Ahna’s family came to visit! Her
mom, two of her brothers and her baby sister (she’s 9) came for a whole month.
It was SO wonderful to have an American “mom” around for so long and pray for
us and give us insight and love and support. They also brought some books for
me so I could take a class called Perspectives for my missionary training. It
was a great class, but I had to do it super fast so I could finish before
leaving to the US in April. I kept up with my self-imposed schedule right up
until I had to write a paper at the end It’s not that I didn’t WANT to write
the paper, it’s just that every time I would write a few pages, I would come
back the next day and think it was terrible and start over again. Finally, I decided
to employ the tactic that had served me well countless times in college:
procrastination! Yes, I waited until three days before I was due to leave for
the US and stayed up late writing page after page about the Akha people, their
history, and how best to start a contextualized church among Akha villages. It
was fascinating reading about their traditional religion and heartbreaking to
hear how former missionaries had abused their trust. Well, it was supposed to
be 5-8 pages long, but I cranked out 21 in those two days. Overkill works
though, I got 100% on it. ;)
March was the beginning of summer
schedule, so some kids went to visit their families in the mountains, some came
back from school for the holidays and we got a few new little ones for the summer.
We also changed the schedule to make our days longer (11am-7pm, which we
discovered too late left us NO rime for prep) and add different activities. We
had Bible stories on Tuesday, broken up by age group; Art class on Wednesday,
also by age group; Outreach on Thursdays, when we exposed the kids to the idea
that they can do things for other people and give back to their community,
regardless of their social status. We visited a nursing home, who LOVED it, an
orphanage and walked down our own street giving out Jesus Loves You cards for
Easter. Finally, Friday was character building time, when the older kids
learned about things like Respect, Honesty, Loyalty and Trustworthiness. We
kicked it all off with a parents meeting where the parents got to come hear
what we would be teaching and get a tour of our facilities, which apparently
had never been done before, to my surprise! They were excited about the things their kids were going to
be able to do that summer, and approved of our schedule, so it was a great success!
We also went to the Royal Flora several times over the winter months, which is a huge celebration of all things environmental. There are all sorts of exhibits about how water works, conservation, Thai culture, different trees and flowers from around the world, how the king has helped advance agriculture production, etc. It was a fun time every time we went!
