Already having the trip to Thailand planned when the Dec. 26 tsunami happened, I decided to see if there was a way I could help with some of the relief and rehabilitation from the disaster. Joined by three other girls, I went to the island of Phuket where a lot of damage had occurred. We managed to hook up with an organization that was already helping there, and they made the connections needed for us to go to several villages and put on simple children's programs for them. We were able to meet a number of local Thai believers, and to meet missionaries who serve full-time there. We heard so many stories of how they had been directly impacted, and even hit with the tsunami.
We played games with the children, gathering a large group of them. We taught them some Bible stories, with some local Thai believers translating for us.
The children were beautiful, we fell in love with them.
Many of the children were seemingly malnourished, and several had completely inadequate clothing. It was hard to see the conditions, but we welcomed our brief opportunity to love them, pray for them, and play with them.
The two villages on Phuket where we did the children's programs, are "Sea Gypsy" fishing villages. You can see here some of their boats. A number of them had lost boats in the tsunami, and a Christian aid organization was helping to rebuild.
There were still posters up all around asking for help in finding, as-yet unaccounted for loved ones.
We were able to see some of the tsunami damage first-hand, in Patong on Phuket, where the casualties and damage were significant. The tsunami had come from the beach directly behind where I was standing when I took this picture, and went up this street, destroying everything in its way.
As we walked along the beach front road we kept seeing signs for businesses and shops we wanted to see, then realizing that they no longer exisited. The biggest concern on people's minds seemed to be the tourism-dependant economy, and how it would be affected in the tsunami aftermath.
