AFC Bangkok 2008

So as I look at today’s date, I realize that I only have about 17 days left in Thailand. I just can’t make up my mind how I feel about this. I love Thailand and the people here, so I don’t want to leave because I don’t know when I’ll be able to return. But I also want to see everyone back home, not to mention the food I have been craving that I cannot find here. And it’s almost football season and I want to get my last full year of school started. But then there are students who I feel would be more interested in learning about God if I could be here longer to teach them.

What have I learned from this so far? I’ve learned that it’s not the work that I’m doing that matters, but what God is doing through me. I’ve planted and watered a seed and others can continue to water it, but only God will make it grow, in His time. I’ve learned that my needs and wants are not what are most important.  David writes in Psalms, “the Lord is my shepard, I shall not be in want.” God created us as people of who need and want, and He will provide those things for us. But those wants, should not be greater than our want for God. I am learning to trust God that he will provide for me.

I don’t know when I’ll ever be back in Thailand, but God has so much planned for me back in the States.

Tomorrow night during evening worship, I will be given the opportunity to preach again. Please pray that God will speak through me.

Please pray for Koon, one of my students. He is a very advanced student and enjoys reading the Bible in English. We only have a couple more classes together so we won’t be able to read much more in class. I gave him my Thai-English Bible so he could read on his own. This is the first step in a tough journey for a Thai Buhddist to take towards Christianity. As he continues to learn, if he believes and wants to become a Christian, he’ll have to make a tough decision. Becoming a Christian is like abandoning the family. Some parents will disown their children for making this decision. Thai people are very close to their family and don’t want to upset the family. Some Thais believe that all Thais should be Buhddist so if they became Christian, they would be less Thai. These are just a couple things that Thai Buhddists struggle with when learning about Christianity.

Pray for us all these last couple of weeks. I will be arriving in Dallas on Aug 11th, at 10:35 PM. Because it is so late, I will have to stay the night in the airport to catch the next flight from DFW to SAT at 7:30 AM. So I should be back in Jourdanton before noon on the 12th.

Friday morning, I took a van along with 8 students to Cha-Am Beach for English Camp. It is about a 3 hour drive to Cha-Am and because I had to wake up at 6 am, I slept all the way there. We got there just in time for lunch, and spent the first couple hours just playing games with the students and the Christians. In the afternoon, we played several “get to know you games” to try and get the students more comfortable with each other. We then taught what a homophone is and talked about several words that are homophones.  After this, went out to the beach to play a couple of games. Justin taught the students how to play a game called “Steal the Bacon” and I taught “Horseshoes.” After we were nice and toasted from the sun, we had a little bit of free time before dinner. Later that evening, we divided everyone into groups, and each group was assigned a skit they had to write and perform the next night. The skits assigned were: KungFu Panda as a horror, Indiana Jones as a chick flick, Prince Caspian as a musical, and Batman as a comedy. The groups were given time to work on their skits and to get ideas and props ready for their performance.
Saturday morning we taught more homophones and had each group write as many sentences as they could using the homophones. After lunch, we gave more time to work on their skits before having a sand castle building contest out on the beach. At night we had the skit show and karaoke.
Sunday morning, we had a worship service with the Christians and students. I preached and one of the Christians translated for me. I talked about having a common love, peace, joy, and gift of salvation. I did this to explain that God doesn’t care for just some people; he wants everyone to share in His love, peace joy, and salvation.
Overall, it was a great weekend. It was very tiring, but it was very fun. We will have today and Tuesday to regain our energy before we start teaching again on Wednesday.

Please pray for our students. We hope that camp was a way that they could see better how Christians live and act and understand more what we believe. We hope that they got to know the Christians better and built relationships with them that will continue after we leave.

In Him,
เอมัส (Amos)

As I’m writing this, I am exhausted. It has been a very busy week with classes, planning for Sunday Activites and planning for English camp. 

Wednesday morning, I went to the airport to pick up a group of 8 AFCers who will be teaching English in Northeast Thailand, and I also taught a few classes in the afternoon.  I had an advanced student come in the evening for his class. He said he had gone to the hospital earlier in the day because he had some type of stomach problem that was most likely caused by missing normal eating times, stress, and little rest. He said that the doctor told him that he should rest more and try not to work more than he has to, so that he can get better. It was interesting that we started talking about the importance of rest, because the night before, I listened to a podcast sermon over Psalm 23. In this podcast, the preacher talked about the important of rest and how God “MAKES us lie down in green pastures.” We read Psalm 23 together and talked about how God knows what is best for us. We then started to explore certain passages about Christian living, because he wanted to know if Christians were supposed to live a certain way. When Thai people think of America, they see it as a “Christian” nation. So anything that comes from America must in some way reflect Christianity. When they see movies that are filled with cursing and other awful things, they think that its ok for even Christians to act or talk this way. After we ended class, he told me that he would like to learn more from the Bible. I would ask that you pray for him and that you pray for me as we study God’s Word together.

On Thursday, I took the Kranuan team, 1 Thai Christian, and 1 Non-Christian, to the zoo here in Bangkok. When we got back, I went with P’Rung to pick up our T-shirts for English Camp, before I had class in the evening. Friday and Saturday were just normal teaching days so we really didn’t do anything more than teach.

Today’s English Activities was about American Idioms. We a game where the students were put in groups of 5-7, and had to match an idiom with its definition. After the game, we explained idiom one-by-one. There were a total of 21 idioms that we taught. After we finished our English lesson, we taught the students the song, “I will enter His gates,” then sang the songs we learned in the past activity days, so we sang, “Hide Me, Away,” “Sanctuary,” “Soon and very soon,” and “I’ve got peace like a river.”

Tomorrow and Tuesday are our off days, so hopefully we will be able to regain our energy for this next week. We will teach our Wednesday classes, but then we are leaving Thursday to go set up at Cha-Am beach for English camp. English camp will be held Friday-Sunday.

I meant to post more picture slideshows, but I have not taken as many pictures this year, mainly because I have so many from the past years, but also because my camera isn’t real easy to carry around everywhere. When I get back from English Camp, I’ll have plenty of pictures to make another video.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

In Him,
Amos

Well the past couple days have been pretty interesting as far as teaching schedules go. We lost 2 teachers from the first half of the summer and gained 1  teacher. The only thing was, that the one we gained, went to Singapore to try and get a new visa. Then there is Neale, the teacher who lives here in Bangkok. Neale has been out for 2 weeks because his wife was supposed to have a baby a couple weeks ago. She ended having their baby girl, Eleanor, Wednesday morning. This meant that we had students from 4 teachers coming to study but only 2 teachers were here. We had to combine all 4 classes with 4 different English books at 4 different levels. We were able to get through the 2 days of that. I met with an old student of mine, Bam, from a couple years ago. She has gone through a couple rough things lately and asked me today if I would be able to study the Bible with her again. Please pray for her and pray that I may be able to show God’s love to her.

We will be getting ready for English Camp which will be July 17-19. That means the next couple weeks will be very busy with preparation and teaching. Thank you all so much for everything!

In Him,
Amos