fourteen days in sisaket

the team has just returned back to bangkok from two weeks spent in a small village called sisaket. it is a beautiful little village nestled in the middle of miles of rice fields with dirt roads, wooden houses and alot of animals... it was nice (for the most part) to be totally secluded, away from all the noise and business of the city.

we have been working with a new ministry called "we love isaan" which was started by a fellow denver YWAMer married to a thai girl who was born and raised in sisaket. their vision is to set up a centre for the kids in that village - a centre that provides education and a safe, loving environment for kids who really have no where else to go and not alot of love.

since the ministry had barely any facilities when we got there, OUR job was to build them.

literally.

build a building.

the projects that we worked on were: priming and painting, tiling and grouting, building a sidewalk, building a new kitchen, roofing, plumbing and cementing. mostly i worked on building the new sidewalk, which doesn't sound like much, but really was a lot of work! we leveled, laid rocks down and mixed cement and filled it in.

i also did alot of tiling and grouting. and i found out that i am quite the grouter! it reminds me of pancake batter when i mix it, and leaves my hands feeling dry and cracked and sore when i'm done for the day. so we have kind of a love/hate relationship.

i worked on the grouting for the new shower, toilet and main room. this is me in the toilet - a very very small confined space in which i spent MANY hours!

aside from manual labour, we also worked alot a the village school. we taught english, ran games and performed dramas for the kids. we were already quite worn out with children's ministry after the last place that we had been at. we found the kids in the village to be less friendly but very demanding of our attention. for some reason, our whole team found it very difficult to play with the children voluntarily, and really choose to love them at every moment. there was deffinately alot of oppression in the village, which Casey had acknowledged when we first got there. but it was really difficult getting up every day and remembering that there was a spiritual battle going on that was fighting over our attention.

there was an incident at the school, where each child was told to bring a kilo of rice as payment for our teaching services. of course, we hadn't asked them to do this, and we found out that the teachers had kept the rice for themselves. my first reaction was to be furious at what the teachers had done, in giving us a bad reputation umong the community as being demanding and indulgent rich foreigners. but as we prayed about it i realised that God was giving us another opportunity to love - to love the teachers even though they had hurt us. one week later, after we had continued to serve the school, the principal asked us to teach about jesus. she said that we could teach them what ever we believed in, because we were good people and she wanted her students to turn out like us. isn't that amazing?!

here are some of the photos of the kids and our ministry times with them:

our whole team had alot of trouble sleeping there - which, after it was happening too regularly, was also attributed to the atmosphere within the village. i woke up frequently in the night for no reason, feeling an urgency to pray for our team and the village, while others would have nightmares about terrible things happening to us while we were there. it was a new experience for me - not that i have never been in places like that village, just that i wasn't as aware of the stronghold that satan holds over communities like this. on the last day that we were there we did a prayer walk around the village, and spent alot of time walking around the buddhist temple that was right in the middle of it. while we had been there we would often wake up to the drumming or 'sermons' that were blasting from a loudspeaker from the temple.

please pray for the village of sisaket - we have seen the desperation in the eyes of the people, and we know that it can only be filled by coming to know jesus. also pray for casey and pirat (his wife) and their new little baby. they are struggling with village life, which can be so incredibly lonely at times.

anyway, all in all, our time there was a great blessing for the ministry there and for our team - i spent alot of time in the mornings with God (when the roosters start to crow, you realy have no choice but to get up!) and he has taughe me so many things about himself and the importance of abiding in him every day.

our team has four more days till we fly into vegas for a week of mission there. in the mean time we are going to stay at the beach for a night or two as a little treat. i know, i'm as surprised as you are!