Friday, July 20, 2012

Day 3 -- Ratchaburi

We went back to the school to teach and play with the Middle Schoolers.  We had a great time teaching the kids "I've got Joy" with hand motions.  They enjoyed the song and liked the hand motions.  On day 2, our team has taught them a song the day before called "Making Melodies".  The kids loved the song so much that we brought it back today.  If you want to know how it is done, please watch this tutorial video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QynR96wUwaI

Brian taught lesson on feeding 4,000.  He described a picture and had the kids draw the picture to see which group would match our picture.  We wanted to teach them the Bible and test their English at the same time.  All the kids participated and had lots of fun drawing pictures.  We then broke them up into 3 groups to play games.  We had "Freeze Tag", "Steal the Bacon", and "Rock Paper, Scissors".  The kids had a lot of fun.

As I reflect back on our trip so far, I had an opportunity to share my testimony to a small group Bible Study.  Although it is all in Thai, we had a translater.  During my sharing, the translater left and a new translator, named Boy, stepped in.  As I was sharing about encouraging other believers, I felt it was being received well.  But I felt that God was saying it was the translators opportunity to share.  A new believer in Christ, Deo, did not know how to pray, so I told him about the Lord's Prayer.  I asked the translator to explain the prayer.  When he explained, Deo was so touched by the message that he teared up.  He prayed on his own silently.  So, I asked him to pray out loud and allow us to hear him.  I learned that day that no matter how what message you might want to share that God may use other people to give the encouragement by sharing about what the Bible means.  When I share the gospel, I always believed that it is me that needs to talk.  That day, I learned that others need opportunies to share as well.  I felt encouraged to hear others share and learn about the Bible.
Later that evening, we went to go shopping for food to eat.  We were talking about exotic foods, so we decided to have some exotic foods and some regular meat.  We picked Deer, Rabbit, and Crocodile to eat.  While they were cooking the meats, I was the baby sitter playing with the kids.  There were 3 kids.  One only spoke Thai.  Her name is Emily.  She would not even look at me at first, but I tried talking to her in Thai.  She then opened up and wanted to play.  She took me around the house and telling me things.  Unfortunately, I did not know what she said to me, since it was all in Thai.  I had a chance to learn new Thai words and practice those that were taught to me.

I learned that no matter what language barriers that you have even in your own language that the message can still be shared.  When I practiced my Thai with Emily, I did not know how much of a bond that could be built.  She wanted to play with me.  She wanted me to carry her and fly her like an airplane.  She wanted me to fly her everywhere around the house and outside.  You could see her smile.  I learned that a bond can happen even though there is a language barrier.  We should not stop sharing or think that we cannot share about the gospel because others may not understand you.  A bond goes farther than any words that you can say.  It was sprinkling and Emily wanted me to hold her hand to get back in the house.  I felt encouraged to know that I will have more opportunities on this trip to share more without fear of a language barrier.  Boy, Deo, and Emly has been so far very encouraging for me on the trip so far.  I cannot wait to see what will happen next.

-- Alvin Hsieh

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