A ring from a beggar girl

Feb 13, 2009
I’ve run into a ton of street kids this week and had several touching experiences. I bought water and noodles for one of the sweet little girls, Salima, 10 yrs, and she pulled out a ring (the kind you get in a gumball machine) and placed it on my finger. I said, no, no, you keep it! But she insisted, and I was touched by her act of friendship and love. These guys are our little buddies, and everywhere we drive around town we always see little kids jumping up and down alongside the road waving at us. I love it.

I’ve also had a chance to use my creative side this month. I have been busy getting things together for our new office building we’ve started renting. I’m trying to creatively use the limited resources we have to make a comfortable environment to serve and work in (with lots of pictures of the kids on the walls of course!).

Feb. 2, 2009
I'm so blessed to be back in Mae Sot. I have had awesome times with the street kids and safehouse kids this week! I am adjusting back to being in Thailand and trying to remember how to drive the Land Rover, and stay on the left side of the road. Tomorrow the other staff and I are taking the safehouse kids to where they call "The beautiful place" a reservoir/dam area where we go for picnics. Tonight we just played in a field chasing each other around til the sun set. I loved seeing and remembering how carefree childhood can be, and was so SO happy to see these kids enjoying it. I've loved every minute with them.
Please be praying for one more staff member for the safehouse (because one of their live-in caregivers is getting married next week) we need someone with a loving heart and a LOT of patience. :) And please pray for my re-adjustment and for friendships here and a sense of community.
Love,
Rachel

Jan 20th, 2009

I can't wait to get back to these little cuties in Thailand. These little girls are two of the eight children that live in our safehouse along the Burma border. They used to live on the streets and beg for money but now their lives are transformed and they are in a safe place and being loved and cared for. I'm used to seeing them every day and spending at least a few hours coloring or playing with them. When I heard my friend was smothered with hugs when he came to see the kids I was very jealous, but in a little over a week I'll be ambushed with hugs too. :)

I've been back in the states for the past month and go back to Thailand on the 19th. It's been a wonderful time at home and catching up with friends, but it will be hard to leave (as it always is) but will be great to be back for another term.

Jesus was a refugee

Dec. 20, 2009
Merry Christmas!
I hope you are enjoying the Christmas season. I've found myself back in Pasadena for the holidays with my friends and family but am also really missing the street kids out in Thailand. I wonder if they are warm, if their stomachs are full, if they are safe.
Tonight I'm reminded of a child who was born without a home, in a dirty room, surrounded by animal feces. He was born a refugee, destined to wander from town to town. I wonder how often he went hungry, didn’t have a roof, or became exhausted and just laid his head on a rock and cried. He deeply identifies with us in our hurt and weaknesses and this gives me hope. It's incredible to me that Jesus, God of the universe, understood what it was like to be like you and me. This same child also became someone who brought hope to the world. I’m glad that he knows and cares for each life, and these children are precious to him. I’m glad to know my friends that work with Compasio will be looking out for these kids and feeding them every day.

Hoping your Christmas is filled with moments of hope and joy.

Rachel

Kissed by a prostitute

So I've been really really bad about posting on here, and it's about freaking time I guess. So I'm going to post all of the updates I've sent out via email over the past few months to catch you all up.

Pattaya Praise
Nov. 15, 2008

God is taking over Pattaya City!!!
I have just returned to Mae Sot after a couple weeks of being down in Pattaya (where I worked last year with Randy and Edie Nelson). I attended Pattaya Praise and helped to take a couple teams around the city to different events. It was a completely awesome experience to worship God with amazing worship bands in bars, in front of malls, in school auditoriums (with the city Mayor attending and being prayed for), They even let us hand out bibles in a public school assembly and play concerts there for the kids. And even in a huge venue called Tiffany's (a transvestite show that attracts many to the city). We crowned Jesus king over Pattaya in that place and even got to pray for the owner's wife. It is a very significant place in the city as one of the original places that started bringing sex tourists.


Kissed by a prostitute:
It was amazing to see God being worshipped and praised in the places in the pockets of darkness that exist all around the city. We got to pray with students, bar girls and owners, and recovering prostitutes. I ran into a lady that I'd seen in the bars last year and got a chance to pray with her. Her name is Pen. I hugged her and said God loves you very much (in thai) and she beamed a smile at me and kissed me on the cheek. It was so sweet. I think she just felt loved there that night (a pure love unlike what she's used to receiving from crude men), and I think something touched her soul. There were other ladies there that listened to the concert and testimonies but hung back from being prayed for. One had very sad haunted eyes and she was wearing black. I didn't catch her name, but please pray for her and all the women like her.

A glimpse into the city:
We went on a prayer journey and prayed at the gate of the city, and at key places, and on the mountaintop overlooking the city. There were teams of thai dancers that performed, some breakdancing teens too.

Lessons in giving from beggars

So, I went to the street restaurant today, where we feed the beggar kids, armed with supplies, colored pencils and a stack of white paper. I only had to park my motorbike at the front of the market when the first lady approached me. She was dirty and her hair was a mess, she was carrying a toddler in a sling around her. She made the universal sign for hunger, of hand to mouth then an outstretched hand for a donation. I motioned in sign language, let's go eat over there! (She speaks Burmese and I speak Thai, so sign language is used a lot here). We went down the alley way to the restaurant where rice is only 10 Baht a a plate (30 cents). Along the way we picked up the usual suspects, all our street kids. Sometimes there are only 3 or 4 that we find in the market, but today 13 showed up! (I guess word gets out fast!) We all sat down for a meal at the table with green peeling paint. I held the adorable chubby toddler while the mom ate. The sad, hopeless look she had while begging had been replaced by a beautiful smile. I was blown away by her beauty.

Another mother showed up, the mom with red stained teeth and a gaggle of kids that all beg for a living. She has a newborn, who recently had a high fever, and should NOT be out on the streets already picking up diseases at this tiny age. I asked to hold the baby, and she wrapped his bottom in a dirty blanket in case he felt the urge to pee on me or worse (this has happened to my friend Sia before, we have it on video!). While I held the red faced, weakly crying baby, I prayed aloud for him. Now I don't usually just bust out praying for people, but the urge came over me, and it just seemed natural. So I prayed that God would bless this little baby's life, keep him safe and healthy, and that he would grow up and have a good life and hopefully escape the cycle of poverty. I spoke to him gently and said "I'm sorry this is the life you were born into, you couldn't choose where you were born. But now that you are loved. Jesus loves you SO much, and we do too."

He kept crying hungrily, so the mother, who was still busy eating, picked him up and handed him to the other mother, who, without giving it a second thought, pulled up her shirt and started nursing him. My jaw dropped open, I had never seen that before! I've heard of wet nurses, but never seen someone just pick up and nurse someone else's baby! But somehow, (even though it was weird to my western mind) these ladies just knew, this child is hungry, let's feed him. I wonder if they even knew each other... but they saw a need and they met it. What did they possess? Nothing, but still managed to give and meet needs of hungry children.

The children and I had fun coloring, writing abc's and I learned how to say Dog in Burmese (Kweh) from a 12 year old boy named Noh-deh. For a few minutes, they were just children again... we really want to get a drop in shelter started for these kids, so they can just have a safe place to come by and hang out, get food, relax and play.

Yes, Jesus loves me

Last night was such a special time with the babies. I had just recovered enough from my stomach illness that I was finally able to venture out of the house (for the first time in 3 days), and I hadn’t seen the little ones at the safe house in so long. So I went over there around 8pm to say goodnight to them, they met me at the door with huge excited hugs and said, “We heard you were sick, so we’ve been praying for you!”

These kids are amazing! Back in June they were living on the streets, had no real family and came from a Muslim background. Now they have been at the house over four months and tell me often things they’ve learned like, Jesus loves me!

And Saja, the 8 year old budding artist, always asks me to sketch with him and I asked him, “What should we draw?” And he said, “Prah Yesu, Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. And then down below lets draw all the children in the world. Jesus loves everyone. And then here, let’s draw me, really big, looking up at Jesus.” Awww. I am SO proud of them. They are really growing, both in their love and care for others and in their love for God and letting God love them.

And that night I got to tuck 2 year old Ali into bed, tell him a story, and sing him some lullabies (he requested “Jesus Loves Me” because he can sing along for the chorus and do the sign language to “Yes Jesus Loves Me” and then at the end of the song we always clap and say Yay!), and then I patted his back ‘til he fell asleep. He was so precious. I love sleeping children.