Blog

More Norwegians!

Submitted by jennyol on Thu, 2009-07-02 14:12

We have mentioned the Norwegian charity Open Hands who are regular supporters of Hoay Maw and whom we are privileged to work in partnership with. Tore, the director of Open Hands, visits Thailand twice a year to keep in close touch with developments at Hoay Maw and with other projects that Open Hands are involved with.

Lund family

Last week, we enjoyed the opportunity to join the Pastor from Tore's church in Norway and the Pastor's family to visit Hoay Maw and also the Hope for Life centre at Mae Sai where Open Hands are also involved.

Our Norwegian co-worker Thomas, his daughter Veronica, Thai co-worker Niti, Pastor John, wife Gun, and two younger sons Conrad (17) and Johannes (9) and ourselves, travelled together in a rented minibus.

At Hoay Maw we were treated with a special dinner prepared by Rattanaporn and the older girls. We always feel awkward to receive such generosity when we know that they are struggling to provide the basic needs of the 80 children in the home, but we receive the blessing graciously.

Ps Joseph welcomes Ps John and his family

New vegetables and water tank in background

Now that the dry season has ended, it was encouraging to see that the vegetables are thriving again. They have constructed a water tank made out of concrete cylinders and using blue plastic pipe to collect rain water from the roof of the church.

On the other hand, we heard that the chickens are laying fewer and smaller eggs as they are stressed by the regular rain and thunder storms. Apparently the CP commercial egg producer are experiencing the same problem. This means that there aren't enough quality eggs to sell in order to raise the money for the chicken food. We sometimes draw inspiration from the British comedy "The Good Life", and wondered whether we should recommend playing classical music to the chickens to help them relax and be more productive! At least the chickens are producing enough small eggs for the children to eat daily.

Chickens under stress!

Footings for concrete fish pond

We were pleased that World Vision have completed the final processing for the fish pond project and have released the money to commence construction. The concrete pond is to be located behind the girls dorm. It will be 6m wide with 3 8m sections. The building materials are on-site and the workers have dug the footings. This set up of this project is funded by World Vision and Links International

A smaller, natural pond has also been dug in the marshy land that Joseph acquired for the benefit of the home.

Paul has trialled a small crop of shiitake mushrooms which was successful and so we are going to proceed and stock the mushroom farm. First the roof needs to be repaired as well as some other maintenance of the shed.

Natural pond

Prayer for Ps Joseph

Pastor John prayer for Pastor Joseph and also for Paul and Rattanaporn and for blessing upon the home.

Norwegian Connection

Submitted by jennyol on Fri, 2009-06-19 11:07

Translation of the Hoay Maw Videos into Norwegian

The Hoay Maw videos are now being translated into Norwegian with the help of 10 yr old Adelaine. Adelaine and her family from Norway have been based in Chiang Mai for over 7 years. Adelaine attends the English speaking Grace International School for children of missionaries, aka MKs (Missionary Kids). It is important for Adelaine to keep up her Norwegian language skills and so this was an ideal project for her.

First of all, Adelaine translated each of the three Hoay Maw videos from English into Norwegian. Her Mum and Dad helped her check the script. Then we recorded the narration which Adelaine managed to do very efficiently and with excellent expression.

Adelaine's Family Introduced us to Hoay Maw

When we first visited Thailand on an Easter holiday 2005, it was Adelaine's parents who first introduced us to the Hoay Maw Children's Home where they had been involved for some time. That visit made a lasting impression on us and on our return to the UK, we felt moved to continue praying for Hoay Maw and to involve the children at our home church, Arun Community Church, to also pray and raise support to help them.

A leader who oversees mission advised us that it would be difficult to bring about long-term change without having someone "on the ground". We wondered who that "someone" might be!?

The following Easter (2006) we visited Thailand again and it was then that we felt God calling us to move out to help the children at Hoay Maw more effectively. At that time, Adelaine's family were about to return to Norway for one school year and so their furnished house would be available. In August 2006, our family came out to Thailand. We stayed in Adelaine's house and continued the role that her family had been playing at Hoay Maw. Our original intention had been to stay in Thailand for one school year but three years on we are still here!

After the first year, Adelaine's family returned and we rented another house. We continue to work closely together with Adelaine's parents.

Another important connection is with the Norwegian charity Open Hands who have been significant regular supporters of Hoay Maw.

The Norwegian version of the Hoay Maw videos soon be available and we hope this will help Open Hands promote their work with existing and new supporters.

A family's Response to Hoay Maw Offering Focus

Submitted by jennyol on Mon, 2009-05-18 14:48

At Spring Harvest this year, around 6,000 children aged 5-11 were made aware of the Hoay Maw Children's Home through the Spring Harvest children's offering focus.

The children of one family, Edward (7), Emily (5), Toby(5) and Madeleine(2), wanted to help further by giving the proceeds of their Lent preparation to Hoay Maw.

Toby (aged 5) "This year we went to Spring Harvest week 1 at Minehead. We went to our youth group which was Space Academy. We made a lot of friends and the instructors were top. We sang and we danced, we did craft and sport and we watched a film about Hoay Maw, a home for children with no Daddy and Mummy."

Emily (aged 5) "For lent we always paint a huge tree. Then we stick butterfly and flower stickers every time we do something good. At Easter we count the stickers and give money to other people."

Edward (7) "This year, because we learnt about Hoay Maw, we wanted to give the money to them, because we are lucky to have food and a house, and they have nothing, not even a Mummy and a Daddy to be with them.

These young "Nation Shakers" raised £52 for the children at Hoay Maw!
Thank you Edward, Toby, Emily and Madeleine
God bless you, bye!

There's a Hole in my Roof ...

Submitted by jennyol on Tue, 2009-04-21 11:45

After a dry season during which Hoay Maw have struggled to maintain the vegetables, some rain has arrived and some very heavy rain fall has damaged the roof of the boys dorm.

One of the areas that we are wanting to address is "home improvements". We are planning to use some of the Spring Harvest children's offering for that purpose.

Before decoration

With a donation from a Taiwanese church, some initial decorating had been done in the dorms. The pale blue walls that had been painted can be seen in the Spring Harvest videos. A false ceiling had also been installed in place of old, tatty mosquito-ridden netting and this had already made a huge improvement inside the room.

It's a setback that some funds will be required to repair the boy's roof and re-decorate the inside.

We are hoping that the Spring Harvest money will enable us to replace the roof with stronger and safer materials and also install some insulation which would help a great deal to minimise the extremes of heat and cold in the room.

Spring Special at Hoay Maw

Submitted by jennyol on Thu, 2009-04-09 15:44

On Apr 7th we went to Hoay Maw for a "Spring Special".

We were delighted when the staff and children from the local Ban San Faan children's home asked if they could join us.

We were also joined by our friends Simon and Jill Bird and their son Matthew.

Our oldest son, Tom, was away at a youth camp but our other two children, David and Jessica came as well.

David had organised some games activities, mostly with a water theme as it is near the thai New Year Sonkran festival which can basically be described as a good natured, national water fight.

Jessica and I, Jill and Malee from Ban San Faan had each prepared a craft activity.

Simon came to evaluate the water supply as there have been problems irrigating the vegetables.

Whilst the children were enjoying the craft activities, Jill, an English GP, took the children one-by-one and tested their eyes. She had made a special eye test chart using Thai letters. She found one child who had a congenital cataract and a couple of other children who were short sighted. Unfortunately, the boy with the cataract was not eligible for free medical care and so we will have to explore options for helping with that. It should be straight forward to get some glasses to help with the short sight. A surprise outcome was that our David took the test, (as he is learning to read Thai at school) and was found to be quite short-sighted in one eye - so a visit to the optician for us.

As usual, the children revelled in the opportunity to do some creative activities. Jill helped them make a mosaic cross design using pretty glass mosaic squares on a pale blue tile. We have encouraged them to keep the tiles and we will take up some tile cement and put the tiles up as a display.

Malee helped the children make paper bag animal puppets. The children enjoyed colouring in the faces, tongue and paws of the animal.

Jessica and I (Jenny) helped the children make zig-zag paper men. A craft that David had learnt at Powerpack.

After crafts, David organised the games and a lot of fun was had by all.

Simon and Adrian returned from their expedition to find water. They recommended pumping water up from a low-lying lake in order to service the vegetables and proposed fish pond. We hope that the Spring Harvest offering will be able to help with this.

Some good news is that the small mother pig has given birth to 15 cute piglets.

Wan Pen is seen here putting anti-bacterial powder on them.

As it was quite hot outside, we showed a film in the cool church.

We all ate together with the Hoay Maw children.

We finished with a time of worship and prayer in the Church. The Ban San Faan children helped lead some songs in Thai and Matthew Bird helped by playing the electric guitar. One of the Hoay Maw girls led prayer for the children at Spring Harvest as we pointed out that the children at the first week of Spring Harvest would be watching the final video and taking the main offering that day. Then the Ban San Faan children and the rest of the visitors all prayed for the Hoay Maw children.

We travelled back quite late, sleeping most of the way and arriving back at about 11.30pm.

Hoay Maw Children See Themselves on Video

Submitted by jennyol on Thu, 2009-04-09 15:10

On March 25th, we took a trip to Hoay Maw in order to show thechildren and staff the Spring Harvest Videos.

They were really excited to see themselves and most of them appeared in the video. They giggled when they saw themselves and Oranuk, the girl who shows Jessica around the home, was really shy and covered her face.

They enjoyed seeing the videos and were amazed that about 6,000 children were going to be shown the videos about life at Hoay Maw.

When we asked the children what they thought of the videos they said that they felt sorry that they looked poor but that they were pleased that they had the opportunity to represent their life to people in another country.

We encouraged them that although they may not be rich in material things, that they are rich in God and in the way that they live their lives.

We also showed the film Prince of Egypt in Thai which they loved. By borrowing a video projector and hanging a sheet over a big white board frame, we are able to set up a movie zone in the church. The children wouldn't have the chance to go out to see a movie and so we take the movie to them.

Support A Child

Afterwards, we photographed and interviewed two boys and two girls with the hope of encouraging people to support the living costs of a child.
More Details ...

Spring Harvest Videos Translation Into Thai

Submitted by jennyol on Thu, 2009-04-09 12:03

Having recorded the Spring Harvest videos, we wanted the children at Hoay Maw to be able to enjoy them in their own language. The children at Hoay Maw speak a number of languages including Thai, Chinese, Burmese and various hill-tribe languages. Most of the children attend Thai school and so by translating into Thai would enable most of the children to understand.

We worked with the three oldest girls at the Ban San Faan children's home in Chiang Mai where we are also involved.

Sarah

Hope

Peach

The three girls, Sarah Hope and Peach each worked to translate the narration for each of the three videos.

We found that Hope had a really clear speaking voice and so we recorded the voice-over for each of the videos.

To see the videos in Thai click here...

"Call to Freedom" For Hoay Maw

Submitted by jennyol on Thu, 2009-04-09 10:42

We wanted to use the music "Call to Freedom" by Terl Bryant with Psalm Drummers in the Spring Harvest videos.

We were able to contact Terl and were delighted that he gave us permission to use the track. We love the heartbeat of the music.

A news item about the use of the track to raise support for the children at Hoay Maw has been posted on the Psalm Drummers website.

The ‘Call to Freedom’ track is also on iTunes (79p) at these following links:

Original Mix (used in the videos) from the CD ‘Psalm Drummers’ on iTunes at this link
Real World Richard ‘Dickie’ Chappell Mix from ‘Drums of Hope’ on iTunes at this link