Once again time is flying by! We had a very long travel week to get to Thailand. From Capetown we took a 17hr bus ride to Johannesburg. Spent the night. Then we had 2 flights for another 15 hours at least. Then slept in Bangkok. Then we had another bus ride of about 10 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, Thailand. This month is “Manistry” month. Which means all the guys on our squad (8) form a team for the month. The rest of the girls got placed on new teams also this month.
We have been blessed with great accommodations this month with everything we could possibly want. Hot Showers, Toilets, wifi, and a house to ourselves. This month our ministry is helping a christian based organization known as “Help Thailand” provide a life for children who are at risk for being trafficked. This is a prevention ministry. Other girl teams this month are ministering to the older girls who are already involved in prostitution on the streets in other cities. So this month we get to play with the children and share meals with them almost every day. Along with that we are helping a lot with manual labor. They currently are constructing a new home for the boys. So we have been moving rock, sand, and bricks to the 2nd story. We have finished several digging projects and cleared debris.
We also got to spend a night with a youth team from South Korea. They had just a couple days left before we got here. On their final night we helped them launch a Thailand lantern off. I’ve never seen anything like it. Some of them have fireworks that go off after they get up high!
The children are a lot of fun. They all enjoy different things. Some are really good at guitar. Badminton jump rope, soccer, dart guns, card games, and playing with cars are some other activities we do with them. It is an entirely different dynamic than the children in Swaziland. Most of those children have had very sad pasts. But the children here have been rescued from horrible futures. The ministry of restoration of the last 2 months both in Swaziland with the orphans and South Africa with the gangsters, has switched to prevention with the children of Thailand.
The other day we were able to go and visit a hill tribe village. Most of the houses look similar with woven bamboo walls and straw roofs. But in this village there is one house that is nicer than all the rest. It has carved wooden trim and a shingled roof. This house belongs to a family of a women who is involved in the sex trade. She sends money home so her family can live a better life. She tries to persuade other young girls to enter the trade because she will make commission off of every girl she recruits. But since Help Thailand has started working in this village, no child has entered the trade in the last 3 years.
Even though it seems like yesterday that I left on the World Race it was almost 8 months ago. Which means I only have 3 months left before coming back to the states. This journey is stretching me in so many ways and as always I want to thank each and every one who has supported me, I couldn’t do it without God working through you.
