Wednesday, 19 August 2009
taking care of kids is tiring! for the past 2 days, i have been waking up at 6 plus, and taking care of kids until evening time, before going to teach English at the low-cost housing estate (for yesterday) and going for prayer meeting (just now). teaching English to Nep in the afternoon for 1.5 hours is considered a break for me haha... looks like i'll be sleeping earlier and earlier at night from now on, if not i'll struggle to wake up in the morning! the good thing is that the kids are cute, and they are definitely different from kids in Singapore! Nong guitar has been sticking to me for the past 2 days, so i've been teaching her how to count from one to ten in Chinese, since she knows how to count in Thai and English already :) by the way, her mom is my colleague in the childcare centre, and her dad is a friendly guy who will be leading worship this coming week! it will be his 1st time too! Pastor Pairoj will be coming for service this Sunday so he's stressed about leading worship haha... if you remember, Pastor Pairoj comes to Ban Chang fortnightly, and he has a high standard for worship and music!
i'm really thankful for Pastor Anong and her 2 "sidekicks": P' Kat and Baa Lam Yay (aunt Longan)! these 3 women of God have been helping me very much in settling in, and in filling me in whenever we go for cell groups and house visits to pray for people. Pastor Anong is very thankful to God for the 2 of them because they follow her whenever she goes for visits, and are very faithful in praying and serving God, all of which i have seen and praised God for. Even for today's prayer meeting, there were a total of 5 people: Pastor Anong, me, one of the teachers at the childcare centre, and guess who? the 2 faithful women of God! P' Kat is very funny and caring, she tries to learn the Chinese for "God bless you" (神赐福于你) but struggles with the 4th word, because there is no such sound in Thai. she also likes to buy a lot of food, making all of us fat haha! for Baa Lam Yay, she went with pastor Anong and me to the inter-religion seminar and translated for me the whole 2 hours when pastor Anong was on stage. she also has a heart of evangelism, reminding me of my mom! last night she talked to someone who apparently came to church before but not anymore, when we were at the local hospital visiting a sick church member. she encouraged the woman to come to church this week, and also for the evangelistic event on 1-2 Sept. pastor Anong couldn't remember the person when she was introduced, so it's good that Baa Lam Yay helped to befriend the woman when she came to church.
moment of the day: when the kids sang to Don Moen's Give Thanks. the combination of doing the sign language, Don Moen's classic voice, and seeing the kids sing and wave their hands was overwhelming. i had to try very hard to keep the tears from coming out (not very good to tear in front of kids haha...), but it's moments like this that i treasure. there are strangely many moments like this in Thailand... i wonder if that means my heart was so hardened that God had to bring me to Thailand to soften it, or something else...
giving thanks at 21:18 :)
david chow en yuan