Yet another exciting update from Mike Denison. Thailand June is rocking their committee work! It looks like all of that planning is paying off.
“DAY 3: Quick results keep the energy flowing! A 2-week YouthLinc trip goes by in a flash. That’s why the time our team spent meeting and planning over the past seven months was so important. We needed to be ready to hit the ground running the moment we landed.
That’s why I’m so thrilled to report that everything is going like clockwork. Yes, we’ve had to juggle the exact schedule a bit, but every project is probably a little ahead of expectation.
Our students teaching at English camp continue to improve with each lesson. They are making it super fun for these cute Thai kids to learn and practice a bit more English. You’ll be proud of the way they are using games, songs, and their new extroverted selves to make it a success.
The new school library is almost finished being painted, both inside and out. We just need to plaster the back outside wall. Then it will be ready for us to paint our team mural inside and begin filling it with the English kids books we collected.
Our other construction project is the stage I told you about earlier. It’s located in the school’s cafeteria/performance space. It has a nice roof for protection from the elements, with the walls open to allow the refreshing mountain breezes to blow through.
The old stage was wooden, which the termites loved. But it was getting pretty rickety. I’m so glad it held all of us during the opening ceremony! That’s why we ripped it out and are replacing it with a new cement stage covered with tile. With the block surrounding wall complete and back-filled, it’s ready for the cement top.
Over in the new sewing center, the twelve ladies from the village are proving to be super fast learners. Camilla, Lisa, and others from our committee have taught them to sew cute headbands and simple skirts. The results so far are great! Hopefully they can hurry and make more headbands to sell to our students before we leave.
This part of Thailand is famous for growing strawberries. While we were still in Utah, we received requests from the village leaders that the farmers were interested in drying strawberries to increase their harvest profits. So our business committee got busy researching low-cost, low-energy ways of doing it.
Yesterday they taught the village leaders how to build simple yet effective solar dehydrators. It was a great collaborative effort, and a lot of fun to watch them get excited about the possibilities. It’s not strawberry season right now, so they will be testing it with bananas, mango, etc to figure out how it works in this climate. If they work well in this humidity, they can then build larger ones for more volume.
Most of the work today was completed early, so the majority of the team working at the school decided to walk back to the guest house. It was a great opportunity for them to stroll through the area enjoying the beauty of these mountains and the new friends they are making.
You’ll be happy to know that with it being the start of the rainy season, the weather is quite lovely. The mornings are just a little cool and refreshing. Most of the day is overcast to protect us from the sun. It only rains a couple times each day, and when it does we’re protected under a roof. Lots of bugs, but very few bites so far.”