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| Celebrating Colleen's 24th birthday! |
Hey everyone,
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| Dream Project |
These past two weeks we have been back in Bangkok staying at the YWAM Thailand base. Bangkok has a totally different feel from Phuket since it is a huge city but it is a nice, refreshing change of pace. We are working with a YWAM ministry called the Ruth Center which reaches out to the elderly population in Bangkok, especially in slums. Every month, the Ruth Center staff visits 10 slums and builds relationships with over 200 elderly people. It is amazing what God is doing through their small staff of just 4 people. They also employ some of the elderly women through their Dream Project to sew beautiful designs onto bags, t-shirts, and notebooks which the Ruth Center then sells to the public. Our team cleared them out of a lot of their merchandise...it is seriously so awesome.
On our first day working with the Ruth Center last week, we went into a slum and prayed with about 8 elderly men and women there. Only one of the women that we prayed with was a Christian, however all of the others were very open to our prayers and words of encouragement. All of the elderly welcomed us into their homes and Noi, the lady who runs the Ruth Center, translated our prayers for us. It was funny being the only white people in this little slum and at any given time we had a few kids hanging on at least someone on our team.
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| Dream Project designs |
We also visited the house of this slums' witch doctor. She was not there at the time, but we did get to pray over her 7 year old granddaughter who has a severely debilitating disease. Her head is filled with fluid to the point where it has expanded so much that she can not move from a small cot covered by a mosquito net. Please pray for her. On Thursday of last week, a few of us were able to give a short devotional at the Ruth Center to a handful of elderly women who are Christians. Andrew led worship and then they sang a few of their own worship songs in Thai as well. All of these women have come to know the Lord through the Ruth Center's ministry as the staff has continually been obedient to where God has called them. It was amazing to hear these women singing to God and praising Him for all that He has done in their lives. Later that afternoon we helped one of the staff prepare the garments and fabrics for the elderly women to assemble. We all put our craftiness to good use and bonded as we cut out tons of little elephants lovely thai fabrics. On Friday, we visited another slum which had quite a few Christians. We talked and prayed with them and visited some other homes as well. We encountered some people in very desperate situations financially and physically.
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| Lauren cutting hair in the slum |
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The ladies who came to our devo!
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On Monday we cleaned the Ruth Center with the help of some very dedicated kids :-)
On Tuesday, we hosted a sports day with the Ruth Center. It was seriously so much fun. We headed over to a really nice local park with 21 kids from the slums. We played, volleyball, soccer, kickball, fead fish, searched for wild turtles and lizards, played with hair and ate lunch together. We spent hours at the park and even by the end, the kids were not even close to being ready to go back to their houses. It was a great time!
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| Lunchtime |
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| Epic game of kickball |
On our last day ministering with the Ruth Center. We returned to the home of the witch doctor from last week. We prayed over the young girl with the fluid in her head. Noi told us that a doctor from Singapore had offered to perform surgery on her for free, but the family refused because she would have only a 50/50 chance of survival. We sat and prayed over her and her mother for a while. Her mother is extremely tired from attending to her daughter day in and day out and she mentioned that in 7 years, she has never had a day to herself to rest. We also asked the grandmother, who is the slums' witch doctor, if we could pray over her. She did not want to come too close to us because she was afraid of what her spirit might do or how it may react. Noi explained that this is the spirit that she has and carries as the local witch doctor. It was amazing to see how much Christ's light in us affected her and how she even had a hard time being around us because of the presence that we carried. Later in the day, we continued to help the Ruth Center with the Dream Project and we picked up a couple more items of merchandise to bring home. Steph discovered a wound on the inside of her pinky toe that we are quite worried about since we are in a third world country trekking through slums. Please pray that she will not have to go to the hospital due to an infection.
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| stoked |
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| Notebooks that we assembled |
On our last day ministering with the Ruth Center. We returned to the home of the witch doctor from last week. We prayed over the young girl with the fluid in her head. Noi told us that a doctor from Singapore had offered to perform surgery on her for free, but the family refused because she would have only a 50/50 chance of survival. We sat and prayed over her and her mother for a while. Her mother is extremely tired from attending to her daughter day in and day out and she mentioned that in 7 years, she has never had a day to herself to rest. We also asked the grandmother, who is the slums' witch doctor, if we could pray over her. She did not want to come too close to us because she was afraid of what her spirit might do or how it may react. Noi explained that this is the spirit that she has and carries as the local witch doctor. It was amazing to see how much Christ's light in us affected her and how she even had a hard time being around us because of the presence that we carried. Later in the day, we continued to help the Ruth Center with the Dream Project and we picked up a couple more items of merchandise to bring home. Steph discovered a wound on the inside of her pinky toe that we are quite worried about since we are in a third world country trekking through slums. Please pray that she will not have to go to the hospital due to an infection.
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