Week 7 Update

Sa wa dee ka! 

I can't believe another week has passed. It's been a fun week! 

Here are some highlights:

-On Tuesday, Angela, Jacie, and I taught the little kids about God's love. The kids on Tuesday are very active. (that's a nice, teacher way of saying that they are a little out of control =) In the midst of all the chaos, one little boy named Vit talked to Angela after the story and he prayed to invite Christ into his life. =) Vit lives with his grandparents, and he gets scared at night because he has nightmares. I got to sit next to them as they prayed together and he was smiling big when he was done. He wrote on his coloring sheet that God loves all people. That was really exciting! 

-On Wednesday morning, I got to meet with Pu and teach her a little bit of English. Her homework last time was to practice reading Psalm 139, and she read it for me this time. She did a great job. =) 

-I love going to the Wednesday slum (I know teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but this slum is probably my favorite.), and this week was fun. Benz, a girl that I love, lives in this slum, and I got to spend a little bit of time with her.

-On Thursday, I was met by one of my favorite little girls, Faa as she ran into my arms. She's a sweet girl. There were a lot of kids that came to the program on Thursday and it was fun.

-On Friday, we went to the local school's Sports Day. It was fun to see a lot of our kids running around and having fun. It was sad to see some of the girls wearing makeup and dancing in ways that little girls should not know how to do. 

-On Saturday, we took the kids to tae-kwon-do. (This was my last time to go before I leave.) I also got to teach an English lesson on feeling words and I lead the kids in learning how to pray for other countries. This week, we prayed for Haiti. 

-On Saturday night, I got to hang out with Pu again. She is such a joy to be around. She talked to me about how she wants to take college classes in the fall and how she wants God to use what has happened in her life to glorify him. She wants to be a translator. She says that she has "big dreams" but she knows that God can do them. =)

Next week: 

-A team is coming from the US. They will be building two houses for people in one of the PSM slums. The slum landlord is selling some of the land and making people move to another area in the slum. Pray for no rain while they are building!! 

-Pray for the team as they lead kids' club on Wednesday and Thursday. Pray for the kids in the slums to know God's love more and more. 

-Pray for me to take in as much as I can in the last couple of weeks and that I can communicate love to those I have been around for the last 7 weeks. 

While I have been in Thailand, I've had a lot of time to read, which I have loved. I've really enjoyed the slow pace of life this summer. This week, I started reading Terrify No More by Gary Haugen, President of International Justice Mission. It was so good, I finished it on Sunday. It describes IJM's involvement in rescuing girls who were forced to work in the brothels of Cambodia. These girls were as young as five and experienced abuse and torture which I cannot imagine. 

Here is an excerpt of Gary's response to this: (read if you please...it's a little long...but really, you should read the whole book. It's great...challenging and tough, but great.)

"But over time, having seen the suffering of the innocent and the crushing of the weak all around the world, my plea has changed. More and more I find myself asking not, Where is God? but, Where are his people? There are still painful things of life I find myself arguing with God about but these quarrels are less and less about injustice and perhaps more about cancer or mental illness or rains that come too late or too hard. No, for me, the great tragedies of abuse and oppression in our world are so clearly man-made sisters that I find it difficult to keep blaming God. Not only because it is men and women, not God, who perpetrate the abuses, but also because God has so clearly given men and women the power to stop the abuses. The little girls of Svay Pak were not suffering because of vague and inexplicable forces of nature. They were suffering because men and women with names and faces chose to beat them, rape them, and terrorize them. They suffered because other men and women with names and faces chose to provide shelter and protection for the abusers. And at the end of the day, they suffered because the rest of us let it happen. Given all the power and resources that God has placed in the hands of humankind, I have yet to see any injustice of humankind that could not be stopped by humankind. I find myself sympathizing with a God who, speaking the the ancient prophet, told his people, 'You have wearied the Lord with your words...by saying...'Where is the God of justice?' ' (Malachi 2:17). Increasingly, I feel quite sure of the whereabouts of God. My tradition tells of a Father in heaven who refused to love an unjust world from a safe distance, but took his dwelling among us to endure the humility of false arrests, vicious torture and execution. This is the God who could be found as 'a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering' (Isaiah 53:3). The more I have come to know him, the harder it has become for me to ask such a God to explain where he has been. In fact, surprisingly, I don't generally hear the victim of abuse doubting the presence of God either. Much more often I hear them asking me, 'Where have you been?' "

Psalms 10:16-18 says, 

The Lord is King for ever and ever; 
    the nations will perish from his land.
¹⁷ You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; 
    you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, 
¹⁸ defending the fatherless and the oppressed, 
    so that mere earthly mortals
    will never again strike terror.

Our God is a God who cares about injustice, and if I want to be more like him, I need to care more about it too.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for your prayers.