I’m not exaggerating when I say that our students treat us like celebrities…. Our ministry has consisted of three main things, rice fields, soccer, and teaching english! So guess what this blog is about. You got it, teaching!!
We have had the pleasure of being able to teach at 8 different schools here in Thailand! Each week we would go to a different school and teach depending on the school, the grade level, and who your students were! I really never thought teaching your native language could be that hard, but surprisingly was quite difficult! I did not realize how complex the English language was until attempting to teach it!
This summer I taught about aquaculture to grades 3-5 (actually like 1-8) at the local YMCA’s around southern Maine. Doing this made me realize I have a very strong passion for teaching; I became so excited when I realized a lot of our ministry would be teaching! Something about forcing knowledge into kids brains really gets to me.
The very first school we went to we taught common phrases like “hello, how are you?”, “what is your name?” “how old are you?” and “where are you from?” The kids often times get them confused so you ask them, “how old are you?” and they reply “I come from Thailand.” It’s super funny, but when you don’t speak the language, it’s a little hard to help them understand why they are wrong. After teaching here, we realized many of the kids actually knew more than we thought they did, so many lessons we would make a little harder. For each school we would have to come up with our own English lessons, so these often consisted of a lot of songs, random fruits and vegetables, nouns, verbs, creating sentences, and many many game of hangman.
I found out I loved teaching older kids, so I would always choose to teach the classes normally grade 6 and older. I would teach past, present, future verbs, sometimes nouns and verbs, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, and different things to try to improve their vocabulary. In Thailand, they have a very hard time pronouncing their “R’s” and it always sounds like “L’s” so I spend a lot of time on pronunciation. It’s kinda creepy when they say “I eat rice” because they always say “lice” and our team has only had two bad occurrences of that…we’re good now though no more lice!…. Some schools we would do stations, some we teach the same class all day, some we just played games with all day. Every school was different but they all were a tremendous amount of fun!!! I loved teaching here in Thailand and it is something I am going to miss so much!
At the last school we went to, they were over an hour away, but once the principal heard that our hosts had white people, they called Raem and Nan and begged for us to go and teach at their school. The school spent a week setting up their school to be Christmas themed. We arrived and they had Christmas music playing on the loud speaker, tinsel and balloons everywhere, a giant Christmas tree, A Merry Christmas sign, gifts, and all of the kids were either wearing Santa hats or Santa’s face that they colored on their head. Their school was decked out for Christmas. We did different programs and stations all Christmas themed and the kids loved it! It was such a fun experience and it was so amazing to see a Buddhist school be so impacted by Christmas, something I know the Lord is working in their hearts!
Also at the first school, we realized we are going to be celebrities. We drive up in the back of the pick up truck and there are kids standing outside all staring at us. Everywhere, in the fields, upstairs staring in, in the classrooms, EVERYONE was staring at us. I meant to say hello “Sa-Wa-De-Kha” but I accidentally said thank you “Ka-Phun-Kha” and all of the kids screamed as if they had just seen Justin Bieber. At first we thought it was just cute, funny, and an accident, but I kid you not, this happens at every single school.
The area that we live, there just aren’t white people. 20 minutes away in the city there are maybe 5 old white men who married younger Thai women but that’s it. At some of the schools, we were the first white people they had ever seen, so we were kind of a big deal to them. All the students will come up with pieces of paper, pencils, and seriously ask for our autographs. I didn’t realize how hard it was to sign a full name until 20 kids are surrounding you yelling at you to hurry up. The kids, but also the teachers, would always run around taking pictures of us and with us. They go “picture picture” and catch you at the worst possible pose. Every morning when we arrive at the school, they deliver us with coffee, water, and cake. They treated us with the absolute utmost respect. They kind of worshiped us.
Buddhism is the overwhelming majority religion here. Buddhism includes so many different idols and things you must worship. They offer many sacrifices, offer money, and praise fake idols and people. The way of life is to worship, and we were one of the idols they were worshipping. It was really hard at first to be apart of, but then we realized this would give us a huge opportunity to minister to them. We didn’t have a lot of opportunities to preach the gospel, especially since we were at all Buddhists schools, but at the end os our times teaching we would always have a program at the end. We would be able to play games with all the kids, do skits, sing songs, and share about ourselves and what we are doing. We would share a little about Jesus and how we were here spreading God’s love. Since they looked at us so highly, our words would have a lot of influence. Our hope and what we continue to pray for is they change their mindset of Idling us to idling the one who sent us, their one true God.
This season in Thailand has been such an amazing experience. I would not give up any of this for the world. I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but I am still around $2000 away from my fundraising goal. If I don’t fundraise all of this, I will be sent home and not be able to finish my 9 months of ministry. I WILL GO HOME. Please prayerfully consider donating to my fundraising. The money has gone to many different things to complete Gods work. It provides the money for us to teach, to eat, to continue soccer ministry, to preach the gospel, to do the work God has called us to. The money is not wasted and provides where it is in need. Without your help no change can be made, so please help do the work of God and consider donating! Thank you so much and God Bless!
