English Camp & Songkran style...

Some of you may remember from our last newsletter, that Thai children are on "summer holidays" right now.  Schools re-open in mid May but as for the last number of weeks, many kids are bored and often looking for something to do.
For us, this is a free ticket into new relationships in Bang Sai and so we've been holding Friday morning English camps in a small fishing village called Tha Rua Phlii.  We've had a good number of kids show up... as little as 12 and as many as 32.  But thankfully, when we arrive on Friday mornings, there are always at least some kids waiting... ready and raring to go!

We usually start our time with a quick review from the last week's lesson, led by our teammates, Moto & Mariya.  Then, we sing an English song (things like "My God is so Big" are a huge hit!), play a game and then go into our teaching time, which is led by our fearless leader, Jon.

Here's Marek with the community "gatekeeper," Puu Dtu.

I've been in charge of the craft time each week and its been fun to see just how much the kids LOVE this part!  From what I've gathered, Thai kids don't get to do a lot of 'creative' type stuff in schools but that doesn't mean the talent is lacking.  We have quite a few kids who are incredibly creative and I love seeing them enter into the craft with such excitement and joy!

Chonburi is known for their soccer team, the "Sharks,"
so that was our first craft!

Each week, we've had the help of one our Thai friends (from the Thailand MB office or from ALH orphanage) who help us tell a Bible story and then get the kids to act it out.  They also seem to LOVE this part of the camp!

We really have felt the Lord's favour as we've entered this particular area of Bang Sai.  The community leader (Puu Dtu, pictured above with Marek) seems to be so "on board" with us and even cooks lunch for all of the kids and us, every single week.  Its amazing!  Please continue to pray for the Spirit to move in this place and that we will see people come to Christ!  We have 2 more weeks left of this camp but have been invited to keep working in this community, so we hope to see lots of fruit!!  Jon has even been commissioned to do weekly English teaching at one of the municipality offices and got to meet the MP of this area at his first lesson this week.

Now, if you've ever been to Thailand or know anything about it, you'll know that the annual Songkran festival in mid-April, is like one big, nation-wide, week-long water fight to bring in the Thai New Year.  April is one of (if not THE) hottest month of the year here and so its only appropriate that people use this holiday to douce each other with buckets of freezing cold water.  Everyone dons their tacky, bright, floral shirts and spends the week having a blast with extreme water war.

So seeing as the beginning of Songkran fell on one of our English camp days, we thought it was only right that we become one of the Thais and sport our Songkran shirts. Pretty snazzy, hey!?

Ready to soak the neighbourhood!

I'll leave it at that for now.  Its taken me forever just to get this post finished.  I'll write more about our cute kiddos in my next post.  Hard to believe that Marek will be turning 1 in less than 2 weeks!?!