Chiang-Kham Week of Action

non-negotiable waterfall visit

More greetings from Chiang-Kham, Thailand -- bringing you a fresh report on our first week of ministry here at The Home of Blessing!

Now that we've been here for nine days, there's almost too much to report -- we've gotten so much closer to the girls on the property, grown in unity on our team and have made it half-way through the weekend-long bible camp we're running for the Home of Blessing! We've also managed to give devotionals at the girls' daily morning prayer at 5:30am! What an admittedly tiring privilege!

Our week started with the painting of the property's masssive worship hall. From Monday to Wednesday, we were given the chance to lather on two coats of yellow paint on the exterior of the structure and inside the washrooms. Much attention to detail was required, as team members fearlessly cut paint around urinals and gave a new sheen to high-ceilinged walls with paint rollers (extended by bamboo stalks, nonetheless).

 Later in the week, we also got the chance to load dozens of dozens of 40kg unrefined rice bags to a silo for emptying -- the girls at The Home of Blessing plant and harvest their own rice! Additionally, every evening our team has put on a session for the home's girls to learn various dances our team knows. It's been incredible to watch how quickly the girls learn the songs we've brought to them and it's been with incredible energy that we've been able to share some of the most memorable moments yet with one another.

emptying unrefined rice bags

Currently, we are into our second day of the bible camp we're putting on. We started with an afternoon of games, separated by stations. In the evening, we had a time of dance and worship, followed by a drama our creative put together specifically for this camp -- an encouraging and rousing message by Elana Swartz came shortly thereafter. We began the morning sessions today with a message by Nicole Recalde on courage and spent the rest of the time crafting lion masks for everybody! Later tonight, Hannah Root will be giving us a talk on unity (with some illustrations, rumour has it) for our evening session. The camp will have three sessions on Sunday.

Prayer points: 
- that the girls would receive the teaching and heart behind our weekend sessions
- that overall team health will continue to be restored
- for energy, as a demanding schedule in a new culture can be exhausting!
- a desire to continue looking to be more like Jesus in every way we live our lives!

Thank you for keeping updated with our team with your reading -- your prayers continue to mobilise and enable us to continue serving and no words in a blog post could ever thank you enough!