MAHASALACAM

This last week was an exciting week for the Siam Church youth group.
We went on a mission trip to a village in Mahasalacam, which is about
7 hours away from Bangkok. Khun Dree, one of our Church members,
originally lived there with her parents before moving to Bangkok.
While we were there we were able to stay at her parents' house. It
took us longer than we originally thought it was going to take because
it started pouring down rain when we were still a couple hours away
and quite a few of the roads that we had to pass through were flooded
over. When we finally got to the village, we found out that they had
had the worst flood in 25 year. All of the rice fields were flooded
over, with the floodwaters coming within 100 yards of the house.
The first day that we were there we didn't really do anything much
except for exploring around the house and getting to know the
neighborhood kids a little bit. We also went swimming a little bit in
the water around the rice fields. The Thai kids kept on joking about
leeches in the water but I never saw any. That night when we took our
showers we had to take them in an outhouse by pouring freezing cold
rain water on ourselves and scrubbing down with soap. The rainwater
was really clean, though, definitely A LOT cleaner than the rainwater
in Bangkok. The next day after we had breakfast we went out and
invited the neighborhood kids to come to the activities that we were
going to be having that afternoon, and also inviting all the adults to
a fellowship dinner that we were going to be having that night.
That afternoon when it was time for the activities to start however,
none of the kids showed up and we had to go and bring them there. Even
though we had to do that, a good amount of kids still showed up. We
did a skit of the Prodigal Son, had some Bible lessons on Moses and
then on Adam and Eve. After that we played some games. The adults
arrived more towards the end and watched the kids play the games. We
had a great time, even if we did get a little bet wet. There was a total of around 30 kids there. At around 4 o'clock the kids went back home and we prepared everything for the fellowship dinner that evening. At 6 everybody started coming back
again, and I helped serve the food outside to everybody and then they
came inside and sat on the rice mats while they ate. About the same amount of kids that had come before in the after noon came, and about 6 to 8 adults came also. After dinner the youth group sang a couple of worship songs and Bond and Am shared
their testimonies. Dad then shared from Matthew 7: 24- 27 about the
foolish man who built his house on the sand and about the wise man who
built his house on the rock and how we need to build our lives on the
rock, which is Jesus. From where I was sitting and listening I saw
that many of the kids and many of the adults were very attentive and
listened to what we had to what we had to say. I think though that
the thing that really touched me was that after all my Dad had shared we
handed out Bibles and as soon as the kids got them they sat down and
started reading them right then and there. In Bangkok when we handed
out tracks and Bibles to the kids there we almost never see them start
reading it right away, they usually just take them back home and
forget about them. I hope that the seed of faith that we planted in
that village will grow. The next day after saying good-bye to everyone
we gave a couple of soccer ball to the neighborhood kids as a good-bye
present. They were really excited about them. I hope that sometime we
will be able to go and visit them again. Please be praying that the
water in their rice fields will go down soon, or else they will loose
their entire crop.
Michael