Monday: Tearfund village

We drove the 3.5 hours one way (around chiang rai) to a tear fund village. It provided a really good insight to what tear fund / Compassion International does. Throughout Thailand, tear fund has 33000 children in 220 projects. Most of these are in the northern parts of Thailand. In the project we went to there are 127 sponsored children of the 400 or so children that live in this area. 

We drove to one village and spent time with a family with three children who are involved as recipients of sponsorship. With the kids, we played a game similar to petanque(sp?) except with stones. Sitting in their thatched hut with fire burning inside and drinking Chinese tea, we were able to ask lots of questions with the help of our translator. Both parents married at 12 years old (which is common in the villages) and had children by the time they 14. Asking what the kids what they wanted to do when they got older, they replied "doctor" and "soldier." These are comments that would not be possible in the other villages we had visited where all anyone really knows is survival. Nor would they have been possible for their parents a generation earlier. These children have dreams because there is now education and resources available to them. 

Tear fund works with families in need like this one. They come into villages where a church already exists and work alongside the church on the basis that the church (in their thinking)  knows the needs of the community best. This means that the projects they do are a little further down the development chain from some we have seen in these last few days where there has been little contact with the outside world (and therefore no church, water, school or electricity) until Christians from  groups like ITDP(our potential partner here) came along.

Once again we were treated incredibly well by the villages who prepared meals (which take 4-5 hours to prepare!) and gave much time to show us around. Their kindness in such poor conditions is a true blessing. We prayed together and celebrated the unity we have in Christ.