Last week New Community offered the first ever Summer Kids Camp from Mon – Fri from 9 to 3. Since most kids are out for summer, and parents have to work and dont have alot of money to provide them with other opportunities, kids sit at home by themselves alot, taking care of their other siblings, or playing in the neighborhood by themselves with pretty much no supervision. So we’re hoping the camp gave parents a chance to send their kids somewhere for an inexpensive week – much like a VBS. We sang songs, which included a song about Adam & Eve, where at the end each pair does a farcle for who gets to be the leader of the next round of the song. Farcling here is called “Bao. Ying. CHUP!” Instead of Paper, Rock Scissors.
My other favorite song was about all the different modes of transportation we take to church and the sounds they make…motorcyle “BAEN BAEN”, bicycle “GRAENG GRAENG”, bus “BAEN BAEN”, and tuk-tuk “GRATUK GRATUK”. I love it because it is perfect for Thais! I can’t really imagine taking my motorcycle to church on Sunday back home in the US, or my tuk-tuk for that matter, if I happened to own one AND know how to drive it. Kind of cracks me up to think about doing that. One last song was about “Ants eating ants” but i have no clue what it was about, I just loved the hand-motions and seeing one particular kindergartner doing them with gusto. We did memory verses, and broke up into small groups by grade level. Here is one of our verses: Mark 12:31. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 
It was a wonderful thing to see these kids, all from Buddhist families, learning about the Bible, reciting verses, answering questions, and praying along with their Junior Staff. Possibly the neatest thing about this camp was enabling some of the teenagers from Mahatthai – a community we have many relationships in – be Junior Staff Leaders. 
So while we had all hands on deck from the missionaries/staff at New Community, we were able to “hire” them and give them responsibilities in leadership, planning, execution, and discipline. 
This kind of experience hopefully can help them have a sense of accomplishment and increased confidence too. A few of them have made a profession of faith, over a year ago, but the others have yet to, and the Christians still face huge cultural obstacles to understanding the Christian beliefs and how it plays out in their lives.
In the afternoons we went on several different outings. One included going to a neighborhood pool, another day a planetarium, or doing special crafts led by our team’s Art Man, Tim Mills. The pool was particularly unnerving, since probably 75% of the kids there did NOT know how to swim, but they had no qualms about jumping in and gripping the side for dear life for 2 straight hours. (Or Andrew instead). 
Possibly my favorite picture I have of Phii Kieow, my teammate and co-worker…this is classic Kieow!
She has so much genuine concern for these children and is very involved in their lives. She is yelling at someone telling them not to run. (always the hardest rule to follow when you’re a kid at a pool) Thais dont like to get dark skin from sun so they often cover themselves, even over their heads and faces. 
The camp was a huge success! Since it was the first year, we didn’t really know what it’d look like or how it would be, who would come, etc, but we had 70+ kids in all! Andrew was in charge of the entire camp, so you can imagine after that week we were both pretty exhausted…On Friday we had a Field Day for everyone, which Melanie and I put together, and in this hot summertime weather, we nearly melted, but I think the kids had a great final hurrah on their last day and hopefully will come back next year too.
