Hoay Maw

For videos in Thai, please see here.
สำหรับวิดีโอในไทยโปรดดูที่นี่.

Spring Harvest April 2009: Day 1 - Learning

• High Resolution Video (50MB MP4)
• Low Resolution Video (11MB MP4)
• Full Resolution DVD Quality (152MB MPeg2)

Spring Harvest April 2009: Day 2 - Living

• High Resolution Video (53MB MP4)
• Low Resolution Video (11MB MP4)
• Full Resolution DVD Quality (158MB MPeg2)

Spring Harvest April 2009: Day 3 - Working

• High Resolution Video (54MB MP4)
• Low Resolution Video (11MB MP4)
• Full Resolution DVD Quality (163MB MPeg2)

Spring Harvest April 2009: DVD Image

Spring Harvest DVD Image (540MB DVD ISO)
(you can use most DVD image burners to generate the DVD - example, CDBurnerXP. This ISO is a DVD image)

For videos in English, please see here.
สำหรับวิดีโอที่เป็นภาษาอังกฤษกรุณาดูที่นี่.

Spring Harvest เมษายน 2009: วันที่ 1 - การเรียนรู้

• เต็มคุณภาพมติดีวีดี (Full Resolution DVD Quality) - 155MB MPeg2

Spring Harvest เมษายน 2009: วันที่ 2 - ใช้ชีวิต

• เต็มคุณภาพมติดีวีดี (Full Resolution DVD Quality) - 164MB MPeg2

Spring Harvest เมษายน 2009: วันที่ 3 - การทำงาน

• เต็มคุณภาพมติดีวีดี (Full Resolution DVD Quality) - 168MB MPeg2

Last week, our family attended Kingdom Faith, a Christian church conference, in Peterborough where we helped out with the Powerpack children groups.

Jenny, Adrian, Tom and Jessica (part time) helped with the 7 to 9 year olds in "Powerpack", while David helped with the 5 to 6 year olds in "Livewires".

This year's Powerpack mission focus was the orphanage in Hoay Maw - in particular, the educational needs of the 77 children.

During the week, Adrian and Jenny presented to the "Powerpack" group about the Hoay Maw children's home, with particular attention to the children's education, as we were wanting to raise money to help the orphans attend school.

• Monday - introduction to Hoay Maw
• Tuesday - about the facilities and where the children come from
• Wednesday - pigs and vegetables
• Thursday - schooling
• Friday - summary

At the end of the week, the children and their families raises £268.03, which will go towards the educational costs of the children. Exact details of how the money will be spend will be published later.

Thank you!

We are also starting up a sponsorship programme for the children of Hoay Maw to cover the ongoing costs of the children - more details to follow (to include sponsoring the cost of a child's toothpaste...)

Adrian

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We had the privilege to stay at Hoay Maw for a 24 hour period where we were able to document a day in the life of the children of Hoay Maw.

Their schedule was as follows

• 5.30am wake up and get dressed
• 6:00am prayers and worship in church led by house-parents
• 6:15am Chores – sweeping, litter picking, make beds, tidy shoes
• 6:40am Breakfast of rice with some chillies and egg mixed in 7:00am Line up and walk to school – more chores at school
• 8:00am School starts
• 12noon Eat packed lunch at school (rice from breakfast)
• 3:30pm Home from school
• 4:00pm Chinese school for 2 hours
• 6:00pm Play and Meal
• 7:00pm Time in church
• 8:00pm Homework (or “family group” time on Fridays)
• 9-10pm Bed-time

The children have a very long hard day compared to that which most children are used to. It was
however a joy to capture fun moments as the children are developing relational and recreational skills
in their “family groups”.

You can download the video below:

• Full Resolution MP4 141MB (if your player does not play this, try using VLC which does)
• Low Resolution MP4 30MB (if your player does not play this, try using VLC which does)
• Full Resolution MP2 DVD Quality - VERY LARGE 574MB file

There seems to be a trend within our circle of friends to get pet dogs. This started happening a couple of years ago, first in the UK, and now here in Thailand.

Being allergic to dogs (I tend to bleed and come up with bruises when they bit me - as well as sneeze, wheeze etc), I have never been too fond of dogs. Cats are okay, as long as they belong to someone else. Worms are fine - easy to look after...in the garden.

With the world wide increase of food prices, I have finally understood the wisdom of all our friends in getting their four-legged pets. And with the predicted major climate change in Northern Europe resulting from the impending failure of the Gulf Stream - temperatures drop - snow - ice - (Skiing!). They are really "Man's Best Friend"!

While visiting Hoay Maw yesterday, we first heard, then observed a neighbour making full use of this untapped resource...

Nothing wasted - and for the Europe, the fur can be used to make warm coats

"We're having dog tonight!"

We had heard that this practice was common in the region. No we did not eat with them that evening, as we had to drive home. A source tells us that their meat tends to make you hot (I guess that means hard to digest) - excellent for cold countries, like the UK once the Gulf Stream fails...

We have heard that Bangkok resolved their stray dog problem in a similar way by exporting them. And for those worried about rabies, Thailand has a good vaccination programme.

So what's for dinner tonight?

We would naturally not make use of this practice ourselves, as we do not have a dog. We cannot judge others if they do so, whether in Thailand, or the UK...however if we were hungry, we might re-evaluate our position and start to visit friends with dogs...

Piglets!

As you can see from the video above, these piglets have already studied the Bible stories about the Exodus and taking the Promised Land (flowing with milk, and honey?) - they have now moved on to re-enacting:

* 40 years wandering around aimlessly, bumping into each other
* Marching around the enemy to get them to collapse, before...
* ...ATTACK!!

A rare photo that includes...me

These 10 piglets were born to the smaller mother pig from the children's home in Hoay Maw.

The large mother pig is also heavily pregnant and is due to deliver within the next month.

The safe arrival of these piglets marks a significant milestone for the home. These, along with the big mother's piglets-to-be, should provide the home with a regular supply of fresh pork, and for the possibility to sell excess pigs to contribute towards income generation.

These piglets have been produced from mother pigs which have been purchased specifically for the children's home.

We were also delighted to see that they had planted a small crop of vegetable on the South-facing slope next to the boys dorm. This, along with a crop of mushrooms they have ordered, will provide a healthy supplement to their diet.

We were delighted to find a team from the Living Spring Fellowship, Singapore up at Hoaw Maw this weekend.

They had brought over a team of 21 for a long weekend, including a good number of young people, leading a variety of activities from hair dressing, flower arranging, games, teaching English, worship.

And as always at Pastor Joseph's, we ate well!

One of the teams highlights was seeing how many people they could fit in, or on, our truck.

Having worked out that they could get all 21 people in/on, they got back to "work".

I can safely say that their Living Spring Fellowship can be very proud of everything the team did in serving the children at Hoaw Maw.

We look forward to seeing them back here again later this year!

We came across an interesting article about the orphanage on the Bangkok Post, published on 1st June 1999 - see here.

Father Atthapol is Pastor Joseph's Chinese name.

I wonder if we could somehow contact Ken Grier, mentioned in the article...

Below is a message to our friends at Arun Community Church.

The video can be downloaded from Google Video from here.

Last Friday morning, Niti, Jenny and myself were off once again up to Hoay Maw for two days.

With the terrible air quality in Chiang Mai over the week resulting from all the burning, we thought that going into the mountains would provide escape and clean mountain air...not a chance!

March 2007

November 2006

Having lived in the UK, the above photographic comparison would be meaningless. You would have thought that the image on the right was the exceptional once - a rare day when no clouds were in sight, compared to an average low cloud day seen in the image on the left. Well no! Here, the norm is the clear blue skies. And the "low cloud" is far from that - it is ALL smoke!

The current state of the polution in Thailand can be found here

As a result of the terrible pollution problem resulting from farmers and others burning the fields and undergrowth both in Thailand, and over the borders North, the Thai government have had to resort to their favourite activity - rain making!

The planes have been out over and around Chiang Mai releasing large quantities of water using planes normally used for attacking forest fires in an attempt to increase the humidity. And they have had success, in that the pollution levels this week have dropped dramatically - it has also rained a bit in the region too!

On the way up, we stopped off to purchase some vegetables to supplement the delivery of more clothes and toys various people had donated to us from Chiang Mai and Singapore. These were all gratefully received...

Since returning, someone approached us at church on Sunday and offered us a large refrigerator for the home! Will take that up next time!

After lunch at Joseph's house (normal fantastic Chinese hot-pot - yum!), we met up with the home staff (see separate blog entry), and after wards looked at the water tank.

Water Tank Update - We heard this week that they have now applied the water-proofing cement to the tank to seal the leaks and it is now working again. Hopefully the leaking will have greatly reduced.

Friday evening we went down to Mae Sai where we met up with our friends. Their daughter had been asking to have a pizza all week, so...

After a good night sleep, breakfast, we set off early Saturday morning to meet up with Pastor Kae-Nu before driving back up to Hoay Maw for the pig training (see separate blog entry)

During the training, took the opportunity to have a look around the home to see the current state of affairs...

high water pressure effects...

Smog

Those not involved with the training were put to work by Joseph

Choose your weapon	Teamwork
"Nurse" Wan Pen patching up...	Girls having "fun" too
Hide-and-seek while making the beds	Finally, lets get clean in someones water tank

It was good to head home in the afternoon to see our children briefly before bed - they had been with the Mays. It was also good to try out the new spot-lights on the truck - I could now see properly while driving.

Some may have noticed that our website was down a couple of times this week. Well, only during the very early hours GMT, but mid-morning Thai time. It appears that there was a power-cut in Littlehampton which took out our server in our house in the UK. The UPS held up for a while, but did not manage the 2+ hours. Everything appears back to normal now. Investigating hosting our photo gallery on Flickr.