THAILAND – Late Christmas celebrations at CHRISTIAN MISSION NARATCHAKWAI

For the last five years, John Middlewood and his team at CMN have received Christmas Child gift boxes from the United States based Samaritan’s Purse organisation. In Thailand the boxes are distributed through a local organisation named “We Love Thai Kids”. In total CMN has distributed about 500 boxes to children in the area around Nakhon Phanom during the 5 year period.

Christmas 2013’s boxes were delayed by shipping hold-ups but CMN finally received 120 boxes and they made up lists and contacted the children and invited them to receive the boxes at a Celebration of Love service on Sunday February 16. As well as distributing the Christmas Child boxes, they combined the Soup of Love program and the monthly presentation of food parcels to three senior citizens from the village. They had about 90 children from the village and surrounding areas attend together with about 100 others including their regular church group and parents of the invited children. They had a shortened service, with the CMN children presenting a play and singing, together with a short talk about how God loves kids especially but loves everyone else too.

After the service the children played a couple of games and then everyone had lunch together. After lunch the boxes were distributed and the children went to their homes to open them and enjoy the contents provided by Christians from other parts of the world including New Zealand. There were about 20 boxes left over after the service and on the following Monday, John and Maeo visited the local elementary school where, working with 3^rd and 6^th grade teachers, they were able to give the remaining boxes to 20 boys.
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