Suffer the little children to come unto me...

We have the blessing of attending handover ceremonies regarding wheelchair donations that the Church has participated in.  It's always a moving experience to see so many people's lives being blessed by the gift of a wheelchair.  We were told that over 200,000 people EACH YEAR in Thailand need wheelchairs!!  That figure is staggering to us.  There are many organizations here in Thailand that donate wheelchairs, the Church being one of the largest donors.  We get to serve alongside the Humanitarian couple at these ceremonies.  They are the ones who write up the projects for the donations; we get to travel with them and take photos as PA Specialists and write articles for publication in the local Liahona magazine.  These are photos that were taken in the city of Songkla, located in southern Thailand.  After attending the wheelchair ceremony, we were blessed to visit an orphanage and help serve ice cream to the children.  It was a very moving experience. 

The following are photos taken at the orphanage.

Krairat Watson, a dear Rotarian friend here in Bangkok.

The youth loved to give the "peace" sign!!

However, not all handover ceremonies are for wheelchairs.  For instance, we traveled one weekend to a school for the blind for a ceremony for 10 braillers that the Church had donated to the school.  A brailler is a machine that types words into braille. That was a very moving experience for us because there were so many young children, residents at the school, who had blindness and other sight disabilities.  We are hopeful that the donation of the braillers will bless their lives in such a way that they will be able to live productive adult lives.  If you feel you'd like to do "more" to help someone in need, just make a donation under the Humanitarian slot on the donation slip!  Part of those funds may make their way here to help in Thailand!!

This little guy touched our hearts because he reminded Nana of our grandchild, Morgan.  She later discovered he was indeed Morgan's age.

Another type of donation the Church makes here in Thailand is for mosquito nets.  Being such a tropical country, there are many mosquitoes!!  And some of those mosquitoes carry malaria.  It is a nasty disease that you want to avoid; but when you live out in the rural areas, as so many Thais do, it's almost impossible to avoid those little critters!  One way that helps is to sleep with nets around your bed to keep the mosquitoes at bay.  So, the Church donates thousands of mosquito nets each year.  These photos are from one of those donations.  This is a group of people called the Mlabri, who live up in the hill country of northern Thailand.  They are a very poor people, financially, but a very rich people in traditions.  This particular group had been blessed by becoming part of a project of one of the King's daughters, who provided funds to help them build up their compound so that they could become more self-reliant by producing their own food from gardens, by having a craft store to sell their wares to earn funds, and by having a cultural center to display their crafts and some of their traditions.  We saw many precious children in this village, and our hearts were touched by the strong sense of family that we felt.  These people may never hear the gospel preached to them in this life, but we are certain that because they feel so strongly about their families and work so hard to provide for them, they will be blessed to hear it on the other side of the veil.

The mosquito nets are on the table.  This is just about the entire village.

Normally they wear just loin cloth, but for this special occasion they wore their Sunday-best. The clothing was given to them by Thailand's king to cover their nudity. Pink is his favorite color.

Their gardens were immaculate!!

A typical Mlabri home.

It was fascinating and amazing to watch these women work their craft.

 

This little one had a major cleft palate, which hopefully will be surgically corrected one of these days so he can live a normal life.