Can’t let a little tropical warmth slow you down.
Read time: 2:30The second quarter of the year is the “Hot Season” in Thailand. March, April, and May hit 100 degrees easily, and there is little rain or breeze. Kids are off school, and the temps make it a challenging time to be productive.
There are also fun opportunities, just like summer break in the U.S. – daily life has a bit of a different rhythm, and as always, our role is to pay attention to where God is moving and then do what we can to join him.
Here’s how that looked this year …
Community Development
Thailand celebrates the New Year in April with water and blessings. The Thai new year is a special time of year when Thai people bless the elderly in their communities. Khru Ann and a few other staff partnered with the Baptist Bangjak Church to sponsor a New Year blessing for the elderly in the recycling slum community. They were blessed with love, a meal, and food to take home.
Hot season home visits. I joined Khru Ann for one of her visits to the slums on what might have been the hottest day of the year. We met the Burmese family developing a grassroots school for refugees and visited children playing while their moms pulled the labels off plastic bottles. We met with one of our alumni from The Well, and encouraged her to pray and hope.
School Break
Fun and learning during the break. We’ve been able to provide some family-style classes for a group of school-age boys, with English, art, Bible stories, and drums! We also had classes for students at middle and high school levels, including English, guitar, and drums.
Learning and helping during the break. We were thankful to have AJ, a Thai Bible school intern, help with music classes, daily activities, and our new church plant. What a blessing.
Back-to-school barriers. School starts in mid-May, and even free public schools have costs. We help alumni from The Well and families in our community with a small back-to-school stipend to help defray initial term expenses, like uniforms for growing kids.
Church Plant & Online Outreach
One Glass of Water in the April heat. Our little church plant is named Nam Nung Gaew, or One Glass of Water. Add and Ann are leading this local body of believers. During our first week, we shared communion and took time to remember Jesus’ last days before Easter. This month we met on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to learn, worship, share, and pray.
One Glass online, too. Building a church and discipling people who work long hours and live far away requires creativity. We are creating short Bible/life video lessons to share online as part of our church plant’s ministry to new believers. (For more about this project, read Jim’s newsletter from March here.)
Compassion & Care
There is no one-size-fits-all for compassionate care. This season, several women reached out in need of extra care related to social service, counsel, and special support. Regardless of our years of experience, no case is the same. We must always stop, consider, and seek godly wisdom for how best to provide love and care. Our teams have been learning about limit setting, loving people who are not so easy to love, and that God is our main resource.
… But God’s compassion does fit all. We had a good visit with 15 women from our Chinatown community. We were a motley crew gathered in that church-provided air-conditioned room. Women ranged in age from 25-75, but most were in their later years. (Ages 44, 54, 64, and 74 represented!) God was with us. These women have desperate stories, and I was privileged to be in the room, watching them hear that God loves them.
By the time you read this letter, everyone will be back in school. Things will cool off (a little) with the rainy season beginning in June.
Like September in the U.S., the new year is a fresh start. New beginnings for our church, new classrooms for students, and new connections in the slum community and in Chinatown – but the same compassionate God, and the same goal of following Jesus through it all.
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