Thailand Update - Our God Is So Good!!

Sawatdee-kaa from the Land of Smiles, friends and family! We are getting ready for bed on Thursday night of our trip, having finished our second day of teaching English to faculty at the school and our third night of teaching English to all ages in the Red Karen village of Thopsok. It has been wonderful to see the progress being made by our hard-working students! I have also been blessed to see how God is using all the different skills, talents, and personalities of our team to work together as we teach. We have a wide variety of skills among us and have gotten to work with pretty small groups of students. It is so great to see each English teacher meeting his or her students' needs to improve their English. I have been continually amazed by God's wisdom and goodness in putting together our team for this trip, including random little me from Wichita, Kansas who just "happened" to be in Bible study with a young lady who just "happened" to work with Leslie, who just "happened" to go to church at River Valley while she was a student at Trinity with Allison. Our God is so good! Or, in Thai, Pra Jao soong san dee!

This morning we got the pleasure of experiencing some more of Thailand by going on elephant rides through the jungle! It was beautiful and fun! Anna and Reece practiced speaking "elephant," instigating some responding trumpeting from the elephants. Everyone enjoyed themselves and plenty of pictures and videos were taken! After a delicious lunch in Mae Hong Son (including tropical fruit smoothies!), we were treated to learning how to do some weaving from one of the ladies in Thopsok. She is making purses to sell to help pay the medical bills for her daughter, Li, who has a heart condition. Needless to say, we bought all the purses, and told her we'd buy more if she got more done before we leave next week.

After our weaving lesson, we traveled up to the school for more teaching. We reviewed the homework assignment (everyone did a GREAT job introducing a "friend") and the previous day's lessons, then moved on to more sounds (including work on SH and CH), and directions and prepositions. Tomorrow, the school teachers have meetings so we will be doing outreach in a Chinese village instead of teaching, but will return for a final day of teaching at the school on Saturday. Then Ochie prepared a tasty dinner of cashew chicken (we are definitely not going hungry over here!) and then taught people in the village. The children have picked things up pretty quickly as they receive some English lessons at school, but we have worked more slowly with the adults. I have had the pleasure of working with the women for two of the three nights and have been so blessed to see their progress. Instead of asking "How are you?" in the village, they usually ask, "Have you eaten?" or "Where are you going?" We have been working on these questions and answers and they are making some great progress and a few are even able to hold simple conversations with us! We are greatly encouraged to see our students' progress and we know it is thanks to God's help that we are seeing so much success from their hard work!

Please pray for our friend Pen, one of the girls from Samaritan Creations, as she is traveling tomorrow (Friday) to visit family that she has not seen in years and is nervous about telling them of her new faith in Christ.

God has been encouraging me lately to grow in my love for others. This trip has been a wonderful opportunity to do so, both with my teammates and with the people of Thailand. I will leave you with 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 "Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more..." Please pray that our team would love one another and every person we meet with the love that God has so freely, but at such great cost, given to us!

Thanks for your love and prayers and support!

On behalf of the team,
Jaime Andrews