John’s Blog 23rd July 2013

We are getting there again – the end of another month. Our second English Camp for the month was a great success, thank God. In fact, it was such a success that the principal that coordinates this thing for these schools in this group slipped in another school without us knowing about it until we arrived at a little after 8 am Saturday morning.  When I started looking around and counted more than 80 students and saw more than 4 uniform groups I began to suspect something. Seems as though a teacher from this new school visited the English Camp last month and decided she HAD to get her kids into the camp too. She managed to do it so we had 87 students, grades 4, 5, 6 – I think. 🙂  Dr J. our new American was not there, so the teachers insisted I give them a two hour lecture also.

This group now consists of 5 elementary schools that are starved for English teaching and willing to do things like this. Believe me they are in the small minority, so we pray that God will give us the wisdom and strength to continue to help them. This group had it so well planned and knew that I would not be bringing enough handouts and materials, that they had a group already to copy all the materials and get things printed out before classes started.

The schools in this group – now five – have banded together so they can receive one camp a month instead of one every 5 months at each school. We are now experimenting with teaching at the high school level so they may continue the older teaching younger at their own school and then go to their elementary feeder schools and do the same thing. We will know in a few months if it will work.

Prayer points:

• Praise and thank God. Joe and Sandy Boys passports and visas have been approved for them to come back to Thailand in October. The paperwork for work permits and that stuff have been sent to Thailand and are being processed. Pray that God will provide. Joe and Sandy are Christians and came over with World Teach in 2011. They were with World Teach a few months and had problems. They met up with us and we hit it off and they started working in some schools I was working with. Last October they went back to the US and were not sure if they were coming back. They now have decided, God willing, they will work here October – March and back to the US for April – September. They will be working at schools we work directly with and will be very involved in our Saturday English Camps.
• Praise and Thank God for Dr. J and the work he and his students are doing to help the English Camp program. Next month we will be doing a camp at the high school he is working at. The principal has agreed to host an elementary Camp for the schools that feed into his high school. Pray that the attendance is high, the interest is great. From the students we already have that, but from the principals and the teachers. Many of them are not interested. Currently we have about 6 elementary schools out of more than 20 and 4 high schools out of 10 or 15 that are interested.

More in the next letter. God Bless, John, Maeo and the girls