Why I'm going to Thailand

Dear friends and family,

I’ve started this blog to share with you an amazing opportunity that has been presented to me. I have been invited to serve on a short term mission team to Thailand! While I have visited this country before as a tourist, this time I will be working with ZOE, an international Christian organization that rescues children who are at risk of being sold into prostitution slavery.

Nine out of ten children begging on the streets of Thailand are bought and sold for the sex trade. ZOE’s vision is to stop the human trafficking of children in our lifetime. It has been said that “evil prevails when good men do nothing”.

I am very excited about this opportunity to do something! We will be visiting children’s homes, rural mountain villages and the ZOE children in northern Thailand. Our top priority is to share the good news and love of Jesus with these children and those we come in contact with.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Work Day

It's a quarter to 7pm and I'm exhausted! We had such a full day today I don't even know where to begin!  This morning we woke up bright and early, about 5am and after breakfast we attended a 2 hour orientation to ZOE.
 I've known ZOE for a little over 2 years now and have heard many of the stories about what they are doing here in Thailand, but I have to say, after listening to Carol Hart talk about how God has blessed their ministry and how He has changed the lives of so many kids here in Thailand, I was practically in tears.  What a testimony!  Soon after, we loaded up into vans and headed to the current ZOE house (they are moving to their new property in about a week!).

Our job for today was to assemble 1500 goodies bags (yes, 1500! that's not a typo!) that we will be handing out to the kids we will be ministering to over the next week.  Each bag was filled with 6 food items, tied and put into giant rice bags in groups of 60.  It took 24 people 2 hours to do this and we were tired and sweaty when we were done :)

We then spent some time rehearsing our outreach program and fine tuning any last minute details, just in time for all the ZOE kids to come home from school.  There were around 150 kids ranging in age from about 4 to 20 waiting in the big room to greet us and man, what a greeting we got!  When we walked in it was all cheers, applause and hugs from every one of them!

I've never felt such a warm welcome in my life!  Once eveyone settled down, we each introduced ourselves to the group and lead them in a couple of kids worship songs - so much fun! The next hour or so was spent in a get-to-know-you game and we had fun trying to communicate with one another as we learned a little bit about each other.


And so now, we're back at the hotel and most are showering the days work off of themselves and heading out to dinner. Tomorrow we drive to a hill tribe village about 5 hours away where we will spend the weekend doing outreach.

There will be no internet access until we return to the city on Monday so I'll have to do this old school for a couple of days and keep a handwritten journal, which of course I'll type and upload on Monday evening =)

Please pray for our outreach this weekend - that God will use us to reach the unreached.

"Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you." ~ James 1:27
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