Hello everyone!! Sorry it's been so long...but here are my accounts from Thailand....hopefully there's not too much writing and I hope you enjoy the video!
Forgotten, exploited, and stateless the Akha Tribe is a people group who live in Chang Rai, Thailand right along the Thai Burmese border. In the past they were enslaved to plant opium and cultivate the fields for drug lords. If they tried to escape they would be killed by the soldiers who patrolled for the drug lords. The children in the villages are vulnerable to traffickers because of the lack of education, since Thai schools find it hard to accept them into their programs. And because they have no rights with the Thai government they have no means of health care or governmental funding for food or housing. The tribe also struggles from chronic malnutrition.
But with all that said we got to work alongside an amazing organization called Rescue Mission for Children who has been working with and fighting for this tribe of people for eighteen years. The organization has upped the education rate from point one percent to twenty percent and has built a compound where thousands of children have gone through and experienced the love of Jesus Christ and been healed from multiple wounds of their past.
We had an amazing opportunity to visit a tribe twice during our week. While there we washed lice out of kids hair, played with the kids, and our doctor did health checks and handed out medicine to 180 people. We checked and recorded name, age, height, weight, age, symptoms, diagnosis, and the medicine needed. It was an amazing thing because it started health records for all of these people which will benefit them in the future. We also had the amazing opportunity to take eighteen of the kids out on an elephant ride and to a nice all you can eat buffet, which was an incredible experience to take these kids out of an environment of poverty and despair and into one of love and joy. The last thing we did while there was leading devotions and a worship song every night on the compound to the kids who were staying there.
It was an incredible time to see God’s heart for these people and the way he has used Rescue Mission for Children to bring hope and bring change for this tribe. It was also just an honor to come along side this ministry and encourage them and sow into what they are doing.
Bangkok
We were only in Bangkok for a brief few days in between Chang Rai and Pattaya, but while there our time was spent in helping with flood relief and playing with kids in a slum ministry.
To help with flood relief we helped make life jackets one day and we helped package up meals and food for people another day.
The life jackets were made of old plastic like rice bags that we sewed compartments in that empty bottles could be stuck in for floatation. Then the YWAM base in Bangkok would deliver them to the people who were being affected by the floods.
The last day we were there we went to a park and played with kids from the local slum ministry, whether it was playing frisbee or riding in duck boats on the pond we had an opportunity to love on them as Jesus would have.
Pattaya-One Woman's Story
We spent twelve days down in Pattaya and while we were down there we had the opportunity to do bar ministry and talk to the “bar girls” as well as teach English class and share a short devotional with the girls who worked in the bars through an organization called the Tamar Center. During English class I met a woman named On (the woman on the right), and as our time progressed there her and I built a good friendship. On our last night of bar ministry we went to the bar she was working at and while talking to her I got to hear her story of how she ended up working in the bars.
She’s thirty-six years-old, both of her parents have passed away, and she has two sons, one who is seven and one who is thirteen. She had been happily married for SIXTEEN years when she found out her husband was cheating on her, and he wanted to continue seeing both her and his mistress. But she wouldn’t do it, so she talked to her kids and she left everything behind, including her sons. She moved to Bangkok and worked in a nursing home for five months there, after which she moved to Pattaya. It’s in Pattaya that she began working in the bars because she wants money to support her two sons. She doesn’t have a high education and so working in a bar is the easiest way to earn a decent amount of money. Everything she does she does for her kids. She hasn’t seen them in six months because she can’t afford to go see them, but she does the best she can with sending them things and talking to them on the phone. She told me about how sad she is and that after work when all the girls go out to do something she goes home and she cries because she hurts and is lonely, but she knows she has to keep going. I asked her if she ever prayed in those times of sadness and she said she listens to the songs we sang after English class and thinks about the devotions we shared and looks through pictures and that makes her feel better.
On doesn’t want to be where she is, doing what she does, selling herself and working at a bar, but because of the culture and because of what has happened in her life she feels like she has no choice. She’s been trapped and backed into a corner and people may say “well it’s her choice”, but what people don’t understand is that these woman grow up in an environment of lust and debt. These woman are not looked upon as daughters of the King, but as meat and it’s been forced into their mindset that that is just how things are and that is just who they are. They have grown up in a society where you are shamed if you can’t provide for your family and that from birth you are indebted to your mother. They sell themselves and work in the bars because it’s one of the only ways they know how to make decent money for their families. It’s an insane cycle and On’s is just one of many stories.
But I believe that in the darkest places is where Jesus is at. I know God will have victory over this city, he is already moving there through the Tamar Center.
No comments:
Post a Comment