Those words from the Bible are living truth for us. As a family, we just returned from 10 days in Thailand. But instead of visiting Thailand’s world-famous beaches, tropical gardens, or exotic resorts, we went up-country to the poorest rural part near the Cambodia border. And true to God’s word, found for ourselves beauty and riches galore!
We visited Tree of Life orphanage, a small place in Buriram. They hosted our family and three other groups over the Chinese New Year Holiday in February, and we all put ourselves to work. The first three days were exclusively at the orphanage; painting, cleaning, digging, planting, rocking, feeding, washing…and of course playing with the kids! Our own kids were fantastic workers for long days, and were a great example to a few other visiting teen-agers! The next four days were spent visiting about 10 local schools. The final couple days were spent putting on an English camp for local kids.
Fixing playground equipment, putting on song/dance/skit programs, meeting thousands of kids, playing games, and passing out 13,600 bibles to each one. Teaching English with songs and games and making memories. It doesn’t sound like much, until you re-orient yourself to the setting – country schools in the middle of nowhere that never have foreign visitors, kids who desperately want to learn English to get ahead but have nobody to speak it with them, and even kids who now own one book – the bible we just gave them. It was a humbling and exhilarating experience all at the same time, and not something to forget.
Here are a few lingering memories and images:
An after-church walk with children from Tree of Life: kids from two different worlds sharing the same love of life.
An orphanage baby who slept on the floor before Sue arrived with her strong arms, wallet, and determination to make a difference.
Some games don’t require you to speak the same language.
Hard-working young men whose only goal was to make the world a better place – for somebody else.
A baby with no mother that had constant loving arms around her.
A courageous young man explaining God’s word to an interested Thai teacher (and a dozen of her very-blushing school girls!)
A hero’s welcome from gracious children that are truly thankful for each small gift – that have a level of appreciation our activity-filled, media-saturated world cannot understand. 
You don’t think young people will give themselves away until they are exhausted? Here are youth group teens from Korea/China on the ride home after another long day.
Three months on the road. Sleeping on floors. Leading to make it happen all along. A YWAM (Youth With A Mission) team from Australia, Canada, Korea, U.S., Thailand, and the Solomon Islands. If a YWAM group ever shows up on your doorstep, feed them a large meal, give them $500, and tell them to get back out there changing the world.
How to change the world? One day at a time, one person at a time, one simple act at a time. 
We love you and miss you all!
