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Global Urban Trek 2008
Playing with a PurposeJuly 9, 2008
Working with preschool-aged children every morning gets really tiring by the end of the week.
I love all of them, but sometimes I just don’t understand what playing with them for three hours a day is doing for them or me. This Friday, we went with the teachers at Baan Chivit Mai, Klu Moi and Ma Pehn to visit each of the students’ homes. Many of their homes had no light and older students were sitting near windows to get their homework done before nighttime in the one room with their entire family.
All our kids live in similar poverty. One mother invited us inside. As we entered, I knew I wasn’t the only one shocked. At school, her daughters are the best dressed. We would have never expected these girls to be living in such unhealthy circumstances. The floor was unstable and the walls were made of scrap wood. They live with their mother and their father’s very young sister. 
Their father is a heroin addict and currently out of the picture; their aunt is around 11 and not in school; and their mother is not participating in any sort of formal work. The assumption is that she’s selling drugs.
Klu Moi explained that many of the students have been abandoned by parents and taken in by family and friends, that others’ parents are participating in criminal work to get by, all of them are suffering the effects of poverty, and that an overwhelming majority are growing up in non-Christian homes.
I now understand what playtime with five American students for three hours a day does for children who don’t hear the name of Jesus outside of school, who don’t have backyards to run in or parents to help them learn to read. Now that we know their situations, we pray more for them and learn more with them each day.
For our American team time this week, we went to stay at the Rainbow House, a part of Thailand’s Christian Care Foundation for Children with Disabilities (CCD). Yesterday, we took a tour of the organization. It’s hard to put the experience into words.
CCD is doing some incredible Kingdom work. Many of the people CCD works with have cerebral palsy and other serious disabilities, and have been abandoned by their parents and most of society. As we walked into the government wards CCD has partnered with, I felt so close to Jesus. One of the women we saw had no eyes or nose, and it was difficult to make out her face. I had to keep myself from turning away.
Right then, I thanked Jesus for being the type of Savior who loves her and knows she’s beautiful. After really looking at her and the many women lying in beds around her, after touching them and seeing them smile, I felt like I had truly encountered God. I’m so thankful He allowed me to meet Him that way, even when my instinct was to look away.
- Jessica
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