Thailand Update - Red Karen Village

Our day today started off earlier than our other days so far. Most of us have been running on 4-5 hours of sleep today and our day has been very busy but God has been sustaining us with the energy to continue his work. We had very nice flights to get to Mai Hong Son and now we are staying with Peter and Ochie in the Red Karen Village. It is insanely beautiful here and the land here is still untouched by man in many places. It is also a lot cooler and less humid up here because of the altitude and lack of smog. Once we got here and got situated we had a lovely meal that Ochie prepared for us and then we were off to go visit the schools. We learned that two of the schools dropped out from the daily lessons so now we will all be going into one school each day instead of splitting into three teams. The first school we visited was the boarding school we will be teaching at every day. We met the principal and saw some of the school. The next school we visited was still in session and we got to talk individually with some of the kids while they worked on English homework. The last school we went to was strictly for visiting and they told us that they wished that we could come and teach but that they had been too busy preparing for a teachers' conference. After we talked with some of the teachers we were able to play volleyball with some of the kids on the grass. They were a lot better than we thought they would be, it was pretty impressive, and very fun. We came back to Peter and Ochie's and we played a volleyball game against the villagers, we all had some fun with that and their honesty while playing the scrimmage was truly admirable. After dinner we had the chance to meet the headman of the village. We paid him our respects and then went to the Church building. It was time to teach some English. We found that it was best to split up the village into five groups- the men, the women, the teens, the boys and the girls. Each group had a few of their own troubles picking up on the sounds or just remembering the words but they definitely know more than they did before. We are looking forward to tomorrow and continuing to teach English to God's children here and we pray that through our every action that we can shine God's light and express his love to the people of this village.

Thanks for your prayers ~ our luggage went through with only a $90 charge. Praise God!

Jamie Gebauer