Inside Thessabaan House (Front)

Now that you have seen the outside of our house, here's a peek inside. Most Thai homes have a "thai kitchen", that is a kitchen that sits off of the rest of the house. This is where our lone sink, oven and pots and pans are. Our bathroom, "hong naam" in Thai, is located off of the kitchen. In the dining area is where our fridge, cupboards and table are located. Ants are a common pest here in Thailand and so the cupboard where we keep food has special plastic rings around it that we fill with water to keep ants from getting into it. If we keep anything in the trash or on a counter, etc for too long, the ants find it and begin their fast work of carting it off to wherever they cart stuff off to. We find ants EVERYWHERE...from time to time we see them walking out of our computer key pad. I am hoping they aren't eating away at the inside of it. Just the other day, I opened a brand new pack of white undies for PJ and there were ants, many ants eating away at the cotton undies. There are actually holes in the undies! I have killed them all off and am super aware now that this is a problem here!
The living room is situated beside the dining room as you might be able to tell from the picture. Thankfully we have a high powered ceiling fan in the living room that keeps it pretty cool. Any time we turn the oven on though the thai kitchen gets very hot very quickly. It seems the heat is sorta trapped with no where to go.
Our house is called Thessabaan House. Thessabaan is the Thai word for government. And from what I've been told there are some government buildings located just behind our compound so they (they being OMF*) call our house Thessabaan House front. Our neighbors who are missionaries from Hollland live in Thessabaaan House back. Unfortunately for us, our house is situated right on the soi (Thai word for side street). This is unfortunate because all the soi dogs (aka stray dogs) like to bark and fight often under our window. And there are many stray dogs here in Lopburi! Of course it is the Thai way not to kill off the stray dogs because it might mess up that spirit's karma or rebirth.

A quick word about OMF. OMF stands for Overseas Missionary Fellowship and used to be known as China Inland Mission...the mission of Hudson Taylor. We are studying here under the direction of OMF though we are MTW missionaries. OMF has several churches planted here in Lopburi though we have only visited one so far. It is very exciting to see the Kingdom of God expanded here in Thailand and to see these Thai believers worship the true God.