March 2011
Somchai sits for a bit at the table
just outside the new church office at Hot Springs.
February 2008
When we first visited Hot Springs, this same area
was used as a food and equipment storage room.
March 2011
Suradet and Yupa now have a simple but clean and usable church office.
(Computer and printer were a gift from Canada in October 2008.)
One of the exciting things for me this trip, was the many obvious indications that Hot Springs is flourishing. Each time I'm there, I see more and more evidence of what our Sponsors' monthly support payments are contributing to the overall benefit of the entire place.
While our focus is always on the children themselves, it's also important to see how their parents, Suradet and Yupa, are being supported and cared for in their astonishing task of love to these 15 kids, bearing in mind that they are also, and were first, a pastoral couple overseeing a small but lively rural congreation.
A comparatively slight, but actually rather significant change this time was the creation of a new office space in what once was a fairly unfinished storage area.
There are only two small desks and a book case in the office. But the sign outside declares this to be the Church Office, and Suradet is so pleased. As part of the Korean Methodist Church, and having this property "up north" and away from the city, there are often day conferences and seminars held at Hot Springs -- with a jaunt over to the public park of the same name a normal way to end the day of gathering.
As a Pastor, Suradet is now able to accommodate something more of a "professional" hospitality, and has the capacity to print off seminar materials and bulletins. As well, he has a separate space to study and prepare. The kids are also often in the office, when school is in session, typing up and printing off assignments.....just like here at home, but with no internet to surf or Facebook to post.
I confess to a certain degree of Pastor Office envy in my time. I am often in the offices of colleagues in the city whose offices are more spacious and better furnished and, well, just look way more "successful" than mine does. And it flickers a bit, that nasty, green little flame of coveting.
But then, there I am half way around the world, and Suradet is so excited to show me his new space, opens the door and steps aside for me to enter ahead of him. It's clean and bare and no where nearly as resourced as mine. Barely an office, really. But he's so glad for it, humbly so, because it just wouldn't do to be proud, but his eyes give him away a little. And I express my delight and say the few Thai words I know to declare it a beautiful space, very good, and that I like it a lot.
And I ask if I can take their picture.
Because it's a picture of success if ever there was one.
