Weekly Slum Updates

A smaller group of kids at Ja Rurat, or so it seemed, but we gave away snacks to twenty eight, so I think not so small as it seemed.

I taught the last lesson on Joseph today. Nok is translating for me. My Thai is steadily improving, but I am still a LONG way from being able to talk in front of folks, even small folks, in Thai.

You are never sure if the kids are listening to you carefully, but afterward, I was so surprised when they were able to answer many questions from the story. I was so pleased when we asked what the main message of Joseph's story was and a girl raised her hand and said, "Even when life is not going good, we should remember that God loves us and that He will help us." Wow. Maybe she should have been teaching instead of me!

Afterward, I put together a game involving picture of animals. Here, Nok explains the game. The kids loved it far more than I could have expected.

Playing Simon Says, or in this case, "Vee Says."

At Soi 107 tonight, after the kids went home, we started planning for the Christmas Party there on December 21st. We are planning for one hundred fifty. All will get gifts and all will be fed. These guys are so great to work with!

(By the way, the Ja Rurat Christmas Party will be the week prior, on December 14th. We will likely have at least that many kids for this one, too. Please pray for the team, as this will be a HUGE undertaking.)

Closing the day, like every Sunday here, with my friends in a time of prayer and praise under the stars.

Final Kanchanaburi Images

The team at Three Pagodas Pass, a spot on the border with Myanmar. This is the border, itself, where we are standing.

Staning with a foot in Myanmar and the rest of me in Thailand. Although Myanmar is a cruelly repressive state, it is not actually that hard to cross the border, you just have to return the same day and not venture too far into the country. We didn't do that, but I still can at least say I was in Burma while I was here!

Monkin' around.

On the way back, the team stopped at Bpreu Nong Church, a church we support financially at Immanuel. Bpreu Nong has about thrity believers, several of whom were there to greet us when we arrived. They treatedus to a fun and unusual dinner. Groups of four or five were given two clay pots stacked on each other. The bottom one held glwoing coals and the top held broth. On the ground in front of us was a collection of meats (pork, beef liver, and chicken), noodles, and vegetables. You put whatever you want into the pot and let it boil until done. Similar to sukyaki and sort of like an Asian fondue.

This IS rhe church. Clear the food awy, put out some chairs and you have it. Clockwise from bottom left: Ah Jan Winit's brother, the pastor at Bpreu Non, Ah Jan Vee, Oat, me, Ah Jan Winit. Good eats!

Kanchaburi Part III

The third part of the ministry we visited Saturday is called Safe House. This is a house a couple hundred meters up the road from the orphanage, which houses very sick people. With a small staff, they work with twenty or more people that no one else wants, from people with HIV to malaria to mental issues. How this woman and her husband find the energy to deal with all the demands is beyond me.


The Safe House.

Those who stay at Safe House and are physically able, are given some form of vocational training. This occupies time, supplements the income of the facility, and gives the 'patients' a sense of accomplishments. Here, women are weaving beautiful wraps that are worn buy Burmese women.

Another type of work is brick making. The bricks produced here are expected to last four hundred years, although no one has checked that personally yet.

This is a house directly behind the Safe House, where a couple now live. When they arrived, the woman could not walk at all. She has somewhat recovered, but as a married couple, they are still afforded the luxury of their own house here.

This is the 'ward' for people too ill to care for themselves. Two of the men in this building are paralyzed, including a man from Bangladesh, who had fallen in a construction accident and was brought here. No one in the area speaks his language, and he clearly gets no visitors. A couple of people on the team stopped to just hold his hand and pray for him and he clutched their hands in his and kissed them and tried so hard to speak in a way we could understand. It was heart-breaking.

Kanchanaburi Part II

Chris works with a woman (standing to his right) who is just this side of Mother Teresa in my book. She totally loves the unlovable. Her own story is sad enough. She is a member of the Karen tribe, a largely Christian group, and was from a Small village in Myanmar (Burma). The Karen have long been the subject of intense persecution in Myanmar. Some twenty years ago, the military burned down the entire village and she and her husband fled to Thailand.

As she got her own life stabilized, she began to reach out to help others. Today, she operates a three-fold ministry. In buildings next to her home are an orphanage and a home for seniors with no one to care for them. The orphanage now houses about twenty eight kids. I have no idea how many seniors there are, but I met several of them


Ah Jan Winit plays his fiddle for the orphans.

This orphanage houses about twenty eight kids. All seemed very cheerful and were remarkably well-behaved. They obviously loved having visitors. David Johnson, a career missionary with IMB and an elder at Immanuel, is standing with them.

Two of the seniors.
Another senior. Notice the traditional Burmese clothing. The men and women both wear a wrap kind of like a skirt. He also has a bag tied around his waist you can barely see in back.

This is the back half of her house. It is mostly open to the elements.

Kanchanaburi - Part 1

We left Bangkok at 2:00 a.m. and drove through the early morning to pick up Chris Mills, an American missionary who is largely serving by himself in Kanchanaburi province. We went to go see Chris and encourage him, while getting a close up view of the work he is involved in.


The sun rises over the mountains near the Thai/Burma border.

Left to right - me, V, and Chris.

We visited a piece of land recently purchased by an organization called Vision Trust, based in the US. They feed about a hundred sixty kids in the area. They plan to build a community center, but right now they just have a big tent and, weather permitting, serve meals out in the open field.

The kids get a bowl of something like chicken noodle soup, but a bit thicker.

They then march over and get s big spoonful of crushed red peppers. Got to 'kick it up a notch!"

Bring a fork, J!

Most of you know by now that J (Jason Hinckley) is coming out to see me in January. He and Vee have become very good friends via email already and can hardly wait to spend time together. They have so much in common it is eerie. Both came from broken homes and turned to drugs and alcohol at an early age. Both went through a rehab program and met Christ in a radical, life changing encounter. Both are now serving as pastoral interns in their respective churches and are attending Bible training. (Vee is finishing up seminary and J starts studying at Midwest Baptist shortly after he returns from Thailand.)

J will be very busy. He'll have chances to preach and to share with small groups, youth groups and in individual homes. We'll travel to southern Thailand for three days and to the western border to visit with missionaries for two days. At Khao Lak, the pastor we will work with there wants me AND J to preach that Sunday in her church as a kind of spiritual father and son team preaching exercise. J will work with a prison ministry in Bangkok and will visit the slums with me to work with kids. All in ten days. I suspect this will be a life altering experience for him.

One thing he can look forward to. Each week at Soi 107 while we are working with the kids, a vendor comes up the street pushing his little cart along. The selection is usually pretty similar. Today's choices were: some kind of caterpillar and grasshoppers in two sizes.


Or the ever popular dried frogs. Buy a bag of your favorite, or if you are having trouble making up your mind, mix and match your own combo bag! (By the way, clicking on any of these pictures will enlarge it.)

If you know J, I expect you to hold him accountable. Is he going to do this thing for real or is he going to be the soft, city-slicker farang? We'll know in just over six weeks!

11-23-2008 Slummin'

Nok and Pai joined Vee and me today at Ja Rurat, and that helped a lot. I continued my 'series' on the story of Joseph and the older kids seem to really follow it well. We'll finish that up next week and do one week with the Christmas story before the Ja Rurat Christmas party on December 14th.

One thing I was very pleased with today was that Vee told me that one little girl's mom had told him she loved for me to teach the Bible stories each week. She wants her daughter to learn English and loves that I speak English and Nok or Vee then translates, AND that she is starting to become interested in the gospel. That is a big part of the goal of this ministry, to reach the parents through their children. Vee also said that a couple of the older children asked him about coming to church next weekend. Wow.

Pai loves coming to JaRurat and seeing faith in action. I enjoy so much having him with us.


Vee's son Kimmy (left) and Tony's son Nathan used to want nothing to do with the big farang. Now, I can't peel them off of me. I get mugged every five minutes every Sunday, it seems.

Wat's up?

After visiting Pakkred Orphanage, we went on a short boat ride on the river. As we floated along, I was struck once again with how many wats, or temples, there are along the river and every major roadway. Folks who have been in Thailand for a while often talk about how you lose the sense of wonder at their beauty because you see them everywhere, but yesterday I was reminded of what a major part of Thai culture these buildings are.

Every half mile or so, it seemed, another wat appeared on one side of the river or the other.

A funeral taking place at one wat we went by. The black condolence ribbons on the wreaths had a 'Sopranos' feel to it.

Pakkred Orphanage

Yesterday, I went to Pakkred Orphanage with associates from my work. They were planning a team building outing and I was pleased and proud of them for deciding to fore go a day trip for pleasure and instead collect money to donate to the orphanage and take the time to go up and give the kids a day of activities and fun.

I was also surprised when, afterward, the director told us how much they enjoyed it because they seldom get visitors who come and spend time with the kids.

Pakkred is actually in the city of Pak Kret, which is like a suburb north of Bangkok. The orphanage is huge. There is the home for boys, which is where we were, the home for girls and a home for babies. All three are huge complexes next to each other, but separate. The home for boys currently houses about eighty boys. I believe this to be government sponsored, but it is secular, at any rate.

The kids came in and quietly lined up in their groups.


The group I was in taught the names of various body parts in English. Ear, nose, eye, mouth, etc.

Then they were giving coloring book sheets with Winnie the Pooh characters and asked to color them in as a team member called out a body part.

I wasn't sure if the older kids would have any interest, but they sure did.

Pond, showing off his masterpiece.

Soi 107 11-16

Vee and I leave for Ja Ruarat a half hour to an hour before the team leaves to go to Soi 107. Each week, after we are finished, we race across town to join them.



Today, when we arrived, I discovered that they had formed a new group for young adults in the church to also receive English instruction. That's good stuff, that is!

Like I said, kids are kids, whether Ja Rurat or Soi 107 or Liberty, Missouri.

Forming sentences with new vocabulary words.

That's just a cool sight.

Best part of the day is always the same. After the kids are gone, we break bread together. Well, OK, we have rice and Som Tum (papaya salad) and whatever the ladies bring back from the market. When the dishes are cleaned, there's a time of just relaxing together and spending some time in prayer and worship and just enjoying being together. There's something so hard to explain about sitting in the open air, singing Heart of Worship or Here I am to Worship, with voices singing out in both English and Thai and knowing that the miles and cultural differences are all bridged by a common love for Jesus and for his church. These few moments are always the brightest, most energizing point of each week for me.

Ja Rurat 11-16

The day started as well as I could hope. I was asked to preach at the 8:00 service again this morning. I spoke on Mathew 9 and how Jesus attracted people like tax collectors and sinners because of the love and acceptance he demonstrated, and how we we are called to draw others to Christ by our own demonstrations of irresistible care. It seemed to go well and was well received.

Just Ah Jan Vee and I on our own today at Ja Rurat. Two men handling twenty eight kids is a challenge, without a doubt, but it went as well as it possibly could have. We sang a couple of songs and Vee led us in a very simple game. Afterward, I taught the Bible lesson for today (with Vee translating) and we picked back up on the story of Joseph and took him from being sold into slavery to being thrown into prison after being falsely accused by Potiphar's wife. The older kids are really following the story and seem very interested. The younger kids can not sit still or understand the story, so they are all over the place. Vee and I both know we have got to do something to break the kids into age groups for part of our time each week or we may lose the older kids. We're going to be discussing how to do this in the weeks ahead.


Vee leads the kids in a game. The kids really love him. He has such a heart for the slum areas.

We had coloring book pages that went along with the lesson. My Thai is still very limited, so about all I could do with them is suggest various colors in Thai.

How can you help liking these kids and hurting at the thought that at the end of the day, you're going home, but they LIVE here?

Kids are kids the world over, and these kids show the same unbridled joy that all kids do.

Workin' that new hair-do!