We spent a few hours teaching English to some of the people from Lighthouse MB Church
Dave and Louise took us out for a wonderful Thai dinner overlooking the city of Mae Sot
We had arranged late last night to join some of the members of Lighthouse this morning to have fun with some English games, songs, and Bible stories. We were kind of relieved that we would be going to an already-existing English teaching event and could be part of it!
Well...when we woke up Louise mentioned she may have miscommunicated and we were to be the ones leading things! Thankfully Lindsay and I were able to work as a team and use our "teacher skills" and some great ideas and advice from Louise to come up with a plan. It wasn't eloquent based on some of the more detailed lesson plans we've created before, but in the end it worked so well :)
Two of the items that were up for debate between Lindsay and I were, 1) were these kids or adults? and 2) how much English do they already know? I think I won that debate because they were adults and already had a reasonable amount of English understanding...yikes! Louise suggested that we do some worship, look at some of the vocabulary used in the song, tell and act out a parable (again, looking at words used), and memorize a verse in English, so that's what we planned out!
When we got to the church we waited for people to gather, introduced ourselves, and did a quick "introduction" activity with everyone there so they all had to get up and practice doing introductions and naming different objects on the "Spot It" cards they were given. We then looked at the English lyrics for the song, Revelation Song, and discussed some of the words used and their pronunciation and read through Revelation 5 in Burmese so they could read it in their own language. We then sang the song and discussed some of the words in it a bit more.
Once we finished with the song we introduced some of the words and phrases that are used in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard and then had everyone act it out. Lindsay spent a few moments afterwards sharing the story of how she shared this parable with her Grandma Stofer and how--even in her 90's--it was never too late to come to Jesus and accept him.
We closed our time by reading through Ephesian 2:8-9 in English, learning some actions to help with memorization, and then eating lunch together with everyone...whew! It was a lot packed into only a few hours!
Louise brought us back to the hotel where we had some swim time and journal writing time before we were picked up again to go out to dinner. The plan was to go to a waterfall just out of town but when we got there we found out it had actually close 30 minutes prior, so we went straight to dinner! It was a beautiful location overlooking the city of Mae Sot, and with all of the burning pollution/smoke in the air the sunset was especially colourful :) We spent time talking about missions, ministry calling, what we saw and learned in Mae Sot, and further getting to know each other. We are so very thankful for our time here seeing all that God is doing in Thailand and with the Burmese people!
Tomorrow morning we hop on a bus we have chartered with Wichian, Siriwan's husband (...she leads Naomi House in Chiang Mai) to take us down to Hua Hin for some family time on the beach. Louise is actually coming with us down to Bangkok as she is going to also take some much-needed rest, so we will have the chance to chat with her for another few hours. If anyone has time to come to Mae Sot and see what God is doing--and you are up for spur-of-the-moment English teaching--we suggest you consider it!
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