Pray for us

I thought i would write and ask for prayer. We have been on a week long marathon doing Christmas outreaches. They have been very effective, but we are all feeling the toll. As I write this post, it's 9:30 and my husband and all three of my boys are still sleeping. For those of you who know Clinton, know that he doesn't sleep past 7. But he is pooped! However, we have one more outreach today and are praying that some will come to the knowledge of the Great King! We are honored to serve the Lord in Thailand and as every year passes we fall more in love with the people and eagerly anticipate them coming to know our Lord. I hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas and have spent time thinking on our Saviour, who was born a man, and came to die in our place. Oh, what love! love to you all amber

Bible club Christmas party

A picture is worth a thousand words. Candy is praying with the children and they are agreeing with the prayer! We never thought that we would work with children..... especially clinton, but God has put a love in our hearts for the chidlren of Ban Pru. The next two post are pictures of our Bible club Christmas party. These chidlren, about 12 of them, come to our Bible club every week and study the Bible. They are faithful and growing in a knowledge of God and what it means to be a disciple. We thank God for this priviledge to reach out to these little ones. Many of them spend from the early morning until the late evening taking care of themselves. The little boy on the left in this picture is alone from 6 am until 8pm. He goes to school Mon - Fri but he comes home to an empty house, and on Saturdays he fends for himself.
This is You. She is one of Clinton's favorites. Her heart is very soft towards the Lord. She has a younger sister, Yim. Their parents are divorced and their mother raises them on her own.
This is Naam the oldest of the four sibblings that I write about in my next entry. This little girl has had a very hard life! She's been the primary care giver for her three younger sibblings and has lots of anger inside. She's been beat so bad that her mind isn't all the way there. Please pray for her! We want to see the love of God break through all of her pain!!

Bible club Christmas party

Here are the six girls that regularly attend our Wednesday Bible club. from lft to rt Nong Yim, Nong Bia, Nong Bang, Nong You, Nong Nim, Nong Naam Here are some of the little boys. lft to rt Nong Nathan, Nong Tha, Nong Bam, Nong P and Candy who came as our special guest speaker to share the meaning of Christmas with them.
Here is a picture of Nong Nim, as you can see she has some white stuff on her neck. This would be powder. After the Thais take a bath, they put on lots of powder. It helps them stay dry and it also lets everyone know that they have had a bath! This is a big one in Thailand!! They take three baths a day. Once in the morning, once at around 1 or 2 and then again at night. They think that foreigners are dirty because we only take a bath once a day.........
This is Nong P. Him and his sister Nong Bang who is only 6, are locked into their house every day from 7am until 3:30 while the two older sibblings go to school and the mother and grandmother go to work. So you have a 4 year old and 6 year old in the house all day alone! It breaks our heart. However, we will be giving them both a scholarship and they will both be attending school this next school year. Praise the Lord!
this is P's brother. He goes to school and he loves to worship God!!!

Christmas block party

God is so good! He put the idea in our hearts to have a Christmas block party for the children of our neighborhood. We were believing for 60, but scared that we would only have about 20, and God gave us 96 children!!! Including the adults there were about 110 of us in all. This far surpassed what we thought! The next 6 blog entries will be about the party. I tried to put the pictures in the sequence by which they happened. Enjoy! In Thailand, the Thais have block parties when people get married, die, or go into the temple to be a monk. They rent tents, tables, and chairs and provide food and alcohol. There is loud music playing and people getting drunk and eating all day and all night for anywhere from 3 to 7 days! So the Lord put it in Clinton's heart to do an outreach using the same kind of idea. We worked our bottoms off, but had a blast!!! We were in the preparation process for about 4 days and on the actual day of they party we started at 7am and didn't lay our heads on our pillows until 11:30! We had 6 different "stations" in which we had groups of 15 rotate through. We had finger painting, which the Thais had never done, but loved, face painting, needle work, foot soccer sitting in chairs, blind folded two people and saw who could clip the most clothes pins on the other person, and catch the flag. The kids had a wonderful time. HOWEVER, THE REASON OF THE OUTREACH WAS TO TELL THEM ABOUT JESUS AND THE REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS. We had two different Thai people share, and we showed the children's version of the Jesus film. I think our Wednesday Bible club will grow after this outreach. Please continue to pray with us for the people of Ban Pru! Much love, The Garsees

Getting ready for the party take 1

Clinton and Nan getting the house decorated. He is so creative that we decided that he should be in charge of decorations We had all the children sign up and receive name tags with a number because we had drawings for gifts. There were 87 children who registered, and after that we ran out of name tags. We had 13 staff who were helping. In all there were about 110 of us!!!!
This says Happy New Year in Thai.
I just had to add another kitchen picture...... look at all these women around one pot! Read on in anothe post about how Thai people do things.

Getting ready for the big party

Here's the little boys helping put up all of the tables We had 10 tables with 6 chairs at each table. The kids were sooooo excited!
Nong Bang helping with four chairs! She's a precious little girl and those who gave money will help this little girl go to shcool this year. She is 6 and has not been able to go to school because she has to take care of her 4 year old brother while her mother goes to work. The mother and older chidlren leave the house at 6 and Bang and her little brother are locked in their house from 6am unitl 3:30 everyday except Sundays when they go to church with us.
Wow! Aren't these two little boys strong!
Chase Tanner helping put the table clothes on the tables.

Fish balls anyone??

Here's Saaw and Bang washing the fish balls that will go in the green curry that we are going to eat after the games are over. The kitchen was too full so they had to wash them on the side of the house...... yes, in Thailand we can do this. But I can't imagine anyone in America taking their food to the side of the house to wash it. Can you??? But here, it's seems quit natural. If the sink is not avaliable, go the the next best place... the faucet on the side of the house. : )
In Thailand, everything is a group effort. In fact, when we first came over here, this drove us crazy. If you wanted to take something back, if you needed special assistance, if you are washing fish balls.......... it takes at least 2 to 5 people. Jing, jing!! (really)

How many Thai does it take to make a meal

The answer....... a whole LOT. There were about 7 Thai ladies in my kitchen yesterday helping make food for the party. You will notice in several of the pictures they are squatting on the floor. That's how they do it. I have two perfectly good counter tops for them to work on, but everyone of them went straight for the floor. Here's Saaw, Nan, and Jaw
Here's Jaw and La cutting vegtables
P Noi, Nim and Nan's mom, with Saaw and Naam in the back.
I put in another picture of the tent from the side.

Christmas block party take

Little boy listening to the Word of God being taught Chian and Colton leading out one of the games
Game of catch the flag
Saaw andNim, these two girls are some of our helpers. Saaw, on the left is a gem!!
Kids at the cross stitch station. Mee Kiaw is doing the overseeing

Christmas block party for kids

These are just a few of the precious faces that came to our Christmas party One of the stations that we had was finger painting. After the chidlren were done we hung their pictures on the fence. At one point in the day when I looked over and saw the fence lined with all of these pictures, it brought tears to my eyes.
Here's Clinton at the face painting booth. Thai children love to have their face painted.

After the games we served food. You can see Chian and Chase and the other people who were there to help us. We all had on red shirts.