Family Together

Songkran is a significant event in the life of Thais, and is a time families reunite and spend precious time together. We at Hope Home try to ensure each staff member has enough time off over this period to visit their families if they live away from the family home. We also spend the time enjoying each others company and have a lot of fun too with the extra water play that this season brings. All very welcome in this time of year when it is also super hot, and sadly the pollution levels are dangerously high. Chiang Mai yet again boasted the highest air pollution levels across the world for a number of days. We are very grateful to our neighbourhood who noted that we were absent from our daily village walks for this period and came by to check up that we are doing okay. One neighbour also bought us a pile of water guns and play equipment ready for our Songkran fun. We feel very blessed to be so welcomed and accepted into this village community, and I trust our presence too is blessing them in ways we may never see.

This Easter at Hope Home we took the chance to attend our local Thai church for their morning service (not the sunrise one!) and our staff and children did amazingly well with a formal structured service that included 4 youth baptisms, 8 new church members being received in, communion and full sermon and Easter worship. The staff attending that day, bar one, are not yet Christians, and yet they took it all in, and many ongoing conversations have followed about the meaning of Easter and what it means for them personally. At home the Bible story times have also worked through the Easter story, with plenty of art and craft work too to accompany the story telling. My ongoing prayer is that every child and staff member will reach a real and personal understanding of who Jesus is, and invite Him into their lives. My personal challenge is to be a constant witness of Jesus through my words, actions and reactions, and to not shirk from opportunities to share my faith directly with the staff God has placed in our care.

The staff of the Social Development Services Unit are as busy as ever, but they do take a break over Easter and Songkran, and also all the Church of Christ in Thailand staff have a retreat away as one big family. They were at the beach this year and from the photos they sent it looked a whole heap of fun and team building. They too take the time to be away and visit extended family, as well as helping in their local churches with all celebrations. Pray for the staff to be refreshed and renewed and renergized for a fresh new year of service to the vulnerable communities they reach out to across Thailand.

Recently too we were thrilled to have a mum of one of our children, and a few of her village aunts, call in and visit her from their remote village. There was a group of four village women chosen by the local government authorities to represent their ethnic tribal group at a meeting on rights and access to services. The meeting was held in Chiang Mai, and on the last day the mum conjured up her courage to ask the authorities to pass by Hope Home so she could visit her daughter. It was a fleeting visit but clearly special to all involved and brought a lot of joy to all of us. Family matters, and this mum hopes that she can come again soon, maybe even courageously travelling on her own to come to us. Sadly we can no longer take this young lady back to her village due to her intense medical needs and the mum and community are unable to meet her needs in their village.

Pray for SDSU staff to start the new Thai year with renewed energy and desire to be Good News to the communities we serve.

Pray for the staff and children of Hope Home to stay healthy through this time of very hot weather and severe pollution.

Praise God for family, whatever form that takes, and for opportunities to be family together.

Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel through your support of BMS. I personally am so appreciative of your prayer support and encouragement. I look forward to being able to visit some of you in person over the next two months of May and June when home in the UK. Please do get in touch to see what my schedule of visits is. I too am looking forward to being together in person with family once again.

April is indeed a special month - full of promise and expectation - and Easter especially reminds us that our Hope is in Jesus - our risen Lord and Saviour - He is alive and His spirit dwells within us.