Month 7 has begun and I am currently living in the country that was number 2 on my excitement list, behind India, when i signed up for this route. Amazing to think we are in Thailand already and there are only 4 new countries after this month. Also amazing to think that at the end of this month I will see my parents in Chiang Mai for our Parent Vision Trip that will show them a little bit of our life on the race. 5 years ago, my father and I were riding our bicycles across the country raising money and awareness for the sex slavery industry in Thailand that is plucking young boys and girls from the cities and country. They are then being sold into prostitution and being violated in ways I couldn’t imagine for foreigners guilty pleasure. Ever since that bike ride and hearing other missionaries experiences in Thailand, I knew it was a place that I really wanted to go and physically help these innocent children.
My team this month isn’t placed in the red light districts of Thailand, nor are we dealing directly with sex trade victims, or any sort of rehabilitation. We are placed 4 hours outside of Chiang Mai in Mai Ai which is right on the northern border of Thailand, right next to Myanmar. Our ministry, unlike most months, is actually not a christian organization at all. We are working and teaching english at a Buddhist school deep in the rural rice fields of Thailand. The kind of place where you see tractors driving down the road, and everyone is riding bicycles, and its a 45 minute drive to a proper grocery store, and where your student might also be your waiter at the restaurant down the street, and a day off consists of riding through rice fields to your students pig farm and visiting all of the temples along the way. Life is slower here and peaceful. And although we aren’t working directly in the sex trade industry, I know we are working on a big step towards preventing it in one small village in Thailand.
This town rarely has much interaction with the outside world and internet is only something that has just begun here. Therefore, english is only a subject that is learned through workbooks and taught by a few teachers who are still working on their english themselves and find themselves defaulting to Thai in the classroom. Having a fluent foreign speaker whose only option of communication is English, forces these kids to rely only on the english vocabulary they know and gives them an opportunity to routinely hear proper English pronunciation. These two factors alone will quickly increase the students comprehension and correct use of english so that they will have better educational opportunities in the future. Also, having a foreigner in the classroom opens up these students worldview and acknowledgement of what is beyond their small farming community and gives them more of an incentive and purpose and excitement for speaking this foreign language which is so vital. The more these kids understand english and open these educational and professional doors for success, the less likely they will find themselves or their families in situations where they need to resort to prostitution in a country where that is unfortunately a very easy road to take. So in our ministry this month I pray that these kids learn to love english, love education, love their future opportunities in the professional world, and love themselves.
And as we build trust and gain reputability with these kids, the Lord will open doors to share His love and His plan for them. Last night, after a little soccer match, I sat down with some of these kids who were interested in speaking to the foreigner and working on their english. I impressed them by counting to 100 in Thai, and then they taught me how to say the days of the week. After building that trust and friendship, I was able to ask how they pray to Buddha. In return they were curious about how I could pray to my God, which led to conversations about why God loves me and how/why I should love God. After working a month in a christian organization, where I was able to disciple and teach a lot to young men who are making their faith their own, I am so excited to start a month where Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins is a completely foreign and awesome concept to these young men and women. Pray that God continues to open those avenues of conversation and that these kids trained in the ways of Buddhism will come to see the difference that Jesus’ love can make in their lives!
