PATTAYA - PART 2

Hello! I hope you’re having a great week! It’s hard to believe it’s almost the middle of June already! Time’s moving along…here’s what I’ve been up to:

ENGLISH, ENGLISH & MORE ENGLISH

A lot of my time serving at the Tamar Center has been filled with English: planning activities and helping women with vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar worksheets. The Tamar staff, women working at the Tamar Center and women at the bars all want to know more English. Whatever English you can learn and understand seems key to more opportunities for your life in Thailand. Many women want to learn English, too, so they can help their children with it. At Eve’s request, Marleen and I have been trying to help the staff individually with English. They’re all at different places in what they’ve learned so it’s been a challenge to figure out where to start and what exercises we can do that will be effective and will help them in their day-to-day life. I’ve especially enjoyed getting to know Kaek who runs the bakery and coffee shop and Oh who leads the discipleship training. They love the Lord so much. They’re both looking for ways to expand what the Tamar Center is doing so that more women can have jobs, the training and discipleship programs can be expanded and more can come to know Jesus.


English class with women from the bars - Marleen (left) & Kath are doing a role play.


Group from the Baptist Church English class. A, at the center, invited Marleen and I to her town of Sattahip (30km south of Pattaya) for the afternoon on Tuesday. We met her husband and had a wonderful time. (We visited a park where I got to meet the cute kitty, aka Tiger.) They and most of the Baptist Church English class are believers :)





THE WOMEN OF THE TAMAR CENTER

Eight new women started working at the Tamar Center in May – leaving life at the bars behind them. So exciting! One of these women received her first paycheck from the Tamar Center on Wednesday. Marleen and I happened to be nearby after she got paid for her work. She had started crying. We didn’t know why. Eve told Marleen later that she was so happy that she received money for work that she felt proud of. The Tamar Center is really making a difference. What a privilege it is to be a part of these efforts!

Very little of my daily time, though, is with any of these women  They’re doing their jobs while I’m helping the staff or the bar girls with English or headed to the bars for outreach. I generally see them at lunch for about 30 minutes and for a few minutes here and there before work, after work and during the day. Somjit and Gay are among the few that know a little English to talk to me. With many of the others, though, it’s our smiles and a few phrases that give us a connection. When they can, and they’re around, the staff will translate for us but this is rare. Marleen amd I both want to spend time with them and love on them so we’ve been looking for ways that work with their schedules. This past Monday night we organized a movie at one of their shared housing units. We brought my laptop and a cake and watched “Bedtime Stories” (English w/ Thai subtitles). Since then, I’ve received even more hugs and hellos from many of them.



Tamar Center staff (+ volunteers)


Some of the Tamar Center ladies from our movie night

AN OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME – OUTREACH TO A THAI VILLAGE

Monday to Thursday of next week Marleen and I will get to travel with Tamar’s Outreach Team to visit a village in the Northeast of Thailand! The Outreach Team travels every other week to remote villages where there the Gospel has been shared little, if any, times. I think the villages are often picked based on a woman working at the Tamar Center – the trip enables the woman to see her family and to tell them about her decision to leave the bars. We’ve been told that sometimes the reunion is incredibly emotional – the family might not have known that the woman had been working in prostitution. On this trip we’ll be going to the village of a woman who came to work at the Tamar Center in January. Nuuy’s now working as the cook at the center – she’s incredible – big smile, sweet heart. She has 2 sons.
Eve has cautioned Marleen & I that we’ll have 3 ½ day of 24/7 Thai language with very little translation and potentially all spicy food. We’ll be helping with food, clean up, playing with the kids in the village, talking to whomever we can and teaching some basic English to the children in the village. We are so excited! I’m also really looking forward to getting to better know Na, 33, a staff woman on the Outreach team. My first evening in Pattaya I ran into her at the Walmart-like store across the street – she recognized me and went around the store helping me buy everything I needed (I couldn’t read some of the all-Thai labels) and then walked me back to my guesthouse.

PRAYER REQUESTS

I especially love your prayers as I’m serving in Pattaya:
Please pray for the Lord to prepare the hearts of those we meet next week in the village during the Outreach – that they would receive the teaching as the word of God : “…When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe…” 1 Thessalonians 2:13

Please pray for Nuuy, too, during the outreach – for her visit with her family and that they would come to know Jesus.

Please pray for the women that we’ve met and that we will meet at the Bars. That they would see love in us and be drawn to the powerful love of God: “…I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3

Please pray that Marleen & I would each connect deeply with a couple of the women & be able to invest our hearts into their lives.

Thanks for your prayers! I look forward to telling you how the Outreach goes!
Love, Becky




Now I've seen it ALL! If you look real close, there's a cat on the back of this motorbike - I watched it ride down the street! It stood up, sat back down & looked around. It seemed right at home!