Child's future threatened by unstable mother.

Feels like another roller coaster ride. The fund raising dinner was a rousing success and through it we raised a total of 32,000!

Just today when I felt I can finally get some rest after the hectic event preparations and meetings, a call from Thailand rings.

Calls on weekends are usually bad news. And indeed it was. Nook nik's mother who suffers from mental illness and behavioural problems is pressing the staff to have custody of her child.

As much as we would hope to allow her to care for the child, she is definitely not in the right state to care for the child, especially when she just contemplated selling off nook nik's younger sibling for cash. We had just successfully convinced her to do otherwise few months back and now she wants nook nik back.

We're just concerned that if we allow nook nik to go with her, the child may end up being sold on the black market.

Last month nook nik's mother asked us for a job and we told her she can always join us on the condition that she does not "run" away from work. Which she has a habbit of doing. Whenever she makes a mistake, instead of facing up, she runs off. Literally! And without notice. So you can imagine how difficult it was to care
her.

Last year, she sought our assistance after being involved with 2 men concurrently and became pregnant by one. But marrried the other chap! We were terribly worried about her mental state but we can't advise very much when the guy decides to take responsiblity for the affair. Yes this was a married man.

The guy took her in as the mistress and second wife and in less than a month. This girl ran home. Disappeared.

With all these "running" and severe neglect for the child, we're really not sure should we return the custody, especially after she has signed a child protection policy to ensure that the child stays on the programme undisrupted for one year.

Should she be in better health or financial state, she can have the custody of the child should the tribal leaders decide so. But now, she just wants to yank the kid out today. Yes today. So keep my staff in prayers that they will be able to calm her down and help nook nik continue her studies.

Working with kids is hard enough. Working with parents can sometime be even more painful.

Hectic hectic April

This month we bid farewell to 3 staff and while manpower is lacking, outreach still has to go on. So you can imagine the stress, especially having to search for a land in khek noi to build the integrated centre.

How this month looked like.
- refugee outreach at start of month at a province 400km away
- immd after rush back to kheknoi to help out with the mass food distribution.
- all while trying to find a land and hiking though potential plots.
- no land was found in the center of the village so we got one small piece just in case there is no land in the village.
- thunderstorm hit radion's office, flooding it with not only water but animals such as frogs, rats ans snakes as they scrambled for shelter.
- mass food distribution day rained heavily and food was all prepared. Just when we thought that no one was coming, more people poured in. 5 received Christ in that rainy event.
- storm tore off the roof of our garage.
- had to bring 18 roaring kids to Chiang mai for songkran.
- volunteer team arrived. 5 activity packed days bringing the kids out.
- still bargaining for land back in the village.
- received more calls for assistance in the refugee communiy.
- tomorrow I fly back to Singapore for more meetings.

I'm grateful for great staff, awesome volunteers and its just awesome to know the sweat and blood (literally) goes into creating a better tomorrow for the disadvantaged.

Standby Land Secured

Finally some good news after a whole week of ups and downs.

For those who have just joined us, our ministry is planning to build an integrated centre for the needy in Thailand. And the ideal plan was to have the centre to not only be a home for street children, but also a training centre, a safe shelter for victims, a church and a community centre for everyone- A place where the broken can come to seek help.

That's our dream. But finding that land is a nightmare. We have searched for a land for the last 6 months, combing though almost every corner of the village. But there was none suitable. The available land is either too small or too expensive. When we said its expensive its SHOCKINGLY expensive. There are pieces of land which are even more expensive then downtown bangkok !

Rich merchants are pushing up land prices to unsustainable levels and the poor people are selling their lands. In the process, the rich-poor divide becomes wider.

For us, we're very concerned that if we delay further, we may not even have a piece of land left. And thats what we have been doing for the last 6 months, searching for a piece of land to build this centre. And it has been a discouraging 6 months.

Finally last week, we had a breakthrough. A parcel of land was floated in the market. The land was sizable, there was water & electricity cables nearby, small road access and the price was right!

The only drawback, it was not as central as we hoped our land would be. So after much discussion, we decided to take up this offer while we continue to search for a better piece of land that is more centralised.

In the event that no better land comes up, at least we have something to fall back on.

As much as I can, I would love the integrated centre to be in a more centralised location where the bulk of the 14,000 people are located, instead of staying in a suburb community of 2,000.

But whatever it is, we're leaving the opening of doors to God.

Here is a picture of the standby land.