The Thailand team is focusing on language study and building strategic relationships. This team has the incredible opportunity to teach English in a Thai Buddhist T-mple school. Other o-treach opportunities include partnering with our long-term workers in an effort to reach out to children, single moms that are coming in off the street (from human trafficking), and university students.

Beth writes…
“Wednesday brought an interesting change of the norm when Rhonda’s entire family came to visit her. (So cool!) Our housing situations are all furhurdled as I am staying with Rachel at JP and Brittany is spending her nights with Trudi at her host home. Rhonda and all her family are staying at the apartment.

Speaking of the apartment, has anyone told you about the Foundation? It is finally up and running and Tom and Candice are teaching two English classes a week. They have over 20 students or so, and it seems to be a smashing success thus far. It’s very exciting, but makes for some awkward moments as strangers randomly traipse through our house when we least expect it. We are getting better at not being caught off guard though.

School is going, as always, with various amounts of enjoyment being procured from it. Our schedule this year is basically just the same as last years, only I get the pleasure of helping in the special needs class two out of my three days of teaching. I cannot say in simple words how much I love that class and the children. It’s so beautiful. I’m learning so many things every day about loving the kids and how to better teach them. The other day the teacher wanted me to help the children do a ‘simple’ addition worksheet. I came to realize, however, that two of the girls don’t even know their numbers. So, instead of writing the addition answers for them (as the other teacher was doing), I got out a number puzzle and we worked on saying ‘one, two, three’ for an hour. I feel like they only retained .3 percent of what I was trying to teach, but after awhile I used different techniques and found fun ways to work with them. I’m sure I didn’t do much to help them, but the experience helped and taught me immensely. I cannot wait to go to college and learn even more about how to better teach these children!

But really—walking into that classroom is the highlight of every day. I walk in and all the kids run up and give me the best hugs ever…and as most Thai people don’t hug and neither does the team because it’s so hot, I cherish each one. Those kids always leave me feeling encouraged and loved by G-d.”

Pr-yer requests for the Thailand team:

• Pr-y for good opportunities to talk to friends on a deeper level
• Pr-y for love and patience with the children they teach

The South Asia team will be working alongside an established YWAM base. O-treach possibilities include teaching English as a second language, helping with a bakery for widows, both rural and urban evang-lism, prison m-nistries, leper m-nistry, friendship evang-lism, and physical labor.

Pr-yer requests for the South Asia team:

• Pr-y for focus for the team as they prepare to leave
• Pr-y for safety and peace as they return to the states next week