Saturday, March 31, 2007

7 days in klong Toey

Well I have been here in Thailand for just on a week now, and it feels that this is the first time I’ve had to catch my breath. I’m here again with UNOH as part of one of their ESL short term trips, coordinating the trip for 15 people from Melbourne, and partnering with the Ta Rua church here in the slum of Klong Toey. One of the biggest things you need here is FLEXABILITY. I thought I was going to be with a group taking 50 kids away to a beach side camp, and was so much looking forward to the beach, but in the end have been leading a team in the slum of Rong Gow. I am the person with the most Thai and experience on our team, having no locals at all, which at the beginning of the week I was feeling not real keen to say the least, but God has other ideas. The week has been fantastic with some great relationships with the kids and with the community. One of the challenges we have had is that there has been some kids card gambling right where we do our lessons, which is on a stage directly under a freeway overpass. This is so sad, as well as highly illegal to see 10 year old kids introduced to this EVIL so early on, not knowing the language has been hard as we can’t speak to anyone about the issue there. But our strategy, as well as praying is to offer a better alternative and each day our group of kids has grown, so now we have about 22, 10-12 year olds who love to come each morning. We will go back next week to teach again and at night time teach also at Glua Prick community, a real challenge as the weather here is very HOT so tiring.

Another highlight has been spending time with Celtic muso Sammy Horner, who was with us for 2 days on route back to Scotland. I had never met him before despite having known of him for 15+ years thru John Smith and Sean Stillman and God’s Squad, and played heaps of his music. So was great to hang with him and we got on like a house on fire and he seemed very moved by his experience here in the community as he met Jesus thru the poor. So now is the halfway mark, its also been great seeing old friends, both UNOH workers here, Ash, Anj, Rod, Jodie and Chris as well as many Thai friends that I have met over the years as well, it is a real blessing and privilege to have sisters and brother from this part of the world. Will be interesting spending Holy Week here in a Buddhist slum, attempting to share the love of Jesus.

3 Comments:

At Sunday, April 01, 2007 8:05:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi,
great ot hear your stories, and excited that you got to spend time with Sammy Horner - how cool!!

The photo of Bu & Chip is great, as is the other image.

We're praying for you, looking forward to hearing more stories.

We've got meal night on Wednesday, Youth shas finished for the term with a Passover on Friday, and a leaders meeting with older youth on Saturday. schedule has been set for the term, and the group now has a new identity - "I.D", or "Identity". I think that there's much that God can do with this.

We have Passover on Thursday, Abby's birthday on friday, and we'll probably run with a dawn service on Sunday.

Looking forward to catching up,

Andy!!

Enjoy the next week, see you when you're back.

 
At Monday, April 02, 2007 9:25:00 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Hey mate great to hear how your going, missing the lego slides on tuesday night only a couple used :) but claires doing a fantastic Job!

Praying for ya and hoping you and the rest of the team have a safe and fantiastic time for the rest of the journey..!


See ya soon,

Phil U

 
At Wednesday, April 25, 2007 12:48:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Barro,
Great to hear some of your stories from Thailand this year. I can't wait for March-April next year to head back and see some fo the kids again.
Take care
Jill Menteith

 

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