Thai birthday party


We had dinner at Amnaat's house again last night, Wednesday evening. His younger son turned 5 years old. Grandma and a sister-in-law cooked up a Thai feast for everyone, mostly adults. We sat at a table outside and on mats. It probably didn't look like a birthday party, there were no decorations, no hats, no cake, just a handful of kids who were related to each other and a bunch of us adults eating Thai food. There were birthday presents, though, and he was all excited.
Amnaat's wife died in the tsunami here in Baang Sak. He lives in a tsunami foundation house that belongs to his mother-in-law, built by Dean the guy we are working with, who got the project going to get 51 houses in this village rebuilt. Dean is quite a hero here. Now he is gearing up for his last building project, an Outreach Center for the community, to offer English, Computer, Guitar & a daycare center for working moms. We will be helping at the center along with another Thai Christian couple from Eastern Thailand. We will probably run the English program, they will run the daycare, and we are praying for a computer person. We are also praying for the guitar person, we think we already know who it may be, they just need to be sure this is where the Lord is calling them. We have been amazed at how God has orchestrated this. We just "happened" to move 3 houses down from where the center will be built and where Dean rents a house for his interns. What this center will be is very much along the same lines of what we wanted to do, and eventually we want to add the coffeeshop/art gallery idea (like as soon as the Karaoke place across the street goes out of business.)
God is good. So we are excited to be a part of what God is doing here in this part of the world.

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