What a Weekend!!

Words cannot describe how amazing this weekend was... the best days yet! We had our cooking class Friday night and I learned so much! And the food was amazing. After a great dinner with funny stories about experiences the missionaries have had here my teammate Kristina and I met with two of the students at the bible college to practice their English. They just wanted to talk with us and have a conversation really so they can put what they know into use. One guy, Kohngaow, is a student from Laos. There are not bible training facilities there due to governmental restrictions so he is studying here. The other student is Lei and he is from Thailand. We talked for awhile but they have a curfew so it didn't last long. Saturday we got up and went to ATC (Antioch Training Center). ATC was founded and is run by Korean missionaries. They house students in highschool (which here is grades 6-12) and they go through an intense discipleship program. There are 13 students there now. They go to public school during the day but are discipled at night and then on the weekends they visit children in surrounding villages and then on Sunday run the church service and sunday school for the children. They are an amazing bunch of kids! We taught them English from 10-3. Previously we have just done basic vocabulary and sung some songs but we didn't expect for these students to be so advanced. We were wracking our brain to try and come up with stuff. We ended up teaching nouns, pronouns, verbs, prepositions, and we conjugated the verb to be. We also taught emotions and directions. Finally we ran out of material and everyone was tired of studying so we just played some games. One girl, Juang, is very dear to my heart. We became quite close. Her English is incredible and she is also studying Korean! She has such an amazing heart and I have enjoyed getting to know her. After teaching English all of the students went out to visit the children that come to Sunday school and we got to go along! They split up into pairs and take off on motorcycles to different villages in the area. It was quite an experience riding on a motorcycle in Thailand, but I survived :) . The two girls I went with didn't know much English so they couldn't really translate for me but it was obvious that people were surprised to see a foreigner... I got a lot of stares! Some of the children we visited wanted to give me something, so we had Som Tam. Som Tam is a very popular dish in the North East, it's like a papaya salad but it is sooooo spicy!!! I ate as much as I could to be polite, but my mouth was on fire!! After visiting all the children we went back to ATC and I helped Tuai cook dinner. We chopped up a bunch of leafy vegetable things. He is going to university but is interning with the youth at ATC and has been there for 5 years. Before long it was time to go. We really wanted to stay but they wanted us to come back because they thought we would be tired. We had another wonderful meal here at the bible college and then met up with Kohngaow and Lei again for a little bit. This morning we went to ATC for church and then went to an HIV orphanage to play with the children. These children are so precious and so starved for attention. They ran right up to us and clung to us the whole time we were there. None of them spoke English but it didn't matter, you don't need to know English to play. We had water ballons and made animal noises and spun around and played some hand-clapping games and sung songs. It was a blast! We were only able to be there for 2 hours... not nearly long enough! Then we went out to dinner and went to a village for a service tonight. The ATC students also ran this service, they are quite amazing! We got there early to talk and hang out and stayed as long as they would let us afterwards. It is so sad to come and get to know all these wonderful people only to leave them shortly after. My heart is so sad to have to go. This is practically the end of our ministry time here. Tomorrow we are driving a few hours North for a free day of shopping and eating Vietnamese and Italian food. I would almost rather stay here, and I would ask if it weren't for the fact that the students will be in school. Tuesday morning we will go to chapel at the bible college and then hop on a bus to Bangkok. It seems like every time I leave a place here my heart aches to stay, and so it goes with every place we have been. Several times people have asked me to come back and work, either to teach the missionary children or to live and work at ATC. It hurts to have to say no. Only the Lord knows where I will end up.