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1. Upon arrival
Northern ThailandOn the first Friday of our visit to the children's home in Maechan, a team of 8 of us piled into the 4WD and began our ascent up to !@#$% village (I cannot spell or pronounce the name!). It is in a remote area of northern Thailand, less than 100kms from where we were staying, however, the journey took more than 2 1/2 hours due to the fact that it was up a mountain and the roads were very difficult to negotiate. We even got bogged at one stage and all had to get out 😊 One of our team members was also quite ill and we had to stop for the poor fellow to throw up on the side of the road.
We were visiting this village for two reasons; 1. to run a pastors conference with 22 pastors from the Ahka Evangelical Churches around Thailand, and 2. to run a medical clinic for the village people. This may be the first time that some of them would have seen a real doctor.
This trip was both exciting and worrying as to where we were going, what we would be eating and where we would be sleeping! But we
2.
Northern Thailand all went with it and managed spectacularly!
When we arrived we were brought refreshments of 'I don't know what' but it was welcomed by the team. A group of the church ladies had spent a huge amount of time preparing food for us and their hospitality was second to none even though some of the food was different and not what we were used to, it was all fresh and lovingly prepared. We were indeed special visitors.
After we'd eaten and drunk it was time for church. Being in such a spectacular place on the top of a mountain with people who don't speak thai, let alone english, but being able to recognise each other's faith and love for the same God was unique. The worship songs they sang to us had tunes we reconised, so they sang in Ahka, and some sang in Thai and we snag in English ... and it sounded just the way it was meant to! 😊
After church we were told that we'd been invited to one of the elders homes for the evening meal - all of us! That meant 8 of us & 22 pastors!! So we once again got
into our vehicle and went up and down a few hills before we arrived at this modest dwelling on the side of a hill and on stilts. We all fitted in there somehow and they had prepared a meal for all of us to share. We found it amusing that their next door neighbours had a satellite dish in their back yard! 😊
After our meal we went back to the church where all of the chairs were packed up and we set up our beds for the night. After going to the toilet and washing etc. in the dark we headed off to bed to where we heard a cacophony of strange sounds that kept us amused for quite awhile - pigs grunting, flying bugs the size of rodents zipping across our heads and banging into the walls, scorpians scratching around of the floor beside our heads etc. etc. 2 of our team chose to sleep out side on the little shelter and what a view they would wake up to!
After a somewhat broken sleep we all got up and had breakfast (in the shelter) and began our first full day in the village. Our team
leader prepared for the conference that he was guest speaker at and we started organising the medical clinic. We had purchased US$1,000 of medical supplies and basics to bring with us so we laid them all out ready for our patients who had started lining up early. Some brought chairs over to sit down to watch the proceedings as though it were entertainment....which it probably was!! Our doctor saw many many people that day (100+) and we all felt quite useless by the end of the day because we didn't have the right medication or facilities to really treat these patients properly. But we did what we could and hoped and prayed that it was enough. An example of the hopelessness we felt was when we saw a little boy who was failing to thrive. He hadn't been eating for an undetermined amount of time. We didn't have tests available to be able to determine what was wrong. Part of the difficulties were that we didn't speak the same language so we couldn't even really get the proper story from his mum. These people spoke Ahka so when they saw the doctor, they spoke in Ahka, which was translated into
Thai, which was then translated by someone else into English and so forth. This meant that one consultation could take awhile and there were no guarantees that the translations were accurate! All we could do for the little boy was give him some vitamins and some worm tablets and hope that that was the problem. If it wasn't he would probably die. We my never know what happened to him. After a very busy day of seeing patients and dispensing medication after eating our evening meal, we collapsed into bed for our second night in the village. Out team leader preached three times that day.
The next morning we awoke bright and early and got ready for church. The woman of the church once again prepared our meals with amazing care and love. We were so well looked after. The pastor of the local church banged the 'gong' which alerted the village that church was about to start and then we sat in the church and waited, and waited, and waited for everyone to arrive. While we waited the women sang worship songs that were beautiful. I felt like all of heaven's angels had just descended and had started
singing to us. Amazing. Eventually church began, and we sat through 3 hours of mostly Ahka messages, but hey, we were in an amazing place, with like minded people, worshiping the same God. It was all pretty special.
After church we ate again, opened the medical clinic briefly before we packed up our gear and headed of back to the children's home. We were sad to leave these amazingly resilient people who stole our hearts with their smiles.
God Bless the Ahka people 😊
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