It’s the month we guys have all been looking forward
too, especially Alex and I, who have spent time on a team as the only
guys. The month where we men get away
from the women for fun and fellowship, the world race cheesily calls the month
“manistry.” Our manistry month is taking
place outside of Chang Mai, Thailand.
Chang Mai is the 3rd largest city in Thailand, located in the
Northwest corner of the country close to Burma.
We are working with an organization known as “Remember Nu.” Remember Nu is a house for young girls who
are endangered of being sold into sex trafficking. These young girls come from broken homes or
are orphans. Many of the young girls’
parents are in prison and their grandparents or aunts and uncles are left to
take care of them. When their families
do not want to take care of them anymore they sell them into prostitution. American couples along with Thai Christians
have opened up a house to raise and educate these young girls. At the house of the organization we are doing
hard labor during the day and hanging out with the girls during the night.
Our
contacts here are 2 couples, Michael and Elcy, and Ron and Peggy. Michael and Elcy are full-time missionaries
and Ron and Peggy are here for 4 months.
Ron and Peggy are in charge of hospitality for the organization and they
are hosting us, Ron is our boss for this month.
Interesting fact about Ron and Peggy, they are the parents of the little
person from the TLC show “Little People Big World.” Ron is an ex-marine and as you can imagine
has a very strong work ethic. He has put
is in charge of 2 projects: digging a drain down the road to the girls’ house
and clearing the fence line of brush.
The drain running along the side of the road.
The drain for one is necessary to save the road from being flooded and
ruining during the rain season, without a drain we are told the girls have to
walk to school instead of ride during the rain season. I along with Garrett, Chad and Tyler S have
been working for the past 3 days digging the trench across the road. The trench across the road has to be deeper and
about halfway we ran into rock instead of your normal dirt. We spent a whole day hacking away at the rock
with a pick axe and a sledge hammer and nail.
Due to help from our Thai friend, Titus, we were able to chip down the
rock and lay 4 concrete pipes down.
Having the pipes finally lying in the ground had to be one of the
greatest accomplishments I’ve felt on the race.
We work for about 4 ½ hours a day, but are dead tired when we quit
working at 3:30. To balance our fatigue
with our competitive nature we have developed an after work activity known as
“Walk Football.” Walk football is
essentially touch football but you must remain walking the entire time and
cannot jump; it’s pretty fun.
I’m chipping away at some rock so we can get the 4th pipe in place.
The fence line the guys have cleared and the smoke from the fire of burning the brush.
In
the evenings we eat dinner with the girls from Remember Nu. We have a great time of fellowship through
singing songs and playing cards. Seeing
how joyful the girls are truly gives us incentive to work harder throughout the
day. So far most all of us are loving
life being around men all day. Hope the
girls are having fun. We’re working hard
but it has been a blast.
Joe Joe checking to see if the pipes are level.
