Dear friends and supporters,

While it truly is God who sustains and empowers us in our work in Klong Toey, without your faithful support we could not be here. In the last few months we have been more and more aware of the incredible privilege we have being supported encouraged and upheld in prayer by so many great people. Some of you have journeyed with us for the whole 21 years of this crazy adventure,- others we have had the pleasure of meeting along the way; all of should know that you have been part of bringing about Gods Kingdom here on earth to some of the poor, forgotten and ignored , people of this world.

Parent teacher meeting with Aiden and Film

In the last 6 months the ministries and programs here in Klong Toey have continued to grow and expand at an exhausting rate. We don’t really plan to start new things they just seem to emerge and it feels like a tide that we can’t seem to hold back. In these exciting and scary moments we rest in the amazing knowledge that there is a large group of Christians standing with us, who believe in, and fight for the same hope, love and justice that we long to see. Almost everything we do starts without a budget and God then seems to stir the hearts of people like you to become part of this.

A recent example is that of 2 special needs children that seem to have just been handed to us – Nong Bart and Nong Foam, both four years old. These beautiful heart-melting little boys have been quietly locked away in the middle of the slum, hidden to save face from a community that sees disability as something a person deserves, and as a result they don’t want to mix with lest it catch onto them.

Bart is Autistic, and was having twice daily seizures. When we found him he was like a wild animal just running from place to place unable to sit for a second, unable to play or connect with anyone. His 74 year old great grandma is his full-time carer, while his mum works 12 hour shifts at a supermarket to support them. Like most families there is no father on the scene, as mum is the minor wife and the husband has a few families from what we can tell. Grandma, out of love for her grandson and desperate to stop him hurting himself was forced to tie him up during the day.

Not far from our slum is a fantastic school for special needs children. We took Bart there and they advised we seek treatment for his seizures before he could attend the school. This started a 6 month haul of twice weekly visits to a great hospital (not cheap but the only real option.  Thanks to all who have donated towards our medical fund.) While waiting for the doctor both Bart’s mother and I would work up a sweat as we chased him around the large waiting room area.  This was mums only day off each week. What a way to spend it!

The fantastic news is that Bart was eventually able to start school just before Christmas and thanks to the generosity of some of you, we have his school fees for 1 year. The other good news is that his seizures have reduced to between 1-3 per month instead of 2 or 3 a day. (Although these last 2 weeks he has had some big seizures and we are back to trying to make adjustments to his medication.) The other news is that he can now walk better thanks to the physio regime he receives at school, and he is starting to speak and can call me by name and make eye contact. He is still very active and each hospital visit remains a vigorous workout for his mum and me!

Nong Foam has dystonia, (It looks a little like Cerebral Palsy), He cannot control his muscles and they constantly spasm and then stiffen. This effects his whole body even his face and neck muscles. He cannot sit, stand or use his hands, and has to be carried all the time. We have been trying to get a special wheelchair for him but without much success. Sadly for this gorgeous, yet tragic little boy, his brain is not affected and he gets very frustrated and bored just lying in front of TV all day locked in the house.  A group of Swedish families have been sponsoring him to the same school as Nong Bart, but they leave Thailand next month and we will need to find next years’ school fees.

Both of these boys needed transport to get to school as the usual mode of transport from the slum- motorbikes is not an option. I have been able to pay one of Ash’s soccer coaches a salary to drive our car as a school bus each day – another of the many unfunded programs that your generous support has gone towards. Ort’s monthly salary is $280 and he helps me out during the middle of the day with emergency and ongoing medical cases. In the evening he coaches one of the junior soccer teams with Ash.

Nong Foam’s father, Gann, is now employed fulltime with the Helping Hands Fresh food delivery service.  www.hhdelivery.com This is a project we started last year to employ young men.  (Thank you to Entrust and others of you who contributed funds to the start up of this project.) We have an online shop and expats in Bangkok place fresh fruit/veggie and meat orders online. Gann goes to the local Klong Toey Market at 5am buys the produce and then delivers it to the customers, getting paid $5 per delivery. While it has been going well – we have 146 customers registered and three guys fulltime- it does still need some salary support as some days there are only 1 or 2 deliveries so it is not yet self sustaining. The hope in the future is that it will sustain itself as a successful business and these young men will continue to be role models to all the other men who attend the community centre daily. The struggle for us has been to encourage men to work and contribute to caring for their children as women seem to bear so much of the burden here.

Helping Hands Thai Cooking School that many of you will know about is exploding and has become quite famous in Bangkok and among tourist groups. We are now rated Number 2 out of 199 attractions in Bangkok on Trip Advisor. The cooking room is now too small and we had 137 customers last month but had to turn 47 customers away.  We have just finished fixing up the old room Ash and I lived in for 8 years and it is ready to be the new cooking school. (Again we have no real budget for this and while some of this comes from Poo’s profits we still have to find money to pay for the metal locking doors and glass sliding doors.) We are about to launch Poo’s cook book “Cooking With Poo” in Bangkok this month, and then we will be touring 3 states in Australia with  Poo and her staff and family (See the website dates (www.cookingwithpoo.com)

It is so exciting to see what God is doing in and through Poo and her team. As I write this she is preparing a banquet for our house church tonight. She feels that she is doing well and wants to bless the rest of us with a beautiful meal tonight. She continues to mentor other young men and women and inspires all who meet her. God has gifted Poo as a peacemaker, and in a community full of conflict and violence this is a coveted yet burdensome gift.  Poo’s influence in the expat and tourist community has also resulted in some great contacts for the Klong Toey Community Centre school, and our soccer program.

Ash has taken the soccer competition to a whole new level – we now have 7 teams competing in 3 leagues across Bangkok- you need a physics degree to work out the programs each week- yet some how Ash and his team of coaches who we now also employ, are able to get 80-90 kids to all the correct places. Again we don’t really have a budget for the transport we rent each week so we rely on whatever we can get – sometimes the trucks have bits falling off them – but so far no kids – so that is good.

Orr with his cast

Most recently one of our favourite little cheeky boys, Orr, whom some of you who visit would have met, fell from the top of the swing set at our school and broke his femur in half. Sadly a fall like that should not have caused a normally strong femur to break – but Orr has malnutrition. He is 7 years old and is cared for by his 9 year old brother, Emm. Their mother who has AIDS has sniffed glue for so long that she is now brain damaged and cannot recognize or remember Emm at all. She roams around the community causing havoc- sometimes naked, sometimes stealing etc. She is in and out of jail, and as I write this today she is chained to the fridge in the small shack she shares with the boys and grandma.

Orr has a half body cast which involves special care and he and his brother spent the  the first 4 weeks living with the either us, or the MacCartney’s  fulltime.  Orr is indeed gorgeous but very demanding and we have spent many a sleepless night sitting scratching under his plaster with a knitting needle!  Again without our medical fund, Orr would be permanently disabled as the free government hospital would not have set the overlapped bones straight and they wouldn’t even have given him pain killers. The combination of our medical fund, a very sympathetic doctor, and a lovely English friend of mine, has meant that Orr had the bones straightened in the operating theatre without pain, and is receiving care in one of the best hospitals in Thailand. We may need a budget for back care for the UNOH team as lifting him in and out of the wheelchair is killing all our backs as his plaster weighs ton! He will be in the caste for at least another month.

In the midst of all this, Aiden was run over by a car at the front of the Community Centre and for 1 week we had 2 little 7 year olds in plaster. Of course it just meant the neighbours now all believe it is bad luck to help a kid with a broken leg as then it means your own kids will suffer the same fate. Thankfully Aiden’s leg is now fine and we are all feeling much better because Granny is here to look after us.

It does make me frustrated with God sometimes – I know accidents have to happen but the timing was just so unfortunate, as I feel it really undermined what we have been trying to teach about Christ to our neighbours. I know God always has a higher purpose and I am so grateful Aiden only had a fractured foot and bruised knee it could have been so much worse!

Film and Focus

In the midst of all this chaos, Ash and I were asked to take on the care of a little boy called Film. He is 6 years old and has been in our pre-school and kids club for the last few years. Rod Sheard one of our UNOH Bangkok team members spent a few years trying to support Film’s dad and help him get off drugs but to no avail. He is now in Jail for the next year. Grandma who cares for Film and his younger sister (Focus,3 years), has sold their mother into prostitution.  Film himself has already been sent to the border to live with strangers once before, while his mother worked off her debt to the brothel. Film has tried to look after himself and his little sister, coming over for food and water regularly. The grandma then also asked us to take the little girl but when we went to get her, we found she had packed her things and gone, and we are unsure if we will ever see her again. We pray for little Focus that she won’t suffer the same fate as her mother, and we will take her in if grandma shows up at anytime.

In the meantime, Amy and Aiden are getting used to having a pretty needy little brother around and Alisha (UNOH Bangkok member) shares the mothering with me. Film is so used to being lied to and abandoned that he keeps checking if we are still here, and is very jealous and possessive when we care for Orr and his brother Emm. We hope over time he will settle and understand that we really love him and that he is precious to God.

There are so many sad abandoned little boys in the slum – “The lost boys of Klong Toey” I call them. The needs are huge and we are always overwhelmed. There are no quick fixes there is only the long slow struggle to see the light of Christ emerge in the darkness – the Hope of Christ who calls the little ones to Himself and threatens Millstones to those who hurt these precious ones.  Today I sit and watch as another  little 8 year old boy, plays like he has not a care in the world, the massive bruise on his cheek that I witnessed his drunk mother make as she slammed his head into the wall last night – stark evidence that all is not well. There is so much to be done!

Ash and I apologize that it takes us so long to thank you for your support. We hope you never feel that we take your generosity for granted. You are very much in our hearts and we cannot thank you enough for choosing to be part of this crazy struggle, for being mad enough like us to believe that we have a responsibility to seek justice for those with no voice of their own. Thanks for being part of the fight – may we never give up while there is breath in our bodies.

Love and thanks

Anji and Ash Amy Aiden and Film and all the precious Klong Toey folk that you share your resources with!