Pregnant We’d also like to announce that we are having another baby! Anne is 9 weeks pregnant, and the baby is due in late May 2009. So, Samantha and Baby Sanborn will be almost exactly 2 years apart. We wondered for so long if we would even be blessed with one child and now we get to have two. We’re very excited about this new miracle God is giving us.
What's over there?
Samantha Samantha is growing so fast. She's already 18 months old! She is constantly talking - though half the time we can't understand her. She is very outgoing and loves going around and turning strangers into friends. She's very precocious and once she gets the vocabulary down, I think she's gonna be a manager! She also loves running and climbing. We can’t keep this kid down.
Did I do That?
Oregon Team Lately Sean has been leading a team from Salem, OR. They've been very helpful around the church, coffee shop and even helping us around our house - can you say, new carport? Sean and the team visited 4 of our daughter churches and helped Home of Joy orphanage.
Getting to the Akha village in Mae Ai
Revival One of the villages, Tung Daeng Prao, is beginning to see a revival. Over a year ago a revival broke out amongst the Karen in the Om Koi area. They started telling others about their experiences. One of those villages that they visited is a Lahu village named Nong Kiew. It is where Sean’s parents Art and Ellen Sanborn planted their first church.
Sanborn Family in NongKiew: 1983ish
Now, all these years later they are experiencing a revival and wanted to share their experiences with others, so they visited our daughter church in Tung Daeng Prao. It’s amazing how things circle back around.
The team had lots of fun with the children of Bethlehem village
The team got to experience part of the revival there. There are many things to share. For instance, even though many of the villagers are illiterate, one woman spent 2 months fasting and praying, and now she can miraculously read. She reads her Bible to her family early every morning.
Children of Tung Daeng Prao The above woman with the pink skirt can now read.
Every Sunday morning the nearby dam opens its flood gates a bit and lots of fish come rushing out. Therefore the villagers used to skip church. After being challenged about it by other villagers (not by us) they stopped fishing on Sunday. Miraculously their fish and income levels have doubled. Now they are tithing so much that they have accumulated 10% of what they need to build a new church, which they want to use as a place of ministry for other nearby villages.
Village kids showing off new bracelets
One evening our team witnessed a time of corporate repentance and what people said was a visitation from angels. All over the north, we are seeing this kind of revival among the hill tribes. And it's being lead by the children and youth. They are waking early each morning to pray, and fast together, and then hold meetings till late in the evening. Many are having visions of heaven and angels. We are in a time of preparation for revival in Thailand. Prophetic words say that revival will come from the North of Thailand - the Hills - and spread like a fire throughout the nation and region.
Hurry up and click it. It's bright out here.
Please pray that the Thai church will be able to let go of their concept of “known forms & traditions,” and of “losing face” so that they can experience the freedom and refreshing that is unfolding in the hill-tribes. Thailand is still an unreached nation. Less than 1% of Thai's have given their hearts to Jesus (as opposed to 10% of hill tribes - which is why revival is coming from the hills).
Sean teaching English to police
Please keep praying with us and labouring with us so that we will see God's plan for this people and this nation fulfilled. Pray that religious “institutions” will not try to get hold of this move of God and control/ contain/ squelch it. One of the Major reasons why the hill tribes are experiencing revival is because they are not steeped on traditions, “proper” forms of worship, or institutional “guidelines.”
Pray for us
Cancer In June an Oncologist told Sean’s dad (Art Sanborn) that he had stage 1 leukemia and less than 8 years to live. Of course, we considered this to be another challenge to pray hard. Four months later they took Art to a recommended specialist and the doctor gave a more optimistic prognosis. He said that Art has at least 10 years at the current growth rate. Please join us in praying that the cancer disappears entirely.
Ellen Praying with a Karen villager
XTTV (Extreme Teens TV) (Facebook photo album) Sean and Anne starred as Art and Ellen in a new docudrama chronicling the events of when Art broke his neck and miraculously recovered. You can watch the 15 minute re-enactment up on GodTube.
Nov 3, 2008 CBN interviewed Art Sanborn about his miraculous healing from being a quadriplegic to complete health. For over 10 years Art has continued to improve...
Furlough In January 2009, we will be making a trip to the USA for a short furlough. We plan to be in Florida (East Coast) all of January, then make our way to the West Coast for World Outreach Week at Central Christian Church, San Jose, CA. We’ll be at CCC for the first 1-2 weeks of February. We hope to be able to travel to see friends on the West Coast. Originally, we intended to stay in the USA for 6 months and travel extensively, but with Baby Sanborn on the way, we’re not sure how much Anne can travel. We may decide to cut the trip short in order to return to Chiang Mai to give birth. Please pray for us as we try to figure this all out.
The Thai Economy is undergoing dramatic inflation (cost of rice jumped 30% in a week). The $US is worth 1/3 less against the Thai Baht. We are finding it difficult to cover monthly expenses. Please help.
P.O. Box 410 Chiang Mai Post Office, Chiang Mai Thailand 50000 Email: sanborn@writeme.com Skype: sanborn_sean
Please send personal correspondence directly to Sean & Anne at our PO Box or Email address. Any financial support should be sent to Youth With A Mission Tampa: Accounting Department 34077 Eiler Blvd. Webster, Florida 33597 (or more information click here.) and made payable to Youth With A Mission Tampa. Please enclose a note stating the designation for "Sean and Anne Sanborn". (If you are in Australia, and wish to support Sean & Anne's ministry, please ask us for more information.) Please contact Sean for the use of graphics content. To donate using your creditcard online with Paypal then click below:
(Do not read this if you are capable of being grossed out.) Yesterday my wife came into my office looking pale. "Your daughter has just swallowed some hand sanitizer. I don't know how much." Well, I've been through some intense emergencies over the years so I tried to stay calm. "She What!" Just kidding, I’m sure I appeared calmer than I felt. I immediately Googled the CDC and other poison control. The big concern is the alcohol content, so if she shows signs of being drunk or drowsy then take action. “Give her crackers to absorb the alcohol,” I said. Observing her for the next 10-30 minutes she was clearly not out of steam, in fact, she showed signs of slightly increased hyperactivity. I spent a while compiling all the internet resources I could creating an emergency procedures manual for babies. I also added the poison control number into my Skype. Just as I was nearing completion, my wife called me in to the living room for help. Our daughter had walked towards her covered in what Anne initially thought might be chocolate but then she remembered that we didn't have any chocolate. Also it was green. Our little "Drunk?" angel had removed her diaper and stuck a fist full of poo in her mouth. I burst into the living room and my socks landed on a floor strewn with poo everywhere, even on the toys. "Baby or floor?" I said to my wife. "You take the baby." Anne said. (Is eating poo is a sign of being drunk? I mean even adults get into all sorts of stupid stuff when they are drunk.) I carefully lifted up my child getting my polo shirt covered in poo. I raced her to the bathroom where I took my poo-covered clothes off as well. Instead of our usual bath, this mess called for a shower. I started hosing her down, getting what looked like green mud off of her while she kept trying to reach around and grab "Hey daddy what's that thing there?" her babbling implied. She kept trying to drink the dirty Thailand tap water. Tonight I suppose it is ok. It is better that she ingest a few gulps of tap water than her mouthful of poo. She had a fun shower time. Ok done, I've got the poo off, no need to wash her hair tonight. I can now put my shorts on, get her dressed, and we can continue our usual evening routine. Fortunately, it only took 5 minutes to wrestle a diaper and jumpsuit onto her. I hoisted her back up. She wanted to see the picture of Tigger. While I turned to look at where she was pointing she yanked out a chest hair and quickly ate it. (Is my daughter drunk?) Then I got a good whiff of her hair. It smelled of poo. "Anne should I re-bathe her?" "Yes, get it all off." Ok, bath-time. While the tub filled up she leaned over the edge and played with the water. She was slippery getting into the tub because I had already put on her body lotion the last time. She wasn't happy about being bathed again. (Daddy, we did this already.) Ok, hair washed, clean baby, let's finish this. Fussing at being toweled again, fussing at having clothes put back on (is my bay a nudist at heart?), and finally more story-time routine. Next, I took her to the living room where she was horrified to find that all of her poo was gone. At least there remained strange drops of water on the floor from Anne’s mopping. She leaned to the ground and, like a person dying of thirst in a desert, she began licking up the floor. (Interesting taste!) (My daughter must be drunk.) I headed back to my office to print out my new procedures manual for dealing with disasters. A few minutes later I came back into the living room and my daughter was playing with my socks. Yes, the same ones that stepped in the you-know-what. What is my daughter’s fascination with her own faeces? Ok, dinner, time to relax. My wife made a wonderful meal of buffalo wings. We stuck her in her playpen (baby prison) and proceeded to have dinner while we watched a TV show. She cried the whole time, horrified that for a few moments she was not the center of our attention. We have learned to zone-out that particular whining frequency. Next, I had the opportunity to go out with the guys to watch the premier of Indiana Jones. Anne couldn’t go because none of our baby sitters were available; most are not even in Thailand anymore. (When we go on dates with our daughter in tow is it still called a date?) I left as she was putting the baby down. Only 10 minutes of screaming tonight. She must have been tired, or perhaps needing to sleep-it-off. At the movie I started to share my experience with an experienced dad. He was so offended and grossed out that he left and came back after the movie started. “I came here to get away from gross things. Why are you telling me this? Are you drunk?” No, but I think I know who was and is home recuperating. It’s a good thing I now have a procedures manual now to deal with baby disasters. The only problem is that there is no section on poo-flinging.
The following Blog is Anne's take on the story http://annesanborn.blogspot.com/2008/05/disgusting.html
Have you ever sat through a boring lecture or sermon when all of a sudden the speaker decides to throw in what would appear to be their version of humor. Strictly speaking this isn’t really humor, in the sense that jokes should be funny. This horrifyingly pathetic attempt at humor somehow becomes a great beam of light into a dreary room. Next thing you know you are laughing until your sides ache. This is much like the first few months of life with an infant. They sleep, poo and cry. Many babies scream for hours as if you were a communist torturing a pastor, until finally your ears ring with blissful deafness. They screech for hours and there is nothing you can do but distract them and bounce them. You bounce them all the early hours of the morning until your thigh-master legs cramp and you worry about what abusive "shaking a baby” entails. Because, unless you bounce her, your ears will bleed. So now I am going deaf. Ever since my daughter was born my hearing has gotten worse. Loud screaming in ones ear at anytime can be bad for the eardrums, but especially, I believe, at 3am. I love every sound she makes, especially since I can barely hear each sound she makes. To clarify, I’m not yet truly deaf, I just can’t hear ambient noise anymore. It used to be that I had only minimal difficulty hearing phrases like, “could you do the dishes.” But now, despite the best of intentions, I can only hear one thing at a time. If the baby is crying then the phrases “Can you change the diaper” or “can you get up and go check on your daughter” are phrases that will likely go unheard. Eventually, I respond to a more efficient communication system, an elbow in the gut. So I go and get my daughter and brace myself for the scream-fest. Then all of a sudden, like a beam of sunlight after a storm, she smiles. she giggles. Your heart is filled with a brief moment of joy. This is the only thing you will later remember when you consider having another child. This brief smile of love is as addictive as cocaine but your high is rare and as unpredictable as gambling. Somehow that 2-minute period of a 24-hour day spent in hyper vigilance is enough to give you patience and stamina for the next 24-hours. A smile from a baby is the purest high on the planet. Even now, I'm hoping that I can be awake the next time it happens. If you reply to this blog, I probably won’t reply because I think my fingers are starting to go deaf, too. Maybe they are asleep. After 3 months of sleep deprivation with my sweet little addiction I need some assistance to stay strong. So tell me a stupid joke and pass the espresso.
So I was playing a computer game and I realized. That’s it.
I’m grown up now. I have to leave playing to the professionals: To Kids. Namely
my daughter.
First of all, to avoid being a worthless dead-beat dad I
must spend lots of time talking to my wife’s belly button. My wife doesn’t mind
one way or another, but she just doesn’t understand the societal pressure I’m
under. If I don’t talk to our unborn baby, and if we don’t play classical music
to her, or perplex her with fractal algorithms, then she is going to grow up
asking people if they would prefer plastic or paper grocery bags as a career. I
would be a failure before I’d even begun. Without such pre-natal attention,
there is no way that she could ever be an astronaut, an Olympian, or even a
hair stylist.
But what if I want my daughter to follow in her dad’s
footsteps as an unpaid volunteer. Very funny, you. No, that is not a euphemism
for a dead-beat dad. I am a missionary, thank you very much. It’s is the result
of years of training, and well ok, from my parents reading the Bible to me when
I was still a fetus.
But how can I, as a father, prepare her for the harsh
realities of life on the mission-field, or even the harsh realities of a
simpler life like that of an astronaut. Well, I could smack my wife’s belly
around a bit each day, but my wife has already had the unfair burden of bearing
this load for months and months. No, she has already been through enough. I
could try it when she is born, but it could get misinterpreted as abuse. Although,
sometimes I wonder when I watch people burping their children.
Instead, I have a plan. Life is about pain and loss, and
what could be more painful or embarrassing than loosing to your father at a
computer game. Now I see that as a fullygrown man and father it is my duty to prepare my daughter for life. It
is my duty to hone my skills for competition.All I can say is…. Pass the Play-Station controller.
