Tomorrow is a new day — and a new year.  What will you do with it?  You have the power to make it the best year of your life.  You can’t control all the circumstances that will happen, but you can control your reactions to those circumstances.  You can decide that this year will be the one that you take charge of your health and make changes that will affect how you feel and how satisfying your life will become.

The new year will certainly bring some changes for me!  My husband Paul and I will be moving to Thailand for three months.  We will be taking a step back in time as we work with people who live in primitive bamboo huts in jungle villages.  Technology has edged its way even into the jungle, though, as we see satellite dishes among the bamboo plants. Motorcycles are parked underneath the stilted huts beside the pigs which are rooting there.  It’s an interesting mix of ancient culture with a bit of modern technology tossed in.

For the most part, though, these tribal people of Chinese descent are simple people who live the same type of lifestyle as their ancestors did centuries ago.  Most live their lives in fear of the evil spirits of their animist religion.  I’m happy to say that many have now cut the strings from their wrists that show they are slaves to the spirits.  They have a new master — One who is loving and good.

Paul will be teaching the native pastors of the many churches that have recently sprung up in northern Thailand and in Burma.  I will help by teaching English and becoming involved in the lives of the orphans at the Children’s Home we will work with.  I will also be leading a Bible study with a group of women who are eager to learn about our wonderful God.

I’ll be blogging about those adventures, and you are welcome to join us at http://www.gracetothailand.com.  As for the Beyond Gorgeous blog — it will go on, too.  I have blogged ahead so that the blog will appear every morning as usual.

For a while I have felt that my newer readers have missed out on some of the basics of our plan.  We’ve fixed that by going back and re-posting some of the beginning, foundational posts.  You’ll be able to get the whole picture of how your body reacts to the fuel you give it — and why — as you meet your autopilot.  The complete plan with food lists will be coming up, as well as an exercise plan you can do forever.

I hope you keep following my posts — both of them — and that they will be a blessing to you in this new year!

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown