Hello everyone! It has been a while, so I figured I might as well write an update for you all...A lot has happened since I last wrote, so I'll do my best to summarize everything. :) But before I do that...Happy Easter! I hope you all had a wonderful one! (Ours here was good--had a couple egg hunts, some Easter cake, a good church service, fun English class, and saw a few elephants to top it off! :)
So where to start...I guess I've been doing mostly three things: traveling, working, and playing. So I guess I'll start with the traveling cause I happened to put that first in the sentence. ;)
Since I last wrote, I have done a lot of traveling! (sorta normal at this point.) Been to Pattaya a couple times and Bangkok once. But we also went on a pretty long road trip! Rodney and Phimpha know a lady who lives in Pattaya. She was sold into the sex trade when she was 8 years old, escaped, married, and then since her husband died has lived at a church in the city. Because she was sold at the age of 8, she has no ID card or identification papers of any sort. In Thailand, this is a very bad situation to be in. If you don't have papers you're considered to not be a citizen--you can't prove that you are! So you can't get a job, get a license, or anything like that. If you are stopped by the police and don't have papers they can send you back to your hometown or home country if you're an illegal alien...So even though she was born in Thailand, she was scared of traveling b/c she might be stopped by the police, and she's never been able to have a real job, etc. You're probably starting to wonder what this lady has to do with traveling and road trips, so I'll let you know. Phimpha and Rodney decided that they would help her to find her family so that she could get ID papers. She remembered what town she was from, so we drove to Pattaya (about 4 hours from where we live) and then drove with her up to Chang Rai province in northern Thailand (about 12-15 hours from Pattaya). Once there, we did a lot of driving up and down mountains talking with random villagers to try to figure out who this lady was and where her family was. Long story short, we found many people who knew who she was and found out that her mother moved about 10 years ago. So we got enough info to get her temporary papers that will be good enough to work until she can get permanent ones. Overall, a pretty successful trip! (and a trip with lots of beautiful mountain views! I'll try to get some pictures up at some point...)
Item number two: working! We have spent a lot of time, particularly in the last week, working over at the shelter house. It was sort of pushed to the side for a week or two because we weren't in the area, but we have been going ahead full steam to get it ready! So I've been doing some painting and sawing and helping fix irrigation pipes, and lots of other random things. It's been lots of fun! I always have enjoyed that sort of thing; it's definitely rewarding stuff! We've also been doing English classes still, which is fun! We got to do an Easter egg hunt in class this past week, which the kids enjoyed a whole lot. It's strange to think that we only have two more weekends of classes...
Finally--I've been doing some playing! As always, the kids love to play! They are all on summer vacation, so whenever I'm around there are kids who are ready to hang out. The young ones are content to run at you for a hug or be carried around upside-down or throw cups of water on you when taking a bath or random things like that. Then I've been playing lots of card games with the older ones, and some checkers, and some soccer...It's so much fun to get to know all these kids and see their different personalities and how they grow and change. The young ones especially have grown so much in just the few months that I've been here! It's neat :) oh and another note on playing: the end of this week is the Thai new year or "Songkron" festival. So lots of playing with water is in my near future! Exciting!!
Well, I'm sure you're all tired of reading by now! Sorry it got so long---if I were better about updating this I'd have less to write in each update I guess! Thanks for your prayers--they are definitely appreciated! Please continue to pray for safety for us all, and please pray for a youth camp that we'll be running from April 28th-May1st!
Thanks so much! (ps...I'll be home in a month! Isn't that crazy? Can't wait to see you all then!)