February 11 - 12

February 11
Crafts Project at Chiang Mai New Life Center with Missionary Kit Ripley

As Karen and I stayed in Chiang Mai while team members Arlene, Sandy, and Karen were at the Starbucks Clinic, she and I enjoyed another fine breakfast at the Chiang Mai Downtown Inn together (love that pineapple!). After breakfast, we waited for a ride to the New Life Center (NLC) to begin a mission trip crafts project there coordinated through Kit Ripley. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding in our getting picked up, and after several phone calls and almost two hours later, we were on our way to the NLC in a "tut-tut" mini-cab, with instructions to the driver provided by Kit in Thai.

Finally at the NLC, we met its Director Karen Smith, her primary staff leader Kit, and an Akha NLC staff member named Fay. Fay recalled meeting another member of my Calvary Baptist Church in Denver (Maggi Sussman) who’d visited Thailand on another mission trip. Kit drove us to lunch at a nearby restaurant that was located inside a section of a Buddhist Temple.

After returning to the NLC, we prepared for our crafts project with the young women who live, learn, and work there. Although only one of them spoke a wee bit of English, we managed with Kit's help to communicate pretty well, and did so with joy. Thanks to a generous supply of paper, stickers, stamps, ribbons and paper-punches, we helped the young women produce some fine-looking Valentine’s Day cards for their loved ones.

Following a tour of the NLC campus, Kit drove us back to our hotel, where we found out that Arlene, Sandy, and Kerry had just returned from the Starbucks Medical Clinic. In the evening, our mission team met Mike and Becky Mann and their son Ryan at our hotel, and we walked a few blocks with them to have dinner at the “Antique” Thai restaurant. Our shared meal included “pineapple fried rice” (made with coconut milk in a pineapple boat), tilapia fish, lemon grass soup (served in a coconut bowl with other vegetables), and fresh fruit. Back at the hotel, our team members stood in a circle hand-in-hand with the Mann’s in the hotel lobby. We prayed for Mike and Becky and their ministries, asking for God’s blessings on their many ITDP programs that help needy tribal people in northern Thailand.

 

February 12
Mission Team Visit Chiang Mai House of Hope/House of Love/Preschool and New Life Center

Following breakfast, our mission team members rode in a pickup truck-type taxi driven by Becky Mann’s friend “Pricha” to meet ABC-IM missionary Kim Brown (and learn about her ministries) at her "House of Love/Day Care Center” facility on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. After Arlene, Sandy, Karen, and I were introduced by Kerry to Kim after we got there, our team first spent time with the beautiful 3-5 year-old children of the Day Care Center. They each politely stood up one-by-one to introduce themselves, and then sang a spirited motion-filled song to us.

We presented the Kim and the Day Care Center teachers many crafts items and small toys that our mission team members brought with us. They loved them! Since there was only one jar of bubbles we brought, the teachers had the kids line up on the porch outside the Preschool, and they each waited patiently for a turn to blow bubbles.

After the children left for playtime with their Preschool teachers, Kim talked to our mission team about here ministries that includes –

• The “House of Blessing Day” Care Center, which provides morning day-care for kids from poor slum areas, prepares children to enter Thai schools, and works to strengthen the kids’ families; and
• The “House of Love”, a program that takes care of HIV-positive women and kids that Kim started in 1994 when a woman came to her with children who were HIV-positive, as well as women who had been sold into prostitution, AIDS orphans, and children taken out of their homes by the Social Welfare Department because of abuse.

We learned that a House of Love worship service is held here every evening for the 31 women and kids currently staying in this facility. Kim also told us financial help is being provided from an Australia Baptist denomination to help cover the cost of AIDS-related drugs for House of Love residents who are not Thai citizens. Financial support is also being provided by the Samaritan's Purse (an International Christian relief and evangelism organization), American Baptist individuals/churches, and churches in Japan and Norway.

Before we left Kim to go to our next mission team activities, she asked that our mission team pray for the kids here to grow in their faith. Our mission team then stood hand-in-hand with Kim, and each of prayed for her and for her many ministries that help needy people here.

After Pricha drove us to a Thai restaurant for lunch and then to the New Life Center to meet Karen Smith and Kit Ripley, our team joined a prayer-circle of NLC staff members who were praying for one of their fellow staff members who was leaving Chiang Mai soon to go to her Hmong village more than ten hours away to be married. After the prayer-circle ended, we said our good-byes to Karen since she needed to return to the NLC main office, and Kit talked to us about the tribal groups of Thailand and its surrounding countries. She mentioned that approximately one million tribal people are living in northern Thailand. Except for the Karen, most tribal groups migrated from southern China, and today tribal people continue to migrate to Thailand from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and China.

As to the New Life Center programs, Kit told us that the NLC provides support for primary/secondary education to resident young women, as well as vocational and university education to non-resident women through scholarships. In addition, NLC offers classes in life-skills training, fire safety, basic health, human rights, and sexual equality. Kit told us the questions that the NLC staff ask themselves are: “How can we keep the girls safe?”; “How can we prepare them for urban living?”; and “How can we help them stay in touch with their own culture?” In addition, NLC staff members hope that many of the young women will choose to live with Christ in their lives.

After Kit’s talk, she gave our mission team a tour of the NLC facility, including the crafts building where NLC residents can make jewelry, quilts, women’s accessories, and other items that are sold in the NLC Crafts Store to help provide income for the Center. We ended our visit to the Chiang Mai NLC by standing hand-in-hand in a circle with Kit, and praying for Kit, Karen, the NLC staff, and for continued support of NLC programs that have helped so many tribal girls and women.

For our Friday evening dinner, our mission team was met at our Chiang Mai hotel by Japan Baptist Union missionaries Eiji/Emi Osato and their two daughters, Naomi and Anna. We’d not been able to meet with Eiji and Emi at the Siloam Bible Institute (where Eiji teach theology in Karen to perspective Karen pastors; and Emi, teaches conversational English to Karen students) on the previous Sunday since they were visiting a Karen village north of Chiang Mai. Our mission team enjoyed learning more about Eiji and Emi’s ministries while eating a delicious meal with the Osato family at a Japanese restaurant called "Kitchen Hush", owned and operated by a native Japanese couple who’d lived in Chiang Mai for over 15 years. The restaurant building had great significance since it was in this very building (a large house in a residential area) where beloved ABC-IM missionaries Paul and Elaine Lewis started the original New Life Center in the 1980’s.

What a day! So much learning! So many people our mission team met! Thank you, Lord!

Beth Kieft