August 07

 

Dear Friends,

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Hello from rainy <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Thailand.  I have been back from America for several weeks.  I had a wonderful time at home.  God did so much for me.  I had pneumonia for over two months and when I went home I was so blessed by having all my medical care provided free of charge and the rest did me a lot of good.  I am now fully recovered and am back hard at work.  It is so good to see the children grow and change.  I think about when I started our first children’s home and there was only me to teach and train the children and how slow it was to see them change and grow in God, the second home was easier because by then  I had trained staff to help me teach and live by example and now with this new batch of children they have been transformed in just a few months because we have such excellent staff teaching them as well as the children who have been with me for years now showing them the way.  It makes my work so much easier – it seems things I want to happen just happen now with out my having to work at it.  So now I can turn my attention outward to the other youth around the city.  We are just praying for opportunities to minister to them beyond what we already do in our weekly youth meetings.  On Sunday I have been invited to teach a big children’s home nearby with about 175 kids.  I am excited about this opportunity.  Youth are so hungry for God I find.  But you have to give them something real.  You can’t give them a stale religion or tradition because they are not interested.  They are interested in a real God that loves them and can help them with their lives.  So above all things we make sure that we keep things real and never let our worship or our teaching become irrelevant to their lives.  We as Christians have something real and powerful and something to offer the world that matters and makes a difference we just sometimes forget that we do. 

 

This month Thailand celebrated Mother’s Day and I was sooverwhelmed by 30 little homemade cards from all my children.  We have this new boy who is about 13 who comes from DEEP in the jungle.  His family is extremely poor but his mom is about the spunkiest lady I think I have ever met.  She didn’t have the money to send her kids to school so she would drive her motorcycle down the mountain on roads that have knee deep mud ( I know because I saw her boots) to make money for her kids school.  We paid for his school but she insists on paying what she can so we let her because it is important they take responsibility for their kids.  The first day of orientation this boy didn’t have a uniform for school so he ran away because he was so ashamed and went back to his village.  But that mother of his brought him right back and we bought him a uniform so now he is in school. Also a few weeks into the term I saw he was wearing the same thing everyday so we took him shopping and you should see how proud and happy and handsome he is in his new clothes – the first he has ever had.   His card touched my heart the most he gave me for mother’s day.  He said because of you I know God loves me and now I have peace and he drew a picture of me and him.  How many people in the world don’t have peace?  Just peace.  Isn’t that all we really want anyway?  Sometimes I wonder why I am here and why didn’t God send someone who could do a better job and sometimes I don’t mind telling you I want to go home but in times like that when a little jungle boy gives?  What if I wasn’t just here available to Go me something so lovely I thank God I am here and I think what if I didn’t come?  What if I’d stayed homed?   God is awesome – He can take something so small and make so much out of it.

 

I had a funny cute experience with another of our little girls.  She is 7 and an orphan and has the worst mouth you have ever heard.  When we first got her she would say the most shocking things in the world, things she learned from her mother before her mother abandoned her.  But she is just as cute as she can be and now she is learning what she can say and what she can’t.  Any way I took her shopping for new clothes too cause she had nothing that wasn’t horrible to wear and nothing for church for sure.  So she was picking out her clothes and when it came time to buy the clothes she wouldn’t let them go so the clerk could ring them up and put them in a bag.  She clutched her new skirt and jeans so tight to her chest and I am like “honey you have to let them go just for a minute” and the whole time the clerk is processing the order she is watching that lady like a hawk and kept pointing saying “give them to me, give them to me” – she was so afraid some thing was going to happen to her new clothes.    I always pinch her cheeks and tell her I love her and now she pinches my cheeks back and tells me the same thing.  She is a doll and I am excited that we will have her with us until she grows up and I can’t wait to see what God will do with her life.

 

So that is some of what’s going on here.   I just do a lot of preaching and teaching - 3-4 times every week in addition to teaching English.  Fortunately it is what I love to do and I can’t imagine doing anything else.  Sometimes it is hard but the kids make everything worthwhile.  Thanks for all your wonderful love and support. It’s you who help make everything we do here possible and nothing is a small thing in the hands of God.  I am attaching two pictures – one of me and the Orawan the little girl I told you about and a group shot of the kids who got scholarships so you can see the young boy I was telling you about.  He is in the back row on the end.  He is tall and skinny with light hair.  Enjoy!  God Bless you all.

 

Love,

Candace