Spoke to Jez Wong at 12:00 GMT on Sunday 26th December 2004 - he reports that they (Mays and Wongs families) are all safe - they were some miles inland at the time.
They were concerned for Claire Jones who was on the West Coast of Thailand - we have since heard that she is safe.
We are still awaiting news of Steve and Kora, but we believe they were in Bangkok during this time
Adrian
Hi friends,
If you have looked on the gallery you will see that we were able to visit two orphanages and take the children Christmas presents.
There are many orphanges here, filled with children from a range of backgrounds. Many of them have parents still alive but they have been abandoned, their parents may be mentally ill, on drugs or in prison and cannot look after them. Some of them have been intercepted from the trade in children, often from Northern Thailand and Burma down to the south of the country and abroad. Many of the orphanages in the North of Thailand are exclusively these type of orphans and we have friends here who are involved with one of them and are planning a visit in the new year.
Official sources estimate 300,000 children a year are brought across the Burmese border into Thailand as part of the child trade. Some of them in the orphanges have in fact been purchased back off the traders.
The first orphanage is run by a Christian Thai couple and has 32 children. We had a lovely welcome and chatted with the children while they served us drinks. They sang half a dozen songs to us which was fantastic. It was lovely to give them presents that we had chosen for them. Many of them unwrapped their presents very carefully so that they could keep the paper and they used it to form a bag to put their things in afterwards.
The second one we visited was a state orphanage wich Esther has some contacts with. There were 180 children and we took some sweets for the younger ones as they were having a Christmas party that afternoon, which we joined in with. The youngest children were wheeled about in a trolley (see photo).
It was a lovely time for all of us and we wanted to take half of them home with us! Thankyou to everybody who has given us money for Christmas as it enabled us to buy presents for 70 children. It was such a blessing to see their faces and share in their excitement.
We are going to spend Christmas with the Wongs so will be out of touch for a few weeks.
Happy Christmas and much love from Andrew & ESther.
Happy Christmas everybody!
Here ,would you believe it ,the weather has plummetted right down especially at night. This morning when we got up it was a mere 12degC and, considering there is no heating in the house and some of the windows have no glass, just mosquito mesh, it is pretty chilly. I never thought I would be this cold here. It warms up quite a bit in the day to about 25c so we are still wearing t shirts which is lucky ‘cos its all we’ve got!!
On Saturday we went and got a Christmas tree. Tescos are full of Christmas cheer now and the plaza has a massive tree that goes up the middle, 3 floors high, with a robotic santa (western) that climbs up and down! I was standing at the supermarket checkout on Tuesday and they were blaring out Silent Night, “Christ the Saviour is born”. It was very bizzarre to think that hardly anyone there had a clue what they were listening to (as it was in English of course) but then Andy pointed out when I got home that no one has a clue in Somerfield, Rustington either and they at least can understand the words .
Last week we took the children to see the musical Godspell. Andy said he remembered singing the songs in music lessons at primary school in the 70s. Did you see it first time around? It was excellent. The other Christian school in Chiangmai put it on and I thought it was just as good as any westend job .It was in this huge but lovely theatre right up in the roof of a mall. We hadnt realised it was there. It’s all up windy (or is that windey? - no draughts anyway) red carpeted stairways; very cosy . It was so nice to be able to take the children to see a show at Christmas!
There has been another big festival here, Loy Kratong, which went on for 2 weeks .Every one goes down to the river, sea , any kind of water but preferably moving water ,and they float (Loy) boats made of flowers (Kratongs) down the river. They believe they are floating their sins away with them. It is also thanking the water spirits for the rainy season .There are fireworks going off every evening for about a month running up to the main weekend and then on those nights massive amount of fireworks and also some giant hot air balloon things, about 6 ft tall, that they send up into the air. We had a meal by the river that night but it was so noisy we could hardly talk! There could have been a war starting and we would not have noticed.
There are only 4 more days of school till the Christmas holidays which is good as the children are still doing a ton of homework most nights, especially Mollie. They are all doing well at school though and we keep praying for the homework situation to change .
We are going to the Wongs over most of the holiday in Bangkok and then to the beach somewhere with them. They have organised it and we are really looking forward to seeing them.
Have a really lovely Christmas. We have our Christmas CDs playing and when we hear O Holy Night, cannot help but remember the great Christmas Specials of the last few years and miss you all hugely.
Lots and lots of love from us all,
Esther & Andrew, J,L,M,I xxxxxxxxx