Gone Fishing - Two Days of Activity

The days are beginning to run together, so processing what we did on what day is getting more difficult, and all food is beginning to taste like fish. Friday morning was mostly prep work for the first leg of the Youth Camp tonight. We were unsure as to how much response we would get, so we thought we would “drum up some business.” We went to the Secondary School in Leong Nok Tha (the community near Ban Yea). This campus is huge! They have over 2500 students in 7th-12th grade. We just showed up and headed to the English department. The teachers were gracious and welcomed us in. Some of our team chatted with teachers while the rest of us mingled with students. Most were nervous around us, some were openly friendly, but all were courteous and acted happy to see us. We made some contacts and invited those we spoke with to come out, plus we received an invite to go back to the secondary school to do some conversational English with the classes. That was a new addition to our agenda, and will be fun.

The afternoon included final preparation for the camp plus visiting with the area missionary, Tony. He has been a joy to visit with as he is near my age and we have much in common. Friday night camp was fun. We had around 45-50 kids show up, most of whom we spoke with at school earlier. As I have mentioned, I am a pretty structured person, but this camp is very fluid. Kids were still very shy during ESL exercises, and most have had very little conversational English, so there was a lot of giggles and silence. So, I just showed off the pics of my girls and beautiful wife which seemed to break down barriers.

Rojena, again was pretty amazing. He really connects well with the kids and speaks their heart language. Even though we have some folks that speak the language, we are still farang. Just about all of the kids, made indication that they were interested in receiving Christ, but these are teens and likely to follow the crowd. The experienced folks say the conversions are not likely genuine unless they want to be baptized which is a huge step. Most feel that this is just the foreigners' religion and they are being polite. We will see how many come tomorrow.