Joys in the Midst of Challenges

In past blogs I've tried to convey some of the challenges of our work here in urban slum communities, but there are also many joys amidst those challenges. Here I want to share two joys that we experienced last week.

Last Thursday at our cell group in our local community I had the joy of sharing the Gospel in Thai with a man who has been coming to our group for a few weeks. Not only has he been coming, but he has allowed us to meet in the shade of his front yard since the weather has been too hot to meet in Jemuay's home! He had been to a church in the past, and as we chatted about God's love it became clear that he was now praying to God instead of to Buddha for such things as happiness, a good night's sleep, and the provision of enough to live on, and he knew that Jesus died to save us, but he didn't know why we needed saving and from what. So it was a great joy to be able to share this with him. Bateung can be seen standing in the middle back of the photo below of our cell group in front of his home.



The other joy was visiting a 9 day old baby in the other community that we work in. On our first visit to this community we met Som, a girl in her early 20s, and started teaching her English every week along with a couple of other students. We have only seen her sporadically since then, including a few weeks ago when I noticed she was pregnant. We were excited to hear last week from her mother-in-law, who attends our cell group, that Som had just had a baby boy, so went to visit on Saturday. Here is a photo of Som, her baby, her mother-in-law (Mae Lek) and a nephew and niece. They're sitting in a house that Som's husband has started to build for them next to Mae Lek's house. The floor and roof are done, but he had to put make-shift walls of tin on two sides for now. When compared to all the paraphernalia that we had to have when we had babies, they have next to nothing, but it certainly hasn't affected the amount of joy that a new born baby brings to a family!