Slum kids no more

Preaw.

Preaw is our beautiful daughter.

You can read about her life here.

Her life has been hard. Up until 2 years ago her life was a constant struggle to survive. She might argue that it still is, but now God has given her everything she has ever wanted. A family that loves her! It’s not always easy. Anyone with a family knows how hard it is but has she has had to learn it the hard way. She is loving being loved, even though she doesnt always know how to handle it.

In October we had to go to Bangkok to get a CT scan for our baby, Evangeleen. God really blessed us and the scan came back clear. While we were there Preaw tracked down her little brother and sister, Huun(boy, 8) and Waat(girl, 7).

They were living in a bad situation and had no one to take care of them. Their mother, who is also Preaw’s mother is in jail for a few years and their father had miraculiously went to jail just days before we got there. In hindsight the timing was a God thing, had their father not been in jail we probably wouldn’t have been able to help. We learned when thier father got out of jail that he was only in for 47 days, which is a short time and was just enough time for us to get them out of there.

Anyway, Preaw went and met them and took them out to eat, bought them some shoes(because they weren’t wearing any), and gave them a little bit of money. She came back home crying and asking us if we could take them back to Chiang Mai with us. We are already in over our heads and feel like we are drowning and said we can’t handle it right now, but we can pray. I this is what God wants for us then we can do it, but He needs to give us a volunteer! We prayed and prayed and looked for a volunteer, but we found no one. As the time came to leave Bangkok we just didn’t feel like God was calling us to take them. Which was weird because I usually feel I need to take all the kids, even the ones the parents don’t want to leave.

Preaw was really sad but she understood because she has been helping us out with alot of the cooking and cleaning. We all continued to pray! One the ride home we stopped in Kham Pheng Pet and met 2 more girls who were looking for a place to go, Kwan and Moonoy. About a week after we got back to Chiang Mai, I was talking on the phone to a new missionary family, the Nortons. I jokingly said, “When you are ready to start taking in kids let me know, we have 4 who are looking for a place to go.”

The reply I received from her was very unexpected. She said, “If there are kids who need help, let us know! My husband just asked last night if there were kids we could take in and help.”

I didn’t know what to say. Part of me knew that it was a bad idea but the other part knew it was the best idea ever! This family had only been in Thailand for a month and could not speak a lick of Thai. The kids had been in Thailand their whole lives and couldn’t speak a lick of English. The Norton family is an enormus family already and having their precious, wholesome, and innocent little boys around these 2 slum kids seemed like a bad idea. In reality it is! These kids come from abuse, neglect, all-kinds of abuse and selfishness and are in no way ready for American family life. It was unknown if these kids had any disease, mental disorders or sexual history. It was also unknow the effect that these kids would have on their family. We know because we did the same with their sister.

We sent Preaw back to Bangkok to get them and take them to Sukothai. She stayed with them for about a week and helped them adjust. It has not been easy for any of them! There have been ups and downs but they are all learning how to co-exist with eachother. You can read more about it here: https://walkingredeemed.com/blog/ you can also help support their work by going here: https://jesus4asia.org/invest/country-thailand/nortons/ . They aredoing great things with those kids and evrytime we see them or talk to them they are looking better and better. We praise God for families that are willing to do what God has called them to, no matter what the cost.

So, it is now December 12th, 2019 and the kids have been there for about 2 months. They are enrolled in school, clean of disease and working on fitting in to their big new family. Their father was released from jail and said they can have them. Their mother wrote a letter saying, “If the father tries to take them back, DON’T GIVE THEM TO HIM!” The kids are not officially Nortons and probably never will be, but the love that the nortons have for them is knocking down all of their walls. Little by little the love the Nortons show to these kids, shows them how much God loves, cares, and desires them!

Kwan and Moonoy will be with us next March, bringing us up to 9 kids in our home. Please pray for Moonoy, she has changed her mind and does not want to come. She needs to come and we are moving forward in faith knowing that God will work on her heart and send her to us.

We still don’t have a volunteer. We still need one badly.

Evangeleen is doing better and her 2 front teeth just came in.

We moved to a much bigger house and we are working on registering our project with the government of Thailand.

God is doing great things in our lives and in our house please continue to pray for us.