First Week in Thailand

Sawatdee Khap! (Hello in Thai)

Here we are already, done with the first week of ministry here in Thailand.  It has been a whirlwind of activity followed by periods of needed down time.  What can I say....it has just been different and amazing.  The weather actually started out cool.  People kept telling us that it was really unusual weather.  It has now started to heat up to around 95 every day. When it comes to ministry stuff I think you all should just watch this....

http://www.ywamsalem.org/outreach-blog/

Pretty sweet huh?

So pretty much it has been a lot of street preaching to various people.  Currently we are in Mae Sot which is located in the North West portion of Thailand.  It is right on the border with Myanmar (Burma).  Actually, in the video, when we are dancing to Justin Bieber we are right on the river that divides Thailand and Myanmar...we could see Myanmar.  Our contact here is Pastor Michael.  He works a lot with Burmese refugees and brings us along as well.  We have done numerous 'open airs' or street preachings, visited an orphanage, visited a school that is located in a dump, ran a youth camp.  The stories are endless and I could go on forever.  The one story I want to tell took place in the dump.

It is the city dump.  Sadly, many of the refugees call that place home and spend their days looking for things to recycle and get some money for throughout he piles of garbage.  Pastor Michael has been working with these people for some time now and has built the children their a school.  We were privileged to visit the school and just hang out with the children.  We played games, performed skits, sang songs...just loved on them.  It was so cool to see them just be able to be kids because frankly, their situation forced them to grow up way too fast.  You had 8 year olds raising their infant siblings, like a mother/father would.  Whenever a new load of trash would drive by, boys would scatter and start chasing it to get first pickings at the new stuff.  It was heartbreaking.  They are children, they shouldn't have to be concerned with such things.  Its just frustrating, especially since they fled from a horrible situation in Myanmar and now are living in squalor and the government does nothing for them.  On a much much much more positive note, at the school our group ended up doing our little open air set (including Bieber) on a whim.  About 18 kids decided to give their lives to Christ!  It was so awesome to see them all huddled together with their hands up in the air praying out to our God!

Friday we started a 'youth camp' of sorts for some kids at a Burmese school.  They are really cool kids and we all really connected with them.  We taught them games and just ran a VBS of sorts.  Our focus was getting them to really take their faith out into their communities.  Currently its Sunday afternoon and we just finished the camp and just have some down time.  Next week is going to be filled with many more opportunities.  We are doing jail ministry, going into a village, possibly the refugee camp, a clinic and many many more open airs.  We leave Sunday, April 10 for Chiang Mai (further north).

Miss all of you guys and wish the best on Spring Break!  Your prayers do much more than you could imagine over here.  Thank you!

Josh