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Join us as we embark on this journey of faith. Journey with us by praying alongside & supporting us every step of the way. May this journal and our lives be a testament of God's love in a hurting world.

Thursday, 29 September 2011

Floods, landslides & God's Faithfulness !

Was about to leave the Chiang Mai office at 10am for Phetchabun when an emergency announcement came on.

The village head's voice came on and it sounded a little glittery. He announced that the heavy rainfall has brought water levels in the rivers to its critical point, the reservoirs that were meant to double up as dams were past its critical point and they could not hold the water for much longer.

The government can only hold the waters for at most another 2-3 hours, and after that residents along the river should brace for a massive surge of water. They will try their best to regulate the waterflow, but everyone should start preparing for the worst.

River water level at an all time high.

They advised all residents to start packing and moving things to higher places. The ones who are living next to the river side are to commence evacuation.

RADION's office is in a rented shophouse on a relatively high ground. According to the local residents, this area has never ever been flooded. And yet today, flood waters reached just 4 meters from our office and that was before the water was released from the reservoirs !

 Water approaches. A view from the 3rd level of our Chiang Mai Office.

We needed to quickly shift everything, computers, documents, equipment all to the second floor before the flood arrive. The water was already surging to at the height of the bridge and we were about to be cut off.
 Getting all the stores up from level 1 to level 2 & 3 !

On one hand, we had to head to Phetchabun in time for our mass food distribution, but storm warnings and landslides will be abundant and we'll be taking a high risk to embark on this journey.

On the other hand there was an impending flood to our office and it may be better to be with my staff in Chiang Mai in this disaster, not to mention it will definitely be safer.

I had to make a difficult call.

We decided to take a calculated risk to quickly complete the move and press on to Phetchabun, where people are waiting for us to arrive for the mass food distribution. It was nerve wrecking, we could have been swept away if we crossed the bridge at the wrong time or could even be cut off by the running water down in the next province.

We jumped on our trucks, made the move and as the truck crossed the bursting river, the waters were already almost reaching the top of the bridge. But more bad news awaited on the other side of the river. Instead of clear roads, we were blocked by hordes of vehicles trying to get out, it was like a scene in an evacuation movie.

The heaviest traffic on a Thursday afternoon !

Waters were rising and we were stuck there in a JAM ! It surely felt like we were sitting ducks. After almost 1 hour, we made it out into the freeway and made our way down to Phetchabun.

Heavy rains, saw a couple of landslides, some roads were even broken off, rescue troops were in position in Phitsanulok province, the final town in the valley before heading up to Phetchabun. The rescue troops had their strobe lights and they were just for the waters to rise further before finally closing the entire access road off.

 Just one of the many landslides spotted along the way

We barely made it through ! Both sides of the road was covered in water and we quickly made our way up mountain. We did a call check with our Chiang Mai center and they confirmed that water has been released but miraculously our office was unaffected !

God is awesome !

As we drove up along mountains in awe of God, my deputy head Ms Puu started sharing openly about the time when she started working with RADION.

She's a professional accountant and mentioned that when she first joined RADION, she was simply astounded about our faith in God, despite the lack of finances. She jested "When you passed me the 100,000bht, i assumed that we would have more in other bank accounts, but that was EVERYTHING we had in Thailand."

She continued "I've seen missionaries and social workers. Every one I knew had a salary or a church to fall back on. They had all the practicalities taken care of, some have a lump sum of money to do their projects, while others have a monthly allowance to keep them going. Essentially, their needs were taken care of and all they had to do was to concentrate on serving the Lord in their ministries."

She continued.

"But you. When i met you, you had nothing. Surely no lump sum in the bank. No church to back you up. You had hardly any salary. But yet chose to serve despite all the uncertainties and without any "practicalities" to back you up. I saw that you had nothing to fall back on..... just God."

As she spoke, I remembered those days.

The days which we went against impossible odds to continue serving the Hmong people. We could even hardly afford a coke, having to think twice before buying the cheapest toothbrush and sleeping on the floor so we could channel more money to feed the needy.

Puu continued reminiscing, while I had tears filling up in my eyes and trying focus on the dimly litted road as I drove up to Phetchabun.

She continued and her next word brought tears rolling down my cheeks....

She said "God was like your guarantee, you needed nothing else."

What a beautiful reminder. God is my guarantee !

The 4 years of ministry, the 4 years of God's faithfulness. What a beautiful picture indeed !

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Excerpt From Bangkok Post (28 Sep 2011

Chiang Mai floods above critical level

Searchers have found the bodies of four members of the family of five swept away when their village was hit by hillside run-off overnight in Chiang Mai province, where the flood situation was reported to be above critical level on Wednesday.
Forest run-off triggered by two days of incessant rain struck a village in tambon Muang Kai in Mae Taeng district about 1am, destroying four houses and sweeping away a family of five people.

Rescuers continued the search for the fifth victim, as rain continued pouring down, causing an electricity blackout in the entire tambon.

Meanwhile, reports said the flood situation in the northern province was above critical level.

At 10.50am, the water level in Muang district had risen to 3.85 metres and the water flow was measured at 482 million cubic metres per second.

The critical water level is set at 3.70 metres and the water flow at 440 million cubic metres a second.

Five swept away by flash flood

Forest run-off caused by heavy rain struck a village in Chiang Mai's Mae Taeng district overnight, destroying four houses and sweeping away a family of five people, who are feared dead.
Tambon Muang Kai Administration Organisation chief Duangkam Wutthi said Wednesday morning village teams  were searching for the missing family - the father, mother, two daughters and a son.
A group of soldiers and administrative officials also joined the rescue operation, Mr Duangkam said.

Photos POST TODAY

Diary : 28 Sep 2011

Its just not easy working with limited resources and yet having to deal with waves and waves of spiritual attacks.

Just 2 days back, a mild chap went off his normal self, wacked up his wife and had to be restrained by our staff. The wife suffered bruising over her head and other parts of her body. She was in such shock and trauma that she did not know whether she was hurt in other places, and was just crying.

We had to spend the last 2 days sheltering her and praying alongside her. Together with counselling for the husband.

We've known these 2 people for some time now and they have been one of the most amazing couples who put down everything to serve alongside us, and all of a sudden, this just happened.

Back in Phetchabun, things are also not going too smoothly with a massive staff shortage, stress is building up together with the workload.

For the organisation's end, we're still not financially cheery and ministry overheads (which is almost at its minimum) is way above the financial support we're receiving. And more people are coming to us, in dire need of assistance.

But I'm trusting God for a breakthrough not only financially but more importantly spiritually in RADION.

Monday, 26 September 2011

Diary : 27 Sep 2011

A rough day today.

Just finished a crisis counseling session, another domestic abuse case.

Diary : 25 Sep 2011 (Flight Of The Gibbon)

Exciting Sunday !

The kids all got up early in anticipation of their ride at the Flight Of The Gibbon.

This was a charity giveaway from the founding members of the company to the lesser privileged children in Chiang Mai,

So a special thank you to Tony K Edalat & Nick Nader Shahin !

The mountain roads were narrow and we got directed to the wrong place, resulting us having to rush back down the mountain to the correct site before 3pm. We reached the place at 2.55pm !

Here are some photos !

 A group photo with the founders and staff

 Safety briefing !

 Kids getting all rigged up and ready to go !

In Flight!

Friday, 23 September 2011

Diary : 24 Sep 2011 (PROJECT LIVES! 2011 is a GO !)

Its always easy to believe God when things are going right and especially when things are going as planned. But when things seem like its going downhill, it takes a whole lot of faith to believe in God's promises.

Take me for example. Last month as I was doing my retreat, I was talking to God about my concerns about having a venue for project lives. I've done all I could, we started out early, sending out requests and all 6 months and yet there was nothing. Its worrying. And at just 1 and a half months away from the event, God prompts me to trust in Him and he will provide.

Now almost a month passed and nothing is heard, I start to fret. Did i hear wrongly ? Is the whole project going downhill ? 3 weeks to the event and no venue. My faith was simply tested and pushed to its limits.

Project LIVES! is one of the most critical campaigns for RADION. Its a campaign to raise awareness and raise support. And this year, everything hung on having a venue for 15 & 16 Oct.

After so many sleepless nights, proposal writings and appeals. Nothing worked and I was at a total loss. And just 2 days back, we had a meeting to decide what we should do. There was no updates, no replies and we were going down.

Yesterday, suddenly Shirleen messaged ! She told me that one of her contacts replied and they are keen to support the campaign ! That was just one day before our final cut off and there it was, given to us free of charge !

SCAPE YOUTH PARK !

Amazing how God works and how he pushed us little faith in Him.

So yeah, I'm terrible exhilarated and looks like project lives 2011 is a go !

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Diary : 22 Sep 2011

Meang is one of our more challenging kids undergoing rehab in our streetkids shelter in Phetchabun. Besides being one of the newer kids, he is also the rowdiest, loudest, naughtiest and probably the most uncontrollable 10 year old on our programme.

Today, he stole again. Not in school, not in the streets, but right in the streetkids shelter.

Last month he was stole and conned another kid out of his money. Yes. He is the same one I blogged about, who was remorseful over his mistake. At least the last time he was in the hot seat. And now it seems like he has forgotten all about it.

This round, he stole from P.Neet, the centre manager.

This is likened to biting the hand that feeds him and slapping the people who cared the most for him.

Honestly its not easy to be in this line of work. Having not only the stresses of daily work, but also  having to draft papers, countless back to back meetings, work long into the nights just to raise enough funds to help these kids.


Seeing a child repeat the same mistakes over again and again is just discouraging. Many times, I feel an urge to simply expel such kids from the programme, saving my staff from the hurts, pains and disappointments working with these "difficult" kids.

Even better, I can even justify my actions, with the cliche words of "caring for the overall good"

But just look at this child, if we were to expel him, where can he go ? These are already the rejects of society, kicked out of their own families or channeled to us by government authorities.

Honestly, if we won't give them a chance who will ? And again, wasn't the streetkids programme meant for unlovable children such as these ?

Whenever I feel the urge to give up on recalcitrant kids, i remember a loving God who's stubborn love held on to a recalcitrant me. Looking at it from this perspective, it sure gives me a little more strength to walk with Meang through this phase in his life.


So here we go again......

Diary : 21 Sep 2011

This has been dinner for the last couple of days due to the heavy downpours. Tomorrow Weisiong will be visiting in Chiang Mai, so thats a break for me.

Monday, 19 September 2011

Diary : 19 Sep 2011

New illegal immigrant at our chiang mai office toilet. It has been staying in the toilet for the last 2 days, where I was too weak from a fever to move it.

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Diary : 18 Sep 2011

Caught a cold probably after exerting myself over the last 2 weeks. My whole body was aching since friday's staff meeting and saturday's Puu's birthday celebration.

Couldn't really enjoy myself, infact I had to come back to office early to rest....I guess i'm getting old.
This is how my table looks like after 2 days of rest and lots of water

Friday, 16 September 2011

Diary : 15 & 16 Sep 2011

 Was out the last 3 days hosting a team of doctors. What a awesome bunch of people who took time off their busy schedules to fly over to help the under privileged ! Something interesting from our walks !
Yup. This made me smile.


Attending Daa's graduation ceremony. Daa successfully completed 3 months of nursing training and the next 3 months will her internship at hospital. After that she will be back in Phetchabun to help with our medical outreaches and home visitation so we can serve the people better.

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

Diary : 14 Sep 2011

Things are still not going as well as we hoped. Approach YMCA today, but no positive reply.

The public collection drive is still up in the air and so I guess we just have to keep on praying.

Monday, 12 September 2011

Diary : 13 Sep 2011

Oh yes. I forget to update. We also brought in a new 6 year old kid into our STK programme. I'll write more soon :)

Today is not the best day we've had. Project LIVES! is close around the corner and we still have not managed to secure a venue sponsor. Its kinda worrying especially when everything hinges on the public collection dates.

The good news however is that most of the corporates have responded so now we're just left with the venue sponsor for the 15 & 16 Oct + the working adults awareness dinner venue.

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Diary : Medical Mission 7-10

What an awesome week !

Here is a short update on what happened last week.
The team of doctors helping out in the medical mission and getting ready to launch.

Wednesday our team launched into the tribal village of Nam Juang. The meteorological agency sent out a warning of heavy rains and floods. And true enough it was raining cats of dogs, it was so bad that the bridge in our village was torn away by the sudden water surge.

A sight of the flood on the way up to Nam Juang
The drive up to the village was not easy, with roads scattered with portholes, debris from landslides and not to mention the thick mud which almost got our truck stuck. But we made it out smoothly and the effort was worth every bit when you see the lives being touched and impacted in a practical way-providing medical care. In a single day, we provided medical care to more than 100 villagers.



 The area that the tribal leaders allocated for use for the medical mission.

 
Medical mission commences in Nam Juang

The rain just continued and our worst fears came through the next day when we moved out from Nam Juang to the neighboring village of Nam Kap. The mud road has turned into a mud slide and to get through it, cars will have to use momentum to get the vehicle up.

It was our turn, we reved the truck up and got up the hill with the car fishtailing out of control and we landed in a ditch. Fortunately no one was hurt and with the help of the locals, we were able to pull the truck back out.

Next our worst night mare, the patch of thick mud has further degraded threatening to derail our medical work in the next village.We prayed as we drove through and other than the undercarriage hitting the mud floor, we managed to miraculously get through the mud sludge with some effort.

Medical mission at Nam Kap

In Nam Juang, we saw another 80 patients. After 2 days of back to back medical missions, the medical inventory was largely drained and we had to rush back to restock for friday's mission.


Helping a child with a massive ear infection

 
Home visit to a blind man who could not make his way to the field medical centre.
 
The field medical centre



We were stocked up and ready to go the following morning. And reach Nam Sai after a 3 hour journey. The people were already at the site and waiting for us to arrive. We distributed 300 blankets, hygiene items and provided medical care to more than 120 patients in 6 hours.

Presentation of blankets to the local villagers

  
 Village leaders help organise the crowd for relief collection

 The medical set up at Nam Sai. 120 patients !

Many were moved to tears knowing someone cared.


Tuesday, 6 September 2011

Diary : 6 Sep 2011

The staff were perpetually stuck to their mobiles for the entire day making final confirmations of the outreach areas with the local village heads.

Amongst the 3 villages, 2 were most hospitable and availed resources for our usage. The last one was not that supportive despite being far & underserved.

I still cannot really understand why some leaders would put off an offer of having people to help their communities especially in the area of medical care.

But instead of putting a day to waste, we have scheduled for another village.

Next 3 days should be exciting ! Do keep us in prayer as many of these areas are also new to us and futhermore it has been raining for 3 days already. We're also slightly concerned about the safety aspect of climbing up a mountain on slippery mud roads.

Keep us in prayer !

Monday, 5 September 2011

Diary : 5 Sep 2011

2 more doctors arrived this afternoon, traveling through heavy rains and bad weather.

Did a home visitation this afternoon. An elderly lady's house was at the brink of collapse with the roof already falling apart. So now we're seeing how best to help her.



Now we're just hoping for the weather to clear up before we launch up mountains to 3 more villages.

Sunday, 4 September 2011

Diary : 4 Sep 2011

Was at Huay Nam Khao church today. The church that we will be ceasing our oversight with effect from this december.

Today was also Pastor Seng's last day. It was rather emotional for me as he was one of the very few Hmong pastors who have garnered the respect of the locals. Not because of his preaching but because of his life.

Ps Seng was an incredible man. He spent most of his youth days helping and supporting missionaries. In those days, so great was the passion to reach the lost that these missionary groups would set out on foot to reach places for Christ. One of this locations took almost 2 months to reach on foot, but to them it was worth it. And to Ps Seng, it was formative in his faith in God.

Towards the end of the service, I thanked this elderly man for teaching me many things. Not only through his preaching but more than that through his life of obedience to God. His life, his good fight of faith and his trust in God was enormous.

Despite getting old and starting to loose sight, he spoke with such conviction and love. Such love that can only come from a life filled with Christ.

My life is humbled by this servant of God.


Saturday, 3 September 2011

Diary : 3 Sep 2011 (MFD Breakthrough!)

This morning as I was preparing my message for the evening's mass food distribution. I asked the Lord, what should I share today ? And the reply was clear and simple. My love for the people.

I teared as I prepared the sermon and my heart heavy.

People started arriving almost 3 hours before the meeting was scheduled to start. The crowd was now so big that our little dining shed could no longer seat everyone. And furthermore the weather was scorching while dark clouds loomed on the horizon.

I decided that indoors will be best and we shifted the crowd into the hall of the STREETKIDS home. We waiting a little while to allow the less physically abled people to come in through our outreach trucks and they arrived we started.

We had benches for chairs and there was just not enough benches to go around, so we had to get the kids to sit on the floor. And almost 130 people turned up for the event. We're just getting too big and the mass food distribution is slowly looking really like a church for the unloved.

I started to share from Luke 15, the common chapter on the prodigal son. There were no fanciful theatrics, just the word of God. The message was not long, it was probably around 30mins and halfway through the message, eyes were tearing and you could see hearts breaking.

We closed with a clip from the song "So you would come" and as we gave the people a chance to receive Christ. Something different happened. Instead of the normal "stroll to the alter" the people were sober and many of them came up with tears flowing down their cheeks. A total of 14 people gave their lives to Christ today.

One lady was so touched by the Lord that she did not stop crying even after the service. She just sat and ate the food we provided and teared as she ate.

A picture of our free medical clinic with Dr Boon helping us to care for the unreached.

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Diary : 2 Sep 2011

I decided to write a quick note before I rush off to pick Dr Boon from the airport and from there its 8 hours on the roads.

Dokmai one of the STREETKIDS! girls was having problems class, academically she was improving in leaps and bounds. But coming from a broken background, dokmai was reluctant to open up to others and stayed alone most of the time, she would eat lunches her self and had no friends to support her at all. Her quiet demeanor was soon observed by the class bully and soon Dokmai became the target of the bully.

The bully hit dokmai frequently and that was not enough, the bully stole dokmai's homework just so that Dokmai will not be able to submit them to the teachers. Dokmai was in distress and as she is not good in articulating her thoughts, she took the brunt of the teacher's punishment and not voicing out her problems with the bully.

2 days ago, Dokmai finally broke. She confided in our staff, her personal mentor her struggles in school and was terribly depressed.

She was depressed, sad and would not speak much. Being bullied, reprimanded by teachers and furthermore she had no friends.

The staff sat down with her for more than an hour just to encourage her but we knew it was not going to be easy. But we prayed.

We shared with Dokmai how as a Christian she can love the unlovable and learn to forgive. Who knows how God can turn things around if we apply wisdom in difficult situations.

She was quiet and we're not sure how much she understood. We could only pray.

Yesterday evening, the staff came out running to us. Telling us some amazing news. Dokmai went to school, stood right up to the bully. Not only did she make her stand, but she offered forgiveness and friendship to the one that hurt her.

It was difficult for Dokmai who comes from a background of hurts to forgive someone like the bully. But Dokmai did.

And you know what ? God turned things around. The bully relented and realised something was different in Dokmai. Stunned and overwhelmed by the thought of dokmai confronting and offering friendship and forgiveness. The bully was overwhelmed.

3 hours latter in school. The bully approached Dokmai. In her quiet voice she asked "So where shall we have lunch ?"

Dokmai lit up. Things truly turned around with prayer and her enemy turned into a friend. A first friend.

Diary : 1 Sep 2011

Fitted up our most reliable truck with a little black roof. Just the thing we need to get people moving from one place to another :)

Spent this morning reading a book entitled Growing Deep In Faith by Edmund Chan. It has been most enlightening and its simply astounding how someone can write so simply but with so much depth.

So much of today was spent preparing for the doctors who will be arriving tomorrow. Dr Boon first followed by 2 more doctors on monday.

I'm also trying my hand on being a vet. Our newest resident, a golden retriever with back problems just developed a terrible rash on her tail. Spent a while researching on how to treat this dog before having to be away in Phetchabun for more than a week.

This is how the tail looks like.



We've bathed it, medicated it, powdered it. Cared for it. So hopefully everything will get better from now one.