To love well...

Well I've been back in Texas for a few weeks now, getting back to normal life. I've finished my first week of school and am getting back in the swing of things. As I step into a new year I'm excited about the things that lay ahead. One of those things being my trip to Thailand. As you may or may not know I will be going to Thailand for 10 days in March. I will be spending my spring break traveling over there. I wanted to share a little about about what is going on over there with ya'll...

During my time over there we will be spending five days working at the Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Phetchabun, Thailand. This camp is a place where Hmong (pronounced "mung") people are being held. This people group have been fleeing Lao since the 70's. They are being persecuted in Lao and are fleeing to the jungles of Lao and to Thailand. The government of Thailand have declared that the Hmong people can not be citizens of Thailand and therefore it is illegal for them to be there. There is a lot of history behind all of this. The Thai government has been putting the Hmong people in refugee camps in the northern part of Thailand. The conditions of these camps is not good, many reports have been filed before the government banned all media from the camp. Although conditions are not, the Hmong people would choose to live here rather then be sent back to Lao. Once they are sent back to Lao they are almost always killed within days. The government has been sending back 160 refugees monthly.

While over there we will be joining a team that has an excellent relationship with the guards of this camp. They have opened up the doors to this team and allow them to do as they please in the camp. We will be joining them to go in and do what we can in five short days to love these people. One of the men going with us is a pediatric dentist, so we will be doing some dentistry work. We will doing some ESL stuff, the details are kind of vague at this point. We will do what is needed and just love on these people. I feel as though the past 26 years of my life I have been learning about what it looks like to love well. I'm excited to go and be able to love these people who may have no idea what love is.

The other part of our time in Thailand will be spent in Chiang Mai. We will be working and staying at Care Corner Orphanage. Care Corner is an orphanage that holds 80 children. These children are either orphaned, living with a disability, or their parents could not take care of them any longer. These children are not waiting to be adopted but rather grown up in the orphanage and develop the skills to survive in the real world. On their website are stories of a few of the children that are there, I am so excited to meet children like Amima.

My heart longs to be help these people and I am so excited to go and love well!