John’s Blog | VBS

Greetings in the name of Christ. It is Saturday, April 9, 2011 and about 2 pm. DVBS is over and our Saturday program is almost over for the day. Our teens are teaching English and will finish in a few minutes and then begin their practice for Easter. The younger children will be taken home.

It has been a difficult but blessed week. Monday-Wednesday was our summer DVBS. We had in attendance about 40 children from 4 or 5 different churches.

Well, Saturday is finished and all the kids have been taken home, so I have a few minutes of peace and quiet.

Back to DVBS. With the exception of about 10 minutes of introduction and 10 minutes of closing, the entire program was conducted and managed by our teens. Thanks and praise God for their dedication.

The pictures that are attached will show you the action of what went on. The children were taught one hour of Bible in the morning – the story of Ruth – in Thai, then the first day an hour of singing, after that an hour of Ruth in English – a repeat of the first hour only in English – taught by the teens.  Then it was lunch time. After lunch there was an hour of straight English and an hour and a half or so of games. By then it was time to go home.

The second day they got a bit in their schedule so they had to face a bit of reality – work before play. They, and I, miss judged the time to make the friendship bracelets, so they had to make up their Bible lesson time and there were no games in the afternoon.

The third day was very busy finishing up the Bible study of Ruth, finishing up the friendship bracelets and preparing their closing skits. They were divided into three teams and each one had to do their interpretation of what they learned in the form of a play. All had great fun.

You will also see a picture of our special girl, Bo. She wanted to come so badly, and she is one of the most powerful witnesses for Christ that I have ever met, but dad was not sure she would make it for even an hour. Another one of our miracles – Bo was here Monday for almost 2 hours, came back Wednesday for almost the same amount of time and back again on Wednesday. Her father tells me she has never been out for that long a time.  Pray that we will see more of her at the Christian Mission.

All of our children go home on Sunday afternoon, April 11^th. They will be home for a week to celebrate Thai New Year. Thailand is the only place I know of that has three New Years celebrations, and this one lasts for from 7-10 days. Our children return April 16^th before lunch and we prepare for a three day English Camp on April 18-20. Please pray for that. Please continue to pray for them as we continue on April 21, 6 hours of English every day until school opens – about May 9^th.

We now have another group I pray you will be hearing more about in the near future. We have 2 6^th graders and one 7^th grader that have asked for special English Classes. They will be studying from 8-9, 11-12 and 3-4 every day beginning April 21 until school starts. Then we will see what God can do after that.

Pray for our meeting on April 11 and maybe 12 as we plan with our two interns for the rest of this calendar year and work on the first part of next year. We are praying that God will bless us even more and make us a teaching location for interns from Payao Seminary in Northern Thailand.

Thanks for your continued prayers and support. God continues to move here, and not always in the direction we expect. Tom and Kip – Maeo’s nephew and niece, who have been living here for about 4 years and helping both in the mission and in the house have left and moved to Rayong. Money has now become an important part of their life. It now looks like this may be a blessing in an unexpected way to improve the mission. Please pray for that.

Now, time to go back to work. Again, thanks for all of your support, both through prayer and finances and God Bless. Keep us in your prayers for health, strength, wisdom and the ability to keep one step ahead of the teens.

You will also note part of our dinner in one of the pictures. That is an almost 5 kg (11 pound) catfish from our pond. Three more of over 8 pounds each were also caught, but we are saving them for later. This is the biggest one out of our pond so far.

Love, John and Maeo

(Hover the images to see the captions)