Cole Ministries International

The end of November we found ourselves in Thailand. We spent two weeks learning to build a healthy and strong marriage, family life and and ministry. It was a lot of work but we made time for lots of family fun. After our daily meetings we had fun biking, going to the zoo, the food fair, shopping at the night markets, riding elephants and swimming. We also spent Thanksgiving in Thailand and found lots of yummy food. We feel this trip opened many new doors for us and we have been givien so many tools to use in our future.

Just before we finished packing to come home for Christmas we had one last photo shoot at our house. While waiting I got a few snaps of the kids playing with my photo props.

November was a very busy month, getting ready to come home for Christmas and wrapping up all the last classes. It was exciting trying to fit 6 weeks into 3. Everyone was flexible and easy to work with. Our last big class was Puppets 101. The students learned everything from how to hold the puppet to how to make one. We covered every basic puppeteer “must know” and a few less known facts, like how to make an amazing puppet out of discarded items easily found in most villages. We know these skills will be used to do great things.

Leaders in puppet training.

In August we took a 2 day family holiday to Ooty. Ooty is about 6 hours from Bangalore and 2-4 hours from Mysore (depending on the road condition at the time). We spent the weekend relaxing in the fresh mountain air. We had fun picnics and camp fires. We also spent half a day shopping and sampling the famous hand made Ooty chocolates. We stayed in a small compound right in the middle of a wildlife preserve. While driving we saw elephants and wild boar. At camp we stood at the look out and saw water buffalo. We could hear the mommy and baby elephants calling to each other but they never came out to say hi. It was a wonderful family time in the middle of a very busy year.

We had planned on conducting 6 weeks of programs, but because of exams we took a 2 week break and wrapped it all up last Saturday, the 19th of September.

With 115 children we had a wonderful grand finale. We talked about the empty tomb and new life. We had lots of fun discovering together the miracle of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly and what new life means to us.

Super heroes ‘Backwards Boy’ and ‘Inside-out Man’ gave us some powerful verses to hold onto.

We also played some great games and participated in meaningful skits.

In the end, we invited all the children and their families to come back on Sunday. We provided transportation and a refreshments with P. Kennie and Martha after the fellowship. We were so happy to see 10 new faces Sunday morning and around 30 children for the children’s fellowship.

Thank you so much for all your support and hard work. To all the volunteers, you made this program a success. We know the children and schools all had a great time.