Visit to Elephant Island

Mike and I have been preparing for a time in the USA that will be a little longer than our usual quick trips.  It has been some work to make arrangements to be gone from our responsibilities here, but we are reaching the home stretch.  Yesterday, we took a trip out to the Moken village that we work in on Koh Chang. (Elephant Island)  While Mike met with the elders in the village to discuss the future of the church and their spiritual growth, I wandered around with my camera to get some snapshots of the people and village life there.

This month, we received some sad news to us, that one of our teenage girls in the dorm, decided that she wanted to stop her studies and move back to the village and marry a man she had met. This is Milaa and she is only 15 years old.  We had hoped that she would continue her education, but the cultural pull of the village life was stronger. The village had a party for her.  She was very happy to see us and seems very happy with her new life. In their culture as soon as a woman is able to have babies, they move in that direction and the older villagers encourage them to do that. 

This little guy was very happy about his fruit treat. 

Down on the pier, they were cleaning out their nets from the night before and getting them ready to go out again. 

Then they cleaned up the small dead fish off the pier from the nets.  Notice she is using a branch as a broom. It actually works great. 

The men are getting their boats ready to go back out and net-fish again.

She is making new nets, all by hand.

The children are so entertained with the simplest things.  Here is a game they play (something like like Mancala) by digging holes in the dirt and transferring marbles. I rarely see store bought toys.

Here is that view from the church looking down over the village, that NEVER gets old. 

Cooling off....

one of the women's jobs.....

One of the little village stores is looking real good.

The Burmese influence of Thanaka in the village.

bath time at the community well...

Pin is unable to speak, but the gals were excited that she smiled so big for me. 

happy, fun, smiling girls having an afternoon drink (can't we just take them home?) 

Bye bye till next time and remember, that time has no concept to them.

The church on the hill is being overgrown with trees, but still a lighthouse on a hill.

Lets end with one of my favorite photos of the day.  There was more than one new litter of puppies in the village, and they were so tolerant of lots of handling by the children. It just doesn't get much cuter than little boys giggling with new born puppies.

Good wholesome play..... no screens, no digital devices....just animals, shells, sticks, and whatever happens to be laying around.  And lots of smiles galore! 

dorm parents for a week

Thank you to those who told us that they were praying for our week in Ranong as dorm parents.  The week turned out to be quite different than we had expected.  We were told there would be 10-12 children who did not have a home to go to over the Thai New Year, but for various reason, most all of the children found relatives to stay with and we ended up with just 5 children in the home with us.

It made the time much easier and laid back to focus on those 5 and do activities with them. We went to the school supply store one of the first days and spent a lot of time with  colored pencils, water paints, markers, scissor crafts etc.  Mike and the boys made some soccer goals for them to use on the field. We played ping-pong, went to a new pool with a water slide, played board games, went to a shooting range, and ate out a few times.  With all our activities, the week went by pretty fast.

They were quite independent when it came to meals.  We did one meal each day for them, and they fixed the rest for themselves.

All day on Wednesday we played with water for the Thai New Year Water Throwing Festival, which I already wrote about.

On Sunday, we took them with us to church on Koh Chang.

The girls who went home to the village and the girls who stayed with us, were so happy to see each other and catch up about their time away from each other. 

When the kids are home, they keep busy helping the family business of preparing the nets to go out to sea each day and gathering whatever comes in.

It was so good once again to see the children from the home sitting in the front at church and helping to lead the service with their fellow Moken families. 

Much of my time was spent with Suk, this newest girl to the home, who came in just last week.   She has no family, was living on her own at age 11, has a lot of needs, and yet so much potential.  I will share more about her later, but she definitely captured my heart during the week and I tried to pour as much love into her as I could. 

Yes, it was a tiring week of heat, not so pleasant living conditions, different foods, and some stress- but we are thankful for the chance to give Somsak and Uan a break.

Now we are enjoying a few days to ourselves in much more beautiful living conditions.  Thailand has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world and we are thankful to soak in a lot of beauty for a few days. 

Visit to CVCC kids and Chang Island

One of our church ministry partners, CVCC,  has been supporting 5 of the children in the Ranong Kids Home and while some of the Aronson family was here (for another project), they came down to spend some time with those 5 kids. The first night they took them out to eat at a restaurant that overlooked the water between Thailand and Burma.

Rawoot, Milaa, Tamae, ThongDii, and Surin enjoyed getting to know Jim, Reatha, and Ariane better.

The kids do not speak much English, but they tried their best to communicate.  It was good that Mike and I were along to help with the conversation and translation.  We all enjoyed watching the sunset over Burma in the distance.

The next morning when we went to church on Chang Island, they wanted to come with us.  The high/low tide there is so drastic and we never know for sure what we'll be coming in to.  I gave a groan as we approached and saw that the tide was way out.  It means having to walk through that murky, stinky, gross stuff to get to the village pier.

Reatha had brought along a lollipop butterfly gift for everyone in the church, and the kids helped us get them assembled before the service.

The children from the village sang a few new songs that they had learned before the message. 

The 5 sponsored children from the home told us that they really  like to worship with the Moken people.  They sang a special song at church also. 

After church, Mike had a 'some sort of business meeting', so I asked the 5 kids to take us around to meet their parents and family. This is Tamae with her mother.

Lawoot was happy for us to meet her father.  He has a handicap leg now and can barely walk with a cane.  He was stung badly by a stingray while diving for fish and worms, as they all do, and did not get it treated afterwards.

As we walked through the village, the children were still enjoying their lollipops from church. 

Others wanted us to take their photo, too.

It was clear that the kids were uncomfortable in trying to create a family photo.  For some of them, it is difficult to really decide who is their family.  Marriages are not always as defined, one parent dies, others live in their homes, and they cannot always label who is their family and who is not. This helps explain why they do such much better in the home that  we have established in Ranong.  They really do not have a family on the island that raises and teaches them.  Milaa chose these people for her photo.

This is Surin with his sister. ThongDii is from another island, so we could not meet his family. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon, sitting on the pier waiting to return to the mainland.  The pier is where many of them congregate and work.  A boat came in with some freshly caught fish.

During the day they work in pairs for hours untangling the fish nets and getting them ready to go back out again each evening. 

They are so good at what they do.  It's their daily routine and livelihood. 

It was nice to see the tide come back up as we loaded up the boat to return.  This is the same area in front of the pier that was mud when we arrived. 

The two hour boat ride back gives us time to process and pray from our trip 'to the ends of the earth.'

James 1:27

"Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this:

to visit orphans and widows in their distress." 

The Ranong Kids Home Visit

During our time in the south last week, I have to say that the children in the Ranong Kids Home were the biggest encouragement to us.  We were very impressed to see how they are growing in so many areas of their lives, since we were last with them. Our last night with the visiting team, we went to the home and they gave a performance for us.

Two of the older girls performed a Thai cultural  dance.

All of the children were in at least one dance or more and they made up the whole program themselves. Their confidence level is where we have seen the most development.  Years ago, these kids were so shy and would never perform in front of a group.  It was obvious that they had a lot of fun with this program that they put together. 

Some of them are continuing on with the musical instruments from the music camp a few years ago. 

The program that they did for us was actually the same program they did for thier Christmas party which is a really big deal to them.  They are each allowed to invite 3 friends which turns into a huge party and after eating and having a lot of fun they share the true meaning of Christmas with thier friends.

This was one of the songs and dance telling about the life of Jesus to their friends who knew very little of who Jesus is.

They were passionate about their songs and want their friends to know Him too.

After their program, they shared some words of thanks to the visiting team and then the group from CTK gave them some gifts.  Each child got a new pair of rubber shoes.  This is the guys picking out their size and color. 

Each child also got a new toy.  Since Chet was part of the group that picked out the toys, he wanted to be sure they knew how to play with each of them.

We had such a fun evening with the children and it was so special as they prayed for us and we prayed for them.  The next morning was a sad good-bye as we told the team good bye.  Thank you again CTK for coming to visit and work and bless the Moken people and these children.

Matthew 25:40

 "Truly I tell you,

 whatever you did for one of the least 

of these brothers and sisters of mine,

you did for me".