I am now in month 7 and I can’t believe how quickly time has gone by. I have officially been in Malaysia 4 days.
But this blog is about last month. I was in Thailand, and I loved it so much I ugly cried when I left. lol.
We were living in the Karenni Long Neck Village outside of Mae Hong Son. The Karenni people are from Burma and are some of the sweetest, most loving people I have ever met.
Freedom Harvest Ministry is the children’s home we worked with. We taught English at the school in the village Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. At first the teachers were not happy with us being their because they thought we were coming to take their jobs, but by the end of the month they welcomed us to come back and teach whenever we wanted to.
The children at the home and school stole my heart. I got to teach 5th and 6th grade. I loved seeing them open up and become comfortable as the days went by. In the beginning it was difficult to get them to participate, but by the end they were all shouting answers. I was known as “Mexico” and “chocolate” in my six grade class. lol.
There is a well in the village where the people shower, but also where the children would go to fill up 5 litter jugs and bring them up to the kitchen. Every morning and evening they did this. When they would pass our hut carrying the jugs of water, we would cheer them on and they loved it. The first time we helped them carry the water, we gained some respect from them and they cheered is on.
Monday through Thursday night we had worship and shared a Bible story. The first night I saw them worship I got teary eyed and thanked the Lord for the honor of seeing the kids worship. I loved seeing them worship freely and dance.
One night we told the story of Ananias and Sapphira and shared how lying was bad. At the end, one of the girls confessed she had gone into the kitchen and stole some rice. She said she was convicted by the story and had to confess. lol.
There were what felt like a million mosquitos. At times I had like 20 bites. We went through about 6 bottles of mosquito spray. Every morning we would wake up sticky from the humidity. If we wanted to shower we had to go to the well. [Confession, I waited for the weekend to shower when we went in town… So I would go 4 days without a shower and baby wipe in the village] Physically, living in the village was tough, but it was easy to overlook all of it when you were surrounded by so much love and smiles.
One of my favorite things to do was to wake up early and greet the children with a “Goodmorning!” or “How did you sleep?” as they walked by our hut. They had me laughing because I would say, “Goodmorning” and they would respond with, “I am good. You?” haha! These kids were the best!!!
As I sit and look back to last month, I can’t help but SMILE! I love those children! The people! I am missing them so much. Papa opened my heart and eyes. he allowed me to see and love them the way He does.
Many memories were made in this place and I will carry them in my heart forever.
