Pattaya English Group, and a day in service.

Meet the Pattaya English Group.  We did a group picture for Irna, the russian sister in the front in the stripped shirt.   She is very sweet and was leaving after being here for many months.  She was so sad to go that after this was taken she became emotional saying goodbye.  We miss you Irna!

 And now, come with me out in service! This was after the Thai sunday morning meeting.  We had such a large group that we had to split into two groups. 

We all rode motorbikes and we all got rained on before we got to the territory, so we opened our umbrellas and snuck shelter under this covering. 

This is Cut.  She is wonderful! She is a recent unbaptized publisher and we were working together.  She studied abroad for her University degree in the Netherlands and got all her bible questions answered by studying with a sister from the USA that was living there.  After this picture was taken, the rain stopped and we worked the territory where Cut got her first RV, and I found Cheeta.
Cheeta is a young girl from Cambodia and is here with her husband who works in construction.  It is very common in Thailand for construction workers to be Cambodian, and their families usually live next to the building site.  Cheeta and her husband, and I think her younger brother, live together in a very humble home.  It is about 10ft x 5ft and only has a hammock.  Their sink is outside.  Cheeta speaks a little Thai, but cannot read Thai and knows no english at all.  So I gave her our Good News book and showed her the cambodian page.  She eagerly read the entire page with avid concentration and at the end we exchanged names.  She pointed to the sentence that asks if she would like more information in her own language.  Someone with us happened to have a truth tract with them in Cambodian so I gave this to her and let her know I would return with more.  We walked down the street to meet the rest of the group and they had finished the street.
It had been about 5min and we walked past Cheeta's door and she was sitting on her ladder steps waving the tract saying (in Thai) "I'm finished, I'm finished, can you bring more?"
The next visit she was just as excited and enthused, and her reaction to more literature brought tears to Cut's eyes.  We promptly started a bible study with her in the BT book and we have had 2 more wonderful studies.  The language barrier is difficult, and Gowoon's parents happened to be visiting on this last saturday and they speak fluent Cambodian.  A rarity in these parts, so I kidnapped them (basically) and made them come see Cheeta.  We sat for an hour with her, and it was wonderful to see her ask questions and communicate her feelings.  I also understood more about her background and her draw to the bible.
When she was in living in Cambodia she wanted to know more about the bible, so she took a 4 month coarse from another church there.  Cambodian people do not encourage this so she received a lot of opposition from her family and others.  When she was telling us this, she actually got very emotional. This is one reason she was so happy to meet us, here she was in a foreign country, not able to leave her house due to thievery, and we came to her to teach her for free.
Needless to say, I am just as excited to meet her.

Fred Barrs came to our rescue! Umbrellas and a car.  We ended our day with our English meeting.  It was a great day.