Christmas Campaign

We were teaching at the schools till the Thursday before Christmas...the 20th I think, and that's when Achan Satit and Krue Na and Pi Korn arrived. We then hung up all the decorations that we had been doing, hearts, stars and angels. We then started preparations for the actual program. The kids practiced for acting on the Friday and on Saturday we spent the day cleaning and decorating for the big day.

Then on Sunday, about 100ish kids turned up to the program. We did the games songs and acting of the Christmas story between 9:30-10:30, then the kids hung around for the first song of the main service before we took them outside for crafts - gift boxes, origami or colouring depending on year level. Then the kids went back inside and the boarding house kids did a dance. Nong Dang was so cute, he fell over on stage, but he got up and kept going, smiling all the way :). All the kids had make-up and had their hair done, and they did really well, even the younger ones. Then during the offering, the girls of the boarding house sang a song. After this we had lunch (green curry or khanom jin - some kind of spicy noodle in soup). Since both Esther and I can't take spicy food, we both had a little bit of green curry (the less spicy of the two). Then we handed out the Christmas bags. Because of all the logistics of having equal number of bags in each box, we kept handing out wrong bags. Nong Dan, who is 4-5 years old, got a bag with a bib and infant toys. He came back and showed us saying "khong dek, khong dek" (belongs to a young kid, belongs to a young kid). So after all the kids went home, Krue Na, Pi Krit, Mel Esther and I went through all the boxes organizing them (for the 3rd time). Then as we finished packing them in boxes, Krue Na stood there with a very concerned look on her face. When I finally understood what was going on, I found out that each box cost 500Baht to send over to Surin, and there were about 10 boxes. (originally there were 4 boxes in Surin that the previous group took over, but some genius packed them back into the truck and they came back to Pharos). So then we had to go through every box, open every single bag and take everything out, separating them into items - toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, pens and pencils, toys etc. This took the rest of the afternoon/evening. We packed them into smaller boxes (which cost 150Baht to send) and whatever didn't fit into a box was left behind (except soap and toothpaste etc that was heavy and was going down in the truck). On the Monday, we were suppose to go to Nong Bit, the home village of a church member, and run a Christmas program there, but we needed to have gifts to hand out. Here's where the extra stuff left over was put to use. we packed some face towels with packed soap (soap we hadn't taken out of the package which wasn't many) and we wrapped this as gifts. We also bought some other gifts and took some of the colouring books and other toys for the kids. We spent the whole morning - 9am-12:30pm wrapping and packing these gifts. Then we had 15-30 min to prepare our Christmas story props and crafts and head off. We got there and the kids were waiting already. We had hoped to be able to do more outreach to adults, but they disappeared very quickly after the program started. We did the Christmas story, but no time for crafts. There were quite a few games that Pi Krit and Achan Satit organized that the kids enjoyed.

We went to a church member Pi Im's parent's house after with the other church members who came and we discussed the caroling. Pi Im's parents are not Christian, so please really pray for her. She seems to have quite a broken family as she (atm) supports her 2 sons by herself since her husband does not give her any money to pay for them though he is an elder in another church. It's a really confusing family dynamics that even I don't understand. That night we went caroling. there was a service at church starting at 7pm and by the time we finished caroling, it was 1:30am in the morning. we were so tired. A long day on the 23rd with Christmas at church and the long day on the 24th with Nong bit and the caroling.

But God really sustained us because the next day, we went to another church and while Mel and I ran the kids program (with about 30 kids though only maybe 5 were from Christian families), Esther played piano for the service. She told us that because the sermon was so long she almost fell asleep, and the piano is in front of the whole congregation...but she made it through. Then we had lunch there before we headed back to church. I had a few health problems for the last few days previous, so I had wanted to go to the doctors on the Monday, but we had no time, so I was going to go on Christmas day afternoon, but the doctors were only open 7-8am and 5-8pm, so I went with the rest of the team to a church near Sanklang. It was actually just a shelter where the kids (and adults I think) came on Sundays for a service or for bible study. originally we were told we were going to observe, but we ended up running that Christmas program too. Here we also handed out the remaining gifts that we didn't hand out the day before.

When we got back to church, we jumped straight back into the truck to go to Naroon's house. They were going to have a Christmas service there too. The service ran from 4:30/5:00ish to about 6, then we had dinner. After that I rushed off to the doctors. When I came out, the team was back at church. We were told to pack our bags that night as we would be leaving at 4am the next day!! We packed the clothes we needed in my suit case (one suitcase between the 3 of us) as they said to take as minimal space as possible, and then we loaded it onto the truck that night.

The next morning, we were up at 4, but then as we were about to get up, Pi Korn came back from the kitchen and told us to go back to sleep for another hour as no one else was up yet and we were leaving at 5 instead. By the time we left it was 5:30. We sat in the car for 17.5 hours, with stopovers every 2-3 hrs. Esther got car sick so she had to move to the front. In the back, we had basically squatting space (especially when PI Krit moved to the back so Esther could sit at the front). We got lost a bit, but we finally found our way and got there at 11pm.

The next day we went to Surin to purchase our breakfast stuff and some essentials, and pick up the boxes we sent over. There was also a funeral going on, so Pi Korn had to buy some stuff to give to the family. We came back to Meh Lek's house and we re packed the bags (for the 5th time) and then we rested for the day as it was basically over.

The next day we went over to Pi Nong's house in Pomsittern and decorated it. The following day we were there at 8am, ready for a 9am start in the Christmas program there. The kids had prepared some Thai dancing and acting of the Christmas story. We returned to Ban choke to decorate Meh Lek's house. On the Sunday we ran a Sunday school at Ban choke. Surprisingly about 30ish kids turned up. We were not expecting many as it was new year time and many parents would have returned, so the kids would have to be at home with their parents, but they still came :).

In the afternoon we went to Po Lek's farm (Pi Korn's dad) and there they drained the small pond and we jumped into the mud to catch fish. It was quite fun. It was a bit scary too because about 1.5hrs in we found out that there were 2 snakes in the pond with us too, but we were all safe, only casualties were fish bites. We had a lot of fish for dinner. On the Monday 31st (after the funeral had finished) we were able to run the Christmas program at Ban choke. Straight after, we had to pack our bags onto the truck and drive down to Surin to catch our bus.

The bus ride was quite okay...though it was the quietest new years we have ever had!! everyone was sleeping. Pi Krit stayed up so he could call his family and girlfriend at midnight, but otherwise we slept through new year. To make things better, we got back to church and found no one there and that we had been locked out. Luckily we can climb fences and that Pi Krit keeps a set of the keys to the kitchen on him.

That long message is the summary of the last 2 weeks. I hope you have time to read it all.

lots of love,