Merry Christmas from the Clouser Family
Christmas break started last Friday afternoon; Stephani and the girls finished their first semester at Grace International School. It’s also hard to believe that we’ve been in Chiang Mai for six months now!
We have many things to be thankful for over the last six months:
- The community at Grace welcomed Stephani and the girls with open arms. Zoey & Jayden were lovingly welcomed into Christian fellowship by their peers.
- We’ve been reconnecting with old friends and building new relationships since we arrived here.
- We were blessed by the Hill Family, who sub-let us their house and car for six months while they were on home leave.
- We’ve been healthy.
- Stephani has settled into a routine with her 6th-grade class and lesson planning; her workdays and school weeks have become shorter, and she’s no longer going to work in her classroom on Saturdays.
- We’ve enjoyed watching Zoey & Jayden play soccer; this fall, Zoey also started running cross country.
- We’ve found a home that we will move into sometime in the days after Christmas.
- The weather has gotten less wet and much cooler in the last month.
- We’ve also been blessed by many of you and wanted to let you know that we’ve appreciated your emails, encouragement, and support.
The Hill family, who sub-let us their apartment and car, will return to Chiang Mai on January 2nd, which means we had to rent a house, and we’re still trying to figure out how to acquire a car. Our finances are better than they were a month ago: Stephani drew a salary from Crossworld this month, and Ken will also start drawing a part-time salary next month. We also started drawing from one of Ken’s retirement accounts; hopefully, that will be temporary. We also know that the economic picture in the US isn’t as good as it has been in previous years and that many of you have been impacted.
Moving here directly from China has really been shockingly expensive. When they join a sending organization, most missionaries spend a few years preparing and raising support. We know that God was directing us to move straight here; we know that God has consistently taken care of all our needs, but we still stress and worry about how He will answer our prayers.
We’ve prayed about how to meet our needs and feel that we’ve been directed to ask you for your prayers of support and help in meeting those needs. We are at sixty percent of our monthly support budget and are still looking for support partners. Our biggest immediate need, at this moment, is a car, and they are not cheap here. To get one that is 7 to 10 years old without excessive mileage and a warranty to help us out if we have car trouble will cost us about $15,000.
Please pray about how you might be able to assist us with purchasing a car. If you are interested in helping us specifically with a car, whether you can only help a little or if you can help with the whole thing, please contact Ken at kenclouser@gmail.com or Stephani at stephanicramer@gmail.com.
We appreciate you and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We love you too!
Stephani, Ken, Zoey, & Jayden Clouser