are just a handful of languages throughout Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe that have any Adventist programming available. Our goal is to produce programming, language by language, that will be up-linked to the satellite and then broadcast region by region in the appropriate time slots. As we are able to record more and more programming in any particular language, that language will eventually be able to be moved to its own channel for full time broadcast. Obviously, there is a lot of work to do to reach everybody in each language group on this side of the world!

The third goal for this studio is that it will serve as a training center for young "media missionaries" - those technically gifted young people from around the world who can come here and learn how to produce quality programming as a means of sharing the gospel. Our goal is to send these media missionaries out to establish and operate other studios that will serve in much the same capacity as this studio.

Thank you to those of you who have been praying, and we ask that you will continue to lift this project up before God as often as possible.

Hello friends and family,

Our visas require us to leave Thailand every three months. Here is a story about our first border run to Myanmar (formerly Burma). Melia, with help from her Daddy, typed this story so her Grandma H can use it for children's story at their church.

We love and miss you!

Dear Grandma,

Here is the story about crossing into Burma and back into Thailand. We had to leave Thailand because we had to renew our visas from outside the country. (We have to leave every three months). So, just before our visas expired we went up to the border where there is a bridge across the Mae Sai river into Burma. We got there about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and parked near the bridge on the Thailand side. Then we walked across the bridge, but of course we had to stop at the immigration check points for the guards to check our passports. At the Burma check point, the guards said they would keep our passports and that we could pick them up on the way out. So we left them there and kept walking across the bridge till we got to the other side. It wasn't very far and after we crossed there was a huge street market where they tried to sell us all kinds of stuff. Mommy and Daddy wouldn't let us buy very much though. Mommy and Daddy did find a Burmese box to use as our missionary prayer box. After we went shopping we were hungry so we looked for a restaurant to eat at. It's a good thing we had a little map because other wise we wouldn't have been able to find one. It was just a little ways away from the market so we walked there and ate some rice with vegetables. All five of us ate for about $2.30. After we ate, we decided to walk around a little bit more to see if there was anything interesting. So we walked back toward the bridge and saw some kind of monument. Mommy and Daddy took some pictures of it but I didn't think it was very interesting to look at. Then we walked some more and went a little bit past the bridge but we didn't see anything else interesting there either. So we turned around and decided to go back to go across the bridge. It was a good thing we decided to go back then and not any later. We got to the immigration check point on the Myanmar side, they gave us our passports and said that we were very late. Late for what, we wondered? As we started across the bridge, first a boy started telling us that we needed to cross to the other side, so we did. Mommy gave him 5 baht for his help. As soon as we crossed we got to the first immigration check point and the guard told us to hurry so we started walking toward him faster and he kept telling us to hurry. Daddy went ahead up to the window where the guard was and came running back with some papers we had to fill out before we could go back into Thailand. He said that the guard told him the border closed at 5 o'clock. By this time it was already about 5:15. As soon as we got the papers, we heard them slamming the gates shut behind us. Mommy and Daddy were writing very fast to fill out the papers and Daddy took them to another guard at a different window. The guard told Daddy that we were very late and the border closes at 5 o'clock. Daddy said he was very sorry and this was our first time crossing the border and we didn't know it closed. (In our defense, it doesn't say in any of the tour books or on either side of the border that the border closes at 5pm). While we were standing there waiting for him to finish our visa papers, other guards were closing the gates to Thailand in front of us so it seemed like we were trapped there on the bridge between the two sets of gates. At last the guard finished with our papers and sent us with another guard through a special door around the gates. After we got through that door, there was one more little office where we had to go in and get our passports back. Finally, about 5:30 we had our passports back and the last guard let us out of the office and closed the door behind us. There were no more doors or gates behind us and we just had to get off the bridge and walk to our truck. Boy were we glad to get back to it because all our clothes, food and water were there waiting for us. Mommy said that if we had been any later, we probably would have had to stay in Burma overnight at a hotel. But we didn't have any clothes except for what we were wearing and we didn't have our passports either. In Thailand, you have to have your passport to stay at a hotel if you are a foreigner. We were so happy to be back in Thailand after that scary part when we were crossing the border. While Mommy and Daddy were doing the papers, Marcus and I were praying that they would let us through and God answered our prayers.

Love,

Melia

Please feel free to join the Facebook group "All-Asia TV studio" to follow the progress of the studio with more pictures. There is an update video link posted there which will let you see what has been accomplished at the studio thus far. For pictures of our family activities and more timely updates, please become my friend on Facebook. Find me under "Judy Bond-Hernandez" and let me know that you are requesting a friendship in order to follow the studio progress.

Wow, it has been a while since we have updated our blog! We finally got internet to our home and then one week later we had the incredible opportunity to attend Mission Institute which was held in Chiang Mai. We enjoyed three weeks of missionary training, air conditioning, no cooking or cleaning and the fellowship of awesome, God-following missionaries from everywhere who are going everywhere!!

The studio is progressing nicely, despite the fact that there are no funds. God is good!! The first coat of paint has been applied to the interior and exterior walls and all of the windows were installed on Friday. Rick has been busy extending the walls in the sounds sensitive rooms. The building has a very high roof. When the interior walls were built, they only built them about 1/2 of the way up to the roof and then a false ceiling was installed just below the tops of the walls. The roof has open venting which will allow sounds from the village (cows, chickens, dogs, motorbikes, etc.) as well as the noise from thunderstorms to drift down into the down-sensitive rooms. Taking the walls of the sound-sensitive rooms all the way up to the roof will help protect the sound integrity of those rooms.

The family is doing well here. The kids have adjusted and are no longer asking to go home every single day! They have made friends with some of village kids. It is amazing how much can be communicated without a common language. The kids are also loving all of the different fruits that Thailand has to offer. The favorites right now are yellow mangoes, lychees, mangosteens, finger bananas and a small round fruit that seems to have just a Thai name. Each season brings new favorites. Below is a picture of produce from a recent trip to the market.

Hi everyone! This is just a quick note to let you know that we have arrived safely and without incident. While we were near Ayutthaya (about one and a half hours from Bangkok) we had internet access but everything on our blog, except for what we had entered was in Thai! With some help, we have overcome that problem.

Right now we are sitting on the pastor's porch using his wireless internet service. Once we have internet or a long period of time available to come sit on his porch we will start to get caught up on our blog. We have much to share!! We love and miss you!

We are on the road! Against all odds, we left our home in Springfield, OR on Thursday the 19th of February. Rick had planned to take the last couple of weeks off but was unable to as he was wrapping up projects at work. It is only the kindness of Rick's family and incredible friends that made it possible for us to leave in time to get down to my parent's before Sabbath.

We arrived at my Mom and Dad's home in Paso Robles, CA on Friday night and then gave a presentation about the project at the Templeton Hills church on Sabbath. The rest of the time in Paso was spent shopping for supplies and packing. The plan was to take 2 or 3 suitcases with us to Thailand but we are ending up with 8 suitcases/duffle bags plus 5 carry ons and two personal items!!

We are now at my brother's home in San Marcos, Ca. Cousins are having a great time playing together. It was fun to be able to celebrate my birthday here and was blown away by the wonderful gift of a digital video camera which will allow me to post higher quality video on the web!

We are looking forward to getting to be tourists down here. Our plans may include trips to the San Diego Wildlife Park and Legoland (yeah for free passes!).

Peter will be taking us up to LAX area on Monday and we fly out Tuesday on EVA Airlines. 17 hours to Taipei, 2 hour layover and then 5 hours to Bangkok.

Quite a few people have asked me if I am sad or scared to leave home. I have been doing really well, considering. It was really hard to leave the home that Rick built and our family and friends in Oregon, but I knew I was going to my Mom and Dad's. It was hard to leave Mom and Dad, but I knew I was going to Peter's. When I say goodbye to Peter on Monday, I don't exactly know what is next, but God does and I have to remember that I am following His plan, and not my own.

This was our last Sabbath at the Eugene church! It is hard to believe that we have been part of this wonderful church family since the Fall of 1997. It is also hard to believe that this was our last Sabbath here (at least for a while!) as it seems like we just got the call from Jesus For Asia a short time ago. Sabbath was a blessed and prayerful day full of family and friends. It left us filled, encouraged and with a strong hedge of protection around our family.

We have our passports, visas and homeschool books. Just a million other things to do and we will be ready to go! It would be great to get this blog set up before we head out, but we may have more time (wishful thinking??) once we get settled in Thailand.