We currently have a business team and an outreach team in Thailand, here is an update from Megan Meinecke who is on the outreach team:

“We have been on three outreaches so far. One to Father Ray’s Children Home, one to Hand-to-Hand Orphanage, and one to the slums of Pattaya.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being shown the light of the city and the great work that is being done to protect the children, educate them, and launch them to bring change to their community. Father Ray’s Children’s Home houses all children but places a huge emphasis on specifically taking in children with disabilities. It is located deep in the city of Pattaya. They do not turn a child away.  They teach the kids vocational kills and do not make them leave the place until they are ready. They pay for their college or university. One boy was asked what he wanted to be, so he said “chef”…they taught him culinary skills, and years later, he is a chef.

Today was drastically different….a small team of us visited a slum where we saw not one but two babies that had major medical conditions, we also saw two elderly women who had been bedridden for years. We surrounded them and offered them our hearts, tears, smiles, and prayers. We continued on through the alleyways, approaching an elderly woman who had taken in her daughter’s baby, a one year old with a critical head condition. It was then I knew I needed to capture this moment-how else will the world know?

Leaving was hard. We wanted to provide even more. We have a nurse on our team who noticed the skin condition of one of the babies who was in danger and needing attention now. The Thai minister who was with us assured us that they would call for a doctor. It was a great reminder that we Americans are not the rescue mission. We are not the facilitators of relief- we are simply vessels.

One of the teams went out to the beaches last night and encountered a young woman. Her house was taken by the flooding in Bangkok within 20 mins. She and her family left for Pattaya to find income. She went to the beach to sell herself that night reluctantly, yet hoping for some way to feed her family. She had been there 10 minutes when the team approached her and invited her to dinner. There she broke down, unable to eat while her family still was struggling to eat. She said she felt guilty. We bought her some groceries and sent her on her way home to feed her family. Our Thai team is in contact with her and today we are going to meet up with her again.

TO SEE MORE PICTURES CLICK HERE.

TO READ MORE UPDATES FROM OUR TEAM CLICK HERE