If you wish us to send you a copy of the three DVD and CD disks containing videos about TreeHouse (edited and prepared by volunteers David and Charlotte from France, using films from Shale Harbor Church, Eric Retterbush from race around the World 2007, TreeHouse Pictures complied by volunteer Katie Sudermann (Canada)and Hope Camp 2008 with loads of pix and mini-cam videos--- send me an email and make sure to include your mailing address, including postal code is any to make it easier for me to send them. A donation of any amount would be appreciated to cover at least the costs of disks, mailer enbvelope and postage. Thanx for remembering us at TOLO. To date more than 70 requests have been received.

Thank you so much for the on-going help for the children here at Tree of Life House. We are truly grateful for the help that you have provided or will provide to the children here at Tree of Life Christian Children’s Center and Orphanage. We are so thankful for the incredible donation of six huge boxes of children’s clothes, toys, books and bags received from Singapore Catholic High School during the month of August. We are encouraged by such donations as it brings joy to the children to receive such gifts. We hope you will continue to support our efforts as we continue to meet the needs of the children here at TreeHouse and in the surrounding community areas. The children are thriving and are truly blessed by your help.

What an incredible six weeks this has been at TOLO since the beginning of 2008!! We have had a total of 41 marvelous volunteers who have come to help us out for periods ranging from a few days, or for as long as 1 to 2 weeks hailing from 10 different countries here with us---- most of them have come to serve for a one-week period as part of their travels around Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia, just since January-- 29 arrived within a 3 day period (Febriary 2nd-4th)and stayed with us at one time! (They included: 4 high school teachers along with ten grade 11 students from an international school located in Qingdao China -one student was from America--Miriam, and the nine others were from Korea: Hyun Ju, Jae Hee, Han Ul, Yeon Soo, Yo Rim, Sung Won, Sang Kwon, Kwang and Hyup, then we had another teacher of Chinese for foreigners from Gwangjou China, named Eilene (she is mainland Chinese) who is currently employed at the Chinese private school located here in Buriram, then we had 5 YWAMMERs along with their translator (Youth With a Mission Discipleship Training School in Brisbane Australia) a wonderfully committed, dedicated and talented bunch of young folks including a Solomon Islander--Ernest, an Australian--Nadine, two Canadians--Jolene and Kristen and a Korean-- Shin and a YWAM translator --Goi (Phattarawan) from the Bangkok Office (Thai National), added to them was a delightful New Zealand couple who stayed for a total of 2 very busy weeks--Caleb and Melinda, a remarkable South African teacher--Jenny-Lea, and another super teacher from England --Steph (both of whom served as part of the leadership from the international school faculty accompanying the 10 high school charges), 2 more teachers also came from the same group of 14 --a married couple from the USA-- Josh and Allison who headed up the school team, along with an incredible family of six --the Allen family--Rich and Sue (plus their 4 fantastic kids aged 9, 11, 13 and 15-- Elise, Lucas, Lance and Stacia) all residing or working in Shanghai, China, and a dedicated, kind and personable and inspirational Australian architect,--Mr. Kim Souk, 61 years young joining us here at TOLO for his first volunteer experience-- Kim emigrated from Laos some 38 years ago, has been long-timed married to his Thai wife and thus he speaks fluent Thai which was a real bonus for us here). Hannah was also here for part of that time as is expected to return sometime duing March. While this amazing team was in residence we held nightly praise and worship gatherings in our dining room led by the various teams which was a real treat and a highlight of the period for me. So many talented and godly people involved in sharing and declaring the precious Word of God. TreeHouse was assuredly glowing with the spirit and presence of the Lord and songs of praise and worship abounded everywhere. Members of the three groups shared their personal witness openly and many new friendships were begun here. These super volunteers, all brothers and sisters in the Lord, were drawn from 5 continents and the islands of the Pacific-- they had all arrived just a week or so after eight more dedicated group of young individual volunteers, which included an Irish lass (Katie) living in London and one young circus entertainer (Joseph) also from London, a South African social worker living in England (Michelle), an American gal from Washington State (Kacie, even her mom, Barbara came to visit for 2 days and is now organizing a book drive for us in Washington State), two teenage Australian girls --Ashley and Christine, both 19) from Sydney and a vivacious Canadian 21 year old miss --Jordan-- had just recently departed. It has been one busy month and a half to say the least. From Mid-November until the end of December it had been so quiet around here with only one volunteer with us and only for a period of one week during that seven week stretch of time. After the fantastic group of aboriginal five high school students from communities scattered around Western Australia and their beloved teachers, Andrew, Meridith and Gaye from Wuthba School from Esperance Western Australia had departed in mid-November-. We have had 18 different pieces of authentic abororginal art work given to the Center which they brought with them for us, now beautifully framed and mounted in our front room which is now oficially designated as our Australia Room. We even have a dijeeriedoo-- along wooden tube-like musical instrument ued in the outback of Australia, and even some genuine boomerangs, stuffed toy kangaroos and several Aussie footies on display. Eric Retterbush, hailing from Michigan, USA who came here originally with a team of young volunteers from Race Around the World 2007 in September last year appeared on his second visit to TOLO. Eric came back and stayed with us for the week of Christmas 2007. His visit was so super for the kids who love Eric's kindly, fun-loving child-centered approach to everything. During the most recent period---beginning from the 3rd to 19th of February visit by so many great folks-- a lot of significant improvements were accomplished at the Center and upgrading in the facilities and grounds were immense. What was even greater was the impact created by these outstanding people who made a real lasting impression on the children at TOLO and who were truly blessed by having so many great folks around to interact with. With the first group of eight individuals who were present here during the month of January, in the weeks prior to the big gathering of 30 plus volunteers ---We visited a rural elementary school along with 80 second and third year college students to paint and fix up an elementary school playground for 87 kids in a very poor village school located just inside Korat province abut 60 kilometers from here where a small group of six volunteers painted all the playground equipment with bright new colors. Several new tasks were accomplished at that school and improvements in landscaping and painting, repairing done by the university students whom we accompanied on this trip during that early Saturday morning to afternoon forray--- as well as cleaning, maintenance and reorganizing took place plus lunch provided by the university student volunteers which included Apinan (Pak) who is one of the kids who we have raised here at TreeHouse (he is now a 3rd year university student at Buriram Rajabhat University) . Some of the volunteers dug deep into their pockets and busted their budgets to make needed purchases for the center for which we are extremely grateful and thankful for to the Lord. At TOLO we now have a real ping pong table frequented by a growing number of children at the center plus or all the neighborhood school kids who are now showing up at TOLO daily to avail thmselves of the opportunity to play games and sports and play on the freshly painted playground equipment. This is, thanks to the parents of one of our volunteers. We also were given a new microwave oven -- since the last one had become rusted badly after 16 year's usage-- 2 volunteers bought this as a surprise for us after they discovered our old one was just about gone). Our playground equipment was also freshly re-painted in some beautiful colors. We were limited during the month of January early on by a lack of funds (January had started out real slow for us financially) and overall stateside donations to cover operating costs had been at an all-time low so we managed to barely scrape bye in January and nearly having our power cut off because we had not been able to pay the overdue electric bill until the very last moment. Being on the edge during trying times like these-- is when our faith gets tested to its ultimate levels--it can be a little nerve racking at times, but our God has managed to supply all our needs according to His riches in glory as He has proved so many times to us over these past 10 years since we have been serving fulltime in Burram Thailand. However, during the combined February team's visit things changed dramatically for us.(The YWAM group, + Chinese School Team, plus the Shanghai family and the others from New Zealand and Australia all here at that one time). We revisited Ban Yoei Sakae School once more and repainted their playground equiment there, attended a number of student shows and gave a good number of performances in return, during which time we also successfully distributed more than 5,800 new testaments early on at many many elementary, secondary and vocational schools in various cities, towns and villages located in Buriram Province, Korat Province and Surin Provinces as well and at the Hindu Temple (Khao Phanom Rung). Volunteers saw and participated in a fabulous elephant show at Ta Klang village in Surin Province during the same week. The kids here at TOLO received a number of toys and games, clothes and refreshments and loads of ice cream compliments of the volunteers. One family blessed our socks off when they took us on a massive shopping spree and generously purchased a baby bed for baby Amanda, a baby stroller and a baby bottle sterilizer (Amanda is now 3 months old), seven floor mattresses for the dorm as we had more volunteers than beds available, a dozen or more pillows and several sets of sheets and pillowcases, a baskeball net, a volleyball net, a half dozen badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, a dart board and ping pong balls galore, cleaning supplies and provisions and enormous amount of groceries to successfully feed this great army of volunteers and our own family as well. In order to accommodate such a large crowd of volunteers at one time some of the volunteers decided to rent hotel rooms for their stay and we rented 2 additional pickup trucks to provide adequate transport. English camp 2008 was, without a doubt, a smashing success for the kids from 4 different schools who were in attendance at the Bird Sanctuary at Suan Nok for the weekend of the 10-l1th. We rented cabins for the staff and dorms to accommodate the crowd of children from grades 4-6 which totalled just under 100 people-- 57 students, our family members (13 members) and 30 volunteers plus several daytime observers / teachers from the various schools. Special English Camp Books were created and printed, filled witha activities and lots of songs to learn, certificates designed by the Korean students, printed and issued to all students participating and many prizes provided by the volunteers were distributed to the kids in attendance. The volunteers danced, sang, did dramas and skits, played sports, taught numerous topics and mingled well with the horde of school kids, sharing their immense talents and making everyone feel so incredibly blessed and surely excited to be part of it all. Fantastic perfomances were given at the high school in Ta Klang Village, at Ban Yoie Sakae Elementary School, and at the Huey Kheo Chinese School in Buriram where nearly 1,000 kids were in attendance. New Testaments were distributed to students, faulty and staff in more than 20 additional schools in Surin, Buriram and Korat Provinces. The Korean kids added beautiful artwork to the walls of our dining room, including a colorful painting of a giant panda depicted as eating bamboo sprouts and saying hello (nee how) in Chinese, and Koean artist, Brian did a series of Korean cartoon characters to emblazen another wall. Caleb and his wonderful wife Melinda did some art restoration work of our logo out front and some of the earlier art work which had been painted on the dining room wall but due to weathering over these past 7 years was in need of touching up. Near the end of his visit Caleb joined me on Sunday afternoon to professionally paint the guest bedroom and bathroom with two coats of paint before departing. The rooms look absolutely fabulous as Caleb had previously worked as a painter for his dad in New Zealand. Two days earlier, On Friday the 15th we loaded up 4,100 scriptures and began a massive one day distribution effort in Lahansai and then on to Ban Kruad locatd just along the Cambodian Thai frontier district (where another Christian friend, Jan Fredrik from Norway and his Thai wife Bee joined us as well --they were on a visit to her home village at the time). Then to complete the distributions of Thai new testaments for the current academic school year this past Monday (the 18th) we headed out once more, my ten year old Toyota Tiger pickup truck loaded down with the last 3,200 copies of the new testament and proceeded to conduct distributions at secondary school located at Paku Yai Village, then on to another village secondary school on the road to Khu Muang, and then onward into Chompeung district of Korat Province where we visited 2 more high schools where we freely distributed testaments for another hour. After a short luch break we began again by doing a through distribution across campus at the district technical college, followed by two more elementary and lower secondary schools. BY 4 p.m on Monday we headed home to Buriram with an empty truck, exceept for the empty 80 cardboard boxes and a lot of great memories. While the full teams were here we had given out around 6,000 testaments to which we added another 7,600 just this past week in two long days, thanks to Melinda and Caleb from New Zealand being so willing to go and give out so many of these precious love letters from Jesus. Isaiah 55:11 clearly states that the Word will go forth and not return void. Seed planting (Thai new testament distributions) is one of the best parts of being out here in Thailand which currently allows free distributions of scriptures in schools everywhere without hindrance. To date we have now been able to distribute and or place more than 265,000 new testaments in the hands of Thai children and adults in over 600 schools since 2002 when we helped organize the Gideon mnistry here in Buriram. To God be the glory! Hey Everyone! I am excited to present to you the new website for Tree Of Life Orphange. It definitely has been a labor of love and we will continue to add more pictures of the children and news from TOLO. As this site grows I welcome any suggestions and how we can do a better job at telling TOLO's story. Dear friends and supporters: Lalita arrived yesterday morning at 7:45 a.m. She is 29 days old as of today. Lalita was born on 21 November 2007 and weighed a bit over 3 kilograms. Her mother gave her up because she was not married and her father is a muslim who wished to do harm to both his daughter and her offspring because he felt she was immoral. Be what may, this child is an absolute gift from God and we shall treasure her as we raise her up in love and the admonition of the Lord. She has already taken the hearts of everyone here, espeially Eileen who nows moves into a position as big sister. She has been asking us for a baby sister for a long time and she is absolutely thrilled. We are renaming Lalita "Amanda Rose." If any of you who read this wish to help us and sponsopr some of the cost of taking care of her we would welcome it. Send your donations, no matter how much, big or small to Family Life Church whose address is listed on donations page. God bless you all as you pass through this season of remembering the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the reason for the season. Roger Photos are up on the children's page.