Learning how to be a servant

As a Christian one thing we are striving for is to live like Christ lived. We want our lives to mirror His. Christ was an amazing servant. He served His Father's people. The people who live in the Agape orphanage are the best mirrors I have ever seen of Christ. They are constantly wanting to serve each other, love each other, and serve all the guests that come to the orphanage. I was able to preach to the children this morning and that was one thing that I told them. I told them that they are great followers of the two greatest commandements: to love God and love people. They are prime examples of what this looks like. They wholeheartedly love God and genuinely love people. I want to be like them. They are always serving me. I had the opportunity to talk to my mom tonight and she asked me if I do any chores here. I told her no and she was surprised. I explained to her that when I try to do things they always tell me no because they want to serve me. They want to serve me out of a genuine love and appreciation. Because of their love for God it simply overflows onto people. It was laundry time and I asked the girls to show me where to do my laundry and 3 of them took my laundry, washed them and hung them up to dry. As many times as I kneeled down with them to help them, they always said "no, no, no, we do". They are amazing! They would do anything they could for me. The girls are also always braiding my hair and constantly making sure I'm taken care of. We don't understand this kind of servanthood. Most of the time in America we serve people, yet we are always expecting something in return..."Well I did ....... for you, so you should do ......... for me". We are a very selfish people without even realizing it and these children are so unselfish.
These past two days were, you guessed it, amazing! I don't think a day is going to pass that won't be amazing! Well, maybe the day when I have to leave here won't be as amazing as all the other days :) Saturday I taught the children a really fun English lesson. Noah asked me if I had any experience in teaching English, because the lesson was really good, and I told him it was all God. I decided to make Saturday a day of shopping. I wrote on peices of paper different stores- the clothing store, shoe store, salon, school supply store, grocery store, and the computer store. I taught the children what you would say if you went shopping in each of the stores. Then I picked 3 children/store to be the employees at that store. Then all the other children had to go shopping at the stores. They had the conversation that they learned written down in their notebooks and they were aloud to look at their notebooks. They loved it! A lot of them really came out of their shells and were speaking very good English! I was so proud of them! I love hearing them speak. After the lesson, I gave them a break and we played some BINGO. I found a giant BINGO game in the store in Mae Sot and thought it would be a wonderful way to work on the children's number recognition. They loved it! We didn't have enough plastic pieces to use on their BINGO cards so all the children went and gathered their own stones and used those as their pieces to cover the numbers. It was awesome! BINGO played with rocks in Thailand, I loved it! The children loved to win because I brought candy from America and they loved getting it as prizes. If you want to send me things, the children definitely love American candy way better than Thai candy (American candy is way better :)) While we sat in the worship hall/classroom we kept feeling a wonderful breeze and sprinkles. It was drizzling all day and the weather was incredible! It has been gorgeous out the last few days, and I have actually been sleeping with a blanket at night because it gets chilly :)
After our fun BINGO game I went to Mae Ramart with Mae. I love spending time with her. She has become my new best friend. She loves improving her English with me and I love hearing her stories. She's so funny! Mae Ramart is a small village and everyone lives in their bamboo huts with the roofs made out of leafs. It's amazing how their roofs are made out of leaves. They have to change their roofs once a year. Not bad for a leaf roof.
Saturday night me, Noah, and Mae watched a movie on my laptop. They love watching English movies because it helps them practice their English. They both go to the University here and they are learning English. I will be going to their University on Thursday to meet with their English teacher and we will be discussing the English camp. I'm excited!
Today, we started our day with church. Pastor Winai took some of the children to one of the churches he has started in one of the villages. Pastor Winai was telling me today that it makes him very sad because the people who are attending this church want to love God and say they do but they don't want to leave their old lives behind. One of the little girls in the village came up to Pastor Winai and told him that her father won't stop drinking. Alcoholism is a very big problem here. In the church service though the man came up and confessed that he was drinking and that he promised he would try to change. Pastor Winai is doing amazing things in the villages for God! Since Pastor Winai was gone this morning, Mae asked me to preach. It's awesome being able to talk about God with these children who so desperately want to hear about Him. We did worship and played games. We played the musical hat game again and I won. I played some hardcore musical hats and I beat all those little kids. In the end we said it was the olympics. The little girl called herself Africa and I was America. I won the olympics for us :) Go America ;) After church I had the opportunity to teach the children a song. I taught them "Father Abraham, had many sons........" It was so much fun! The children also sing this song in Karen so they sang it in Karen and in English. They sound so amazing singing! It's seriously like listening to angels. I think that's how it's going to sound in Heaven :) After I taught them that song me and Mae went into Mae Sot. I wanted to buy a whiteboard. I have been working to make the worship hall like a classroom and a big whiteboard to put on the wall is what I really wanted. I had been writing on this little whiteboard practically on my knees. So this new whiteboard is awesome! Now I just have to wait for them to put it up on the wall. Things work a little slower here, not as efficient as in America, so we'll see how long it takes to get it up.
I moved today. I switched from my room to another room because last night I found a scorpion in my room. I was sitting on the floor and I looked at my bug net and the scorpion was on the inside of it. It was night time so every one was asleeop but I just happened to hear Solo talking in his room. I walked outside to go to his room and it was really dark. I thought I remembered that there was only two steps down from my room, but there was 3 and I missed one step and totally twisted my ankle. My ankles still sore but atleast I can walk on it. I hobbled over to Solo's room and told him there was a scorpion in my room. He came and killed it and told me that hecaught 4 scorpions in my room when he stayed in it and Mae told me that when her and Noah lived in my room she got bit twice by scorpions. So Pastor Winai told me to switch rooms. The children all helped me move all my stuff to the other room. I like the other room a lot better. It's nice and the toilet actually has a cover :) I'm all settled in my new room, and I set it all up to be my new home. I'll put pictures of my new room up to.
I had an awesome dinner with Mae and Noah tonight. The girls made us dinner. I noticed that Mae and Noah were eating every part of the chicken- meat, skin, fat, insides, and bone. She said that the Karen people eat every part. I explained that we don't do this in America and they thought that was strange. It's funny how, in America, we have such a surplus of food so we are so wasteful, but here they food is not so easily come by so they don't waste any of it. They eat everything. I'm not going to be that Karen, so I still eat only the meat. It's difficult to find the meat though because it's all cut up and cooked together. Oh well, I just tell myself "this is Thailand".



I've uploaded more pictures so check them out :)