English Camp Leoi & Construction Lang Gaow

On Tuesday June 24th, the day after the RCC Cultural Exchange, a group of 31 people left Bangkok via tour bus and headed out on a 5 day trip to Northern Thailand. Our group consisted of 15 youth and adult sponsors from Harpeth Hill Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee and 16 Christians from Bangkok. We started with a 3 day English camp in Leoi. Leoi is a small city very close to the boarder of Laos. We set up our camp at a school on the outside of the city. The school provided 350 high school students for our camp. Our job in this camp was to spend time with the students and speak only English with them. These student study English but don’t get a chance to use it with native English speakers. It was a very fun time. Our students played games and sports with them. Wednesday night the school treated us to a big dinner. The entertainment was provided by the student from Leoi and our students. It was a great exchange of the two cultures. On Thursday, we were treated with presentations by teachers and students from the school. The presentations were their interpretations of ancient Thai stories.

Thursday afternoon, we drove 4 hours into the mountains to a village named Lang Gow. This is a village of Hmong people, who are mountain people from the Thai-Loas area. We have a small church in this village. They have been meeting for a few years in homes. They now have land that was purchase by a group of Hmong Christians living in America. We went there to spend time with them and to pour the foundation for their new church building. On Thursday night, the village treated us to some traditional dances. We sang songs for them and one of the Tennessee teens brought a message of encouragement from God’s Word. On Friday, before the work started, the Christians bought a pig for our meal. To honor us, they waited for us to arrive before they killed the pig. It was interesting since most of our group (Americans and Thais) have never seen this before. We worked all day on the foundation and got the footings and half the floor poured. It was a long hard day of work, but God blessed us with nice cool weather. Friday night we shared the meal, singing, and words of encouragement with the Christians. It was a great time. On Saturday, we made our way back to Bangkok. It was an amazing and very tiring trip, but well worth the time and energy spent.