A reflection written by Anji Barker from the Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH) in Klong Toey, Bangkok.



Each night as I go to bed my feet ache, I feel as if I have walked a thousand miles, and actually in terms of life’s dramas, some days I have. Yesterday for instance, started with at 5.30am as we have started a Fresh Food Delivery Service, to employ young men. The customers order their produce through our online shop, and the guys here go and buy the fruit, veggies etc..from the local market,  and deliver it to apartments and condos for a fee. So far it is proving a real hit www.hhdelivery.com. The deliveries on their way by 7.00am and the preschool kids start arriving. I have a chat to a grandma who wants to show me her -granddaughter’s dental work that our centre had organized the day before. The 4 year old girl has 13 very rotten and infected teeth still to be pulled out but grandma is so happy that last night she was able to eat proper food.

The unoh team gather at 8.30am and we share in our daily communion. The team is now 7 people, having Ashleigh Newam and Amy Nettlebeck from Ringwood CofC  helping us this year. After communion it is off to the handicrafts room to see what orders await and what things need sending. Things among the women are tense after two of them had a screaming match the previous day. Sometimes a fun place to work,- sometimes stressful!

Budget reports completed, and my neighbor arrives to be driven to the hospital for her Tuberculosis check up. She is dying, she has aids and drug resistant TB. Three hours of waiting in the heat resulted in seeing a doctor for 20 seconds and coming away with two large bags of medication and syringes. She will require twice daily insulin injections plus thrice weekly TB ones. This will need to be done by a UNOH team and one of our teachers- not me I am scared of needles!

Back at the community centre emails await, some booking enquiries for the Helping Hands Cooking school,  and a catering Job for Helping hands Catering service. A trip to the market to help source some of the more western style requests for tomorrows delivery orders and eventually arriving back at home at 6pm. Not there for 10 minutes when a neighbor who has an autistic son (3yrs old. ) comes over asking for help to find a school that will take her son. Disability is still treated like contagious disease in Thailand and this mother weeps as she tells about her struggle to care for her son with no support or help from anyone. I take her to the Community centre to meet with my boss who is a specialist teacher. She does an assessment and sees that this boy needs all sorts of help before being ready to come to our school. A plan is put in place and I start thinking of contacts we have that can help this family.

7.30pm I walk home again this time with Ashleigh and a single mother with 4 children, who is part of the handicrafts project. She needs some samples to copy that I have at my house. Before they leave I am given an 18th month old baby to look after while his mum, and 10 year old sister go and beg for money. They pick him up again at 11pm. By then Ash has returned from Soccer and has various neighbors in and out watching the world cup-more soccer of Course!

Needless to say that as I crawl into bed with exhausted feet, and I am grateful to God that my own kids are on a holiday with their grandma. They are out of this oppressive heat and the chaos of life, for a little precious time that I also look forward to in a few weeks. Feet have significance in Scripture and in many cultures they have meaning- in Thai culture they are considered the dirtiest part of the body and showing the souls of your feet is very rude. Yet it was feet that Jesus washed, and it is our feet that take us to these places where we are called to serve, to be salt and light. If we take that seriously our feet will be very tired and sore! Yet we rest in the confidence that Christ has walked these same footsteps and others will come after us to finish the kingdom job that overwhelms us.

Anji Barker

Impact team member, Leanne Whitfield has written about her experience of spending two weeks in Thailand in April.

"Going on the Impact trip to Thailand was the fulfilment of a long-term dream of mine. As a wife and mother of four, I found that leaving my family to embark on this adventure was challenging. Therefore, with a mixture of fear and excitement I flew out to Thailand with seven other teammates. 

Our first week was spent in the Klong Toey slum in Bangkok where we ran a holiday program for 40 children from a community centre in the middle of the slum. We did a range of activities from photography to music, hip-hop and craft. I was involved in craft. What first struck me as I began the class was how open the children were to us. We could not speak their language but we did speak a language that was universal, love. These kids were desperate for love, the appropriate type of love that is so deeply neglected in this place.

It is hard to comprehend how these children survive. The conditions of the slum are appalling to say the least. A couple of days into the trip I found myself wanting to run away. I desired to get back to my clean, nice smelling house and away from the stench of hopelessness that was so evident.  But then I was reminded of a song written by Brooke Fraser called Albertine. The line of the song that came to mind was “now that I have seen, I am responsible” I do not think it is possible to see these things and then go back to a normal life and pretend this situation doesn't exist.

I was also excited to visit Rahab, an organisation helping women get out of prostitution in the heart of Bangkok. We took gifts from the women at Riverview and it was special to see these gifts travel from Perth to Thailand and into the hands of these precious women.

The classes were crazy, the heat and humidity was overwhelming but we all loved the opportunity to inspire and ‘love on’ these children that are so neglected.  The way things are done in Thailand was certainly a challenge, for instance one day a group of us took the littlies aged 4-11 to a water theme park. Sounds great doesn’t it?  However, thirty kids who can't swim, at a water theme park, on top of an eight storey building with no safety rail, is quite an experience.  Nevertheless, they all survived and a great day was had by all!

Our second week was quite different. We travelled to northern Thailand to Chaing Rai. As it turns out the timing was great as things were really starting to heat up in Bangkok with the red shirts protests. In Chaing Rai, we met up with Doug Higgins the director for Capacity in Thailand.  On Sunday, we helped run a church service.  The passion of the Thai people worshipping was truly inspirational.   In the afternoon, we had a remarkable opportunity to visit a remote village where the people had never seen foreigners before. We ended up on top of a hill in their little church conducting another service. These people were so welcoming of us and we got the pleasure of praying for some of their people who were sick.  This was a truly incredible experience to be able to minister to these people and to have them receive us so warmly. 

Another highlight for me was to be able to spend time with Dim and Jim. These women run the Akha Safehouse for at-risk girls that the Foundation has been supporting for several years. They are going through a very difficult time at the moment and although we could not fix things for them, we could encourage them. 

Although a lot of our time was very intense, we did have a lot of fun and laughs. We went elephant riding and travelled on a long boat. Some ate frogs and other strange things and the rest of us laughed along. There is much more I could say about this trip because it was so action packed.  Now that I'm back home there has been a lot to process.  The faces of the people I have met and the faces of the children are frequently in my mind. I will never forget this experience and feel truly privileged to have been a part of what the Foundation is supporting overseas".

Leanne Whitfield

Hey Family,

We are preparing to leave Wiang Papao and the pastors we have been working with here, Pastor Supote and Pastor Mam.

They are beautiful people who have such a great vision to help people in this area.

This morning the team did more construction work. Adam went very hard and worked all day brick laying and the rest of the team brick laid and tiled until lunch and then after lunch we went out to visit a new village.

At this village, this church will be building 30 homes with the help of Leannes mum and Rod, who are in the process of shifting to Thailand to work on this massive building project. So inspiring.

The team are safely tucked into bed right now, ready for an early morning start tomorrow. We will be going on a long boat ride tomorrow and riding elephants, for a day of rest after a big 10 days of lots of work.

After the elephant ride we will be staying as a team at the Akha safehouse in Mai Sai, up near the border of Burma.

We miss you all.

Some vegemite on toast, a cup of tea and our own beds are eagerly awaited.

With love

amanda and the team

Hey family and friends.

Thailand is quite chaotic and this is the fifth time I have tried to write a post in the last three days and this blog is not cooperating...

Everyone is well and doing great. We are in Chang Rai, we left Bangkok just in time before the craziness escalated on Saturday. Im really glad we are north at this time, as Bangkok sounds pretty tense.

The team did the most amazing things on Sunday, with Nathan preaching on a psalm from David, Charl and Kellie Spoke their testimonies, Amanda and Leanne lead Bible studies. The team sang and Izumi danced in a church that is on fire in a very small villiage in between Chang Rai and Chang Mai. The Pastors are delightful, and live so simply. God is doing a  great work in such a rural and removed place on earth.

Then we travelled on the back of a truck up a mountain, to a very remote villiage. They said we were the first foreigners there for a very long time (if not the first ones there), they were so excited that we had come that they killed their chickens and pigs and made us a feast with chicken feet and all (nathan ate the chickens feet) as we sat on the floor in a room that only has solar power for two hours a day. This brought a lot of perspective.
We walked up the side of a hill to a little church and we prayed for people from the village. A little girl broke our hearts as she was deaf and asked God for healing. We have out skipping ropes and bubbles to the children. Such a great memory.

The team are well.
We have a big couple of days planned including construction and elephant riding, possibly a little day trip into Burma.

Much love and missing you all from the team...

Hey family. Everyone is fine, we are not near the area where the red shirt protests are happening. The team are safe, keep us in your prayers however.

Kelley, Annette and Nate, have stayed in bed today with a little sickness, pray for quick recovery. We are thinking mostly heat exhaustion from the very hot weather, so please don't stress, but pray for their speedy recovery.

Also if the situation gets worse, it will be more difficult to leave Bangkok on Saturday, as the airport might shut down, so keep us in your prayers for safe passage out of Bangkok on Saturday night.

Aside from these little updates, I can hear nathan drumming away with the drums and guitar group, lisa and leanne are covered in tye die from dying library bags for the kids with a transfer of their photo on it, taken by the photography class.

And a yummy lunch beacons.

Peace, family and friends

amanda and crew

we have a lift in our accomodation...but thats as flash as it gets...we squeeze into it, but unfortunatley it has no sensors for the doors closing, so everyday people get stuck. Leanne got really jammed in the lift doors today.

some days funny.

today not!

Thailand...we are loving it here in hot Bangkok...one of the highlights is Poo's food! She is an amazing business woman who has a thai cooking school and a catering business...and its flourishing!
Today Leanne, Adam, Kelly and I along with the Thai Unoh team took 32 little kids to the water park and we had an amazing time. The kids loved the slides especially the big ones! All the kids came to the community centre wearing the tye-dye tshirts we made with them yesterday...it was very precious to see! I think the adults would like a tshirt too! It was easy to spot the kids at the water park and shopping centre in their cute shirts!

Yesterday we also visited Rahab ministries in downtown Bangkok which is a light among the darkness in the red light district of Patpong . It was so inspiring to meet Pry, a beautiful Thai lady working for Rahab. She had such a soft heart and we were privileged to hear her story and also give out gifts to some of the Rahab girls. All the girls bought jewellery and Amanda even scored a beautiful pearl necklace from Charl! (He is learning fast hehe). We had photos with the girls and even had an improtu hiphop danceoff lead by Izumi!

Leanne, Nathan and I are off tonight to bake cupcakes with Poo and the rest of the team are making shoes!
Love and Peace

Lisa

I think it's safe to say we are having an absolute blast!
A couple of days ago Izumi and I each ate a fried frog. It was pretty tasty, but not so good if I thought about what it was.

Today we walked through the slums to get to the Community Centre and found a couple of kids wearing the tie-dyed shirts they'd made yesterday. By the time we made it to the centre there was a big group of them, it made me feel like the Pied Piper of Klong Toey!
We're coming up to half way through the day and Lisa, Leanne, Adam  and Kellie have taken a group of littlies to a water park. Nate has been doing graff hats with another group. Amanda and Charl have been teaching photography, with some ah-may-zing shots being taken. Izumi's little Hip-Hop dancers are busting moves left right and centre. Nathan and I have been hanging out with the music kids, they're pretty good already (without us) but it's great to hang out and engage in some mutual learning.

The humidity has been pretty killer these last couple of days but I think we're holding up pretty well for farang.


It's such a priviledge to be here, doing the little we can to make life a bit better for these kids. They're having a great time and so are we.

Annette