John’s Blog | 15th January and Jan 29th

Greetings again from The Christian Mission Ban Naratchakwai. This will be newsletter 4 for January. Activities in this one will be from our January 15, 2012 combined church service to praise God and ask him to care for our 12 visitors who are all getting ready to go home. Three have already left, another 4 leave on January 16 and the Kiwis all leave on January 17.

It has been a super time of fellowship and witnessing. The amount of work accomplished was only done by the hand of God. The impressions that our volunteers made at the schools they went to teach was awesome. The high school has already asked for a Saturday English camp and we are working on it.

God blessed us all from the time the team arrived until they left.  We thank and praise God for that.

Sunday allowed us to meet with lots of other Christians – in fact, some I had never seen before. There were about 25-30 “white faces”. I think the most I have ever seen at the Christian Mission at one time.  There were about 8 different languages represented in the group. All together there were about 150 people.  The service began at 9:30 am and lasted until a little after 12 noon. Then we all got together for a fellowship meal.

We also had our food packet presentations to our senior citizens.  A great time was held by all and the word of God sas spread a bit further. Thanks and praise God. John and Maeo and the team

Here we are back again with newsletter number 5 for January. Lord willing this should bring us up to date. Some of you may know and others may not know. The Christian Mission currently has 4 English classes going. Primary class has, for the most part beginning learners, mostly grades 6 and 7. Currently there are 7 students in that class. Next, there is an advanced class. That group currently has three students. They also serve as leaders within the church and do much of the teaching. The third group is a group of 8 university students. They are first year English majors wanting to be teachers. The forth group, just recently started is a group of 6 second year university students, English majors wanting to be teachers. Presently, I am teaching English 15 or so hours per week. For the last 3-4 years we have had a group of volunteers from the advanced group going out to teach in English Camps on Saturday at various village schools. Beginning the end of last year (2011) we started having two English Camps per month. The groups are called (translated) Older teaching Younger. The goal is for us to teach 4-6 grade students in village schools and they in turn teach the Kinder-grade 3 students in their schools. One Saturday Camp can handle about 80 elementary students. The students are taught VERY Basic English, sometimes songs, storytelling and an attempt is made to reinforce their self-confidence and willingness to speak out. The pictures attached to this newsletter are from an English Camp that was conducted by our live-in students on January 21, 2012. Three small elementary schools have combined to make the number of 80 students and we are currently rotating between these three schools. Our second group, the first year university students are conducting English Camps at middle schools and high schools as time allows. Working out all of the schedule conflicts can sometimes be a real challenge.

I ask your prayers for the kids teaching and the kids learning that they will begin to realize the importance of English for them in the future. Many different programs look fantastic on paper, but when you start looking at things a bit closer, it is kind of like a trip to Universal Studios. Many of you will know what that means. We need prayers that thinking and actions will change from the highest levels right down to the students. Thank you, enjoy and God Bless. John