This month has been incredible! Thailand is beautiful and ministry has been so different then what our team has been used to which is great to have something so different. On Mondays to Thursdays we would be working on construction work from 9am to 3pm. We were helping build a boys home. HELP Thailand has 4 homes two boys and two girls homes. These homes are made to help give children a place to live who are at high risk of sex trafficking. HELP Thailand provides a safe place for these children to live and grow up healthy. After construction we would go take a rest from 3pm to 5pm. Then at 5pm we would leave to one of the 4 homes and hang out and eat dinner with the children until 7:30pm. We would rotate throughout the 4 homes to spend equal amount of time with the children! On Fridays we had our day off. Saturdays we would go to one of the 4 homes and would play with the children from 10:30am to 3pm then would take a break till 5pm and would do something cultural in the evening. Sundays we would go to the girls home and have church with all the children. They would all gather along with the staff at the one girls home and would have church. The children were the ones who would lead worship. These children are amazing and its incredible to see God growing in there lives and see how musically talented they are. After church we would hangout with the children until 3pm. This was what our schedule looked like for the month.
In Thailand the religion is Buddhism monks would walk down the street every Sunday morning at 6:30am with there tongs and would ring them. People would make breakfast for the monks and the monks would go around to the homes to eat they would then pray over the people who made them breakfast if thats what they desired. Monks are highly worshipped here and are treated well. No one from the opposite sex is able to touch a monk though or they are considered unclean and will have to go through a cleaning process. This sounds crazy but it true!
I hope you enjoy the photos that I have taken throughout this month. This will help you understand and be able to visual see what we are working on and who we get to work with 🙂 Enjoy!!
These three pictures are of the boys home that is being built it is right beside the boys home that is already made. This house is just down the street of one of the girls homes that is already built as well. This structure has taken them 3 months to come to the place they are at now. There will be about 15 boys in this house. They don’t want to have much more then that as boys can get pretty rowdy as they grow up haha. Throughout the month we carried buckets of sand up to the next storey of the building using the ladder that we are standing on in the last picture. We also transported rocks up on the second storey of the building. We have taken out bamboo from the bottom floor and have put up more bamboo structures on the top floor. We have made forums to pour cement in for the beams and have made cement as well!
This is one of the boys homes that is already made! The house we were working on will look similar to this.
At the end of the day we get to hangout with the children so in this picture I got to teach some workout exercises that the girls loved haha!
These last couple of photos are of us at the homes with the children spending time with them and hanging out! They are crazy talented children and the majority of them play guitar or piano. They love sports such as badminton, volleyball and soccer or football as they call it! But most of all there favourite game is UNO! haha
This is a talent show they put on at there school one night that we got to go and see! It was such a neat night the children preformed skits, dances, singing and there was a band as well!
This is Hill Tribe Village that we got to go see with our hosts. This village is where some of the children have grown up in before they got taken to HELP Thailand!
On one of our ministry days we got to pull weeds around a fence that took about 3 days to complete. The neighbour saw us working up a sweat outside and decided to bring us 2 bottle of cold coke to drink! We were super excited and blessed 🙂
This orchard is a small part of what it actually looks like. On the property they have mango and banana trees, along with lots of other fruits and veggies that they grow on the land. They also have a aqua-ponics centre that is beginning. They are growing lots of pineapple, eggplant, avocado, green beans etc.
So here is a fun picture! Some members of our team are becoming adventurous and trying these lovely looking bugs that are very good to the Thailand people. Silk worms is what some of our team has tried! But I was not one to give them a try haha…
One the race we can’t forget Birthdays so this month it was Allies! We made chocolate cake and pancakes for breakfast for her! Yummm
Of course on our days off we get to go explore Thailand so we went to Tiger Kingdom and got to go in a cage with 4 medium sized tigers! Which was super cool. Along with going to the Lantern Festival at the beginning of the month!
As Thailand is coming to an end it has been an incredible month! Learning new things as a team and individually. This month I have been able to get some reading in and have read Crazy Love by Francis Chan. This book has taught me multiple things but one thing was about giving. We should not just be giving God our leftovers but giving something that means so much to us because He deserves the very best. We can’t be that person who gives only what they can but someone who gives above and beyond what they have because they trust and have faith in God that He will provide for them. The person who gives who has barely anything is worth more then the person who gives and is very rich! (Mark 12:44) Be the person who gives so much they have to be dependant on God. Love those who are your enemies pray for them show them Gods love! If you just love those who love you what reward is that? (Matthew 5:46) Be God light and give graciously! 🙂
Yours in Christ,
Heidi
