Stories worth bringing home.

He told us, through translation, that nobody in his village had ever opened the book of Romans with him. He had been preaching for two years from memory and from a few photocopied pages a friend had carried over the border.

We spent the week walking through the gospel slowly. He took notes in Lao. On Friday he asked if we would pray that he would be brave when he got home. We did. Then he turned around and started the walk back.

We do not always get to know what happens after the team flies home. Sometimes we do. This year a short message came back through the network: he is still preaching, and three more pastors from his region are coming next time.

Most of the Lao wives travel into Thailand once. Their husbands' ministries are quiet, careful, often hidden. They are tired in a way that does not show until you sit with them long enough.

We take the morning at the market. We buy fabric. We buy shoes that fit children they have not seen in a week. We laugh. We pray over each one before we get back on the bus.

There is no agenda for the afternoon. That is the agenda. Honor them, see them, send them home with something in their hands and something in their spirit.

The Lanna Christian School moves children every day. To school, to clinic, to the market, to church. Their vans run hard on rough roads. A van out of service is a child who cannot go where they need to go.

Our team rebuilt brakes on three vehicles this trip and rewired one. The school director quietly said it saved them about six weeks of waiting on parts and labor.

We are not pretending to be missionaries that day. We are mechanics. We are also showing the kids that their vehicles, their school, and they are worth somebody flying across the world to take care of.