Our last week in Thailand!

Hello friends! We are enjoying our last week in Thailand! We can't believe it's gone by so fast and we are ready to go home at the same time. So it is a bittersweet feeling but we are excited to see how God will use us at the hostel this week!
Sally left on Thursday to fly back home, so we spent Wednesday night after class at the night bizarre helping her get the few last gifts she needed. And Thursday we all went for American food at The Duke (we got pizza!!!) and then got coffee on the river to celebrate sallys last day. We took her to the airport that afternoon and then headed back to teach English. Jessica taught the older kids prepositions and directions. Abby taught the middle kids days of the week and bedroom furniture vocabulary. It's exciting to see some kids really learning and practicing what we have been teaching them.
Friday we spent all day resting from the busy week of crazy adventures we have had and we spent time doing lesson plans and brainstorming Bible study topics. That night we taught the younger kids. Jessica worked on writing the ABCs and Abby taught numbers and days of the week while playing hangman to teach spelling.
Saturday we found out that Pon, a teacher from the disability center was coming to Chiang Mai for voting on Sunday and wanted to hang out. We were really excited she came because we spent a lot of time with her in Mae Sariang and tried to witness to her. Saturday afternoon we had our first Bible study. 3 girls and 1 boy came. Jessica talked to them about trust and how we know we can trust God and facts about why the Bible is true. Tessanee translated for her. It was very interesting when she talked about the bible fulfilling prophecies because Thai does not have a direct translation for this word. So Jessica had to explain what it meant and how it helped us know the Bible was true. She emphasized that when we trust in God he gives us peace and this was a good topic for the kids to understand. After the lesson we taught an afternoon English class for the older kids. We drew a maze on the board so they could practice giving right an left directions and then we practiced forming sentences to describe where objects were located with prepositions. That evening we met pon for dinner. It ws great to talk to her again an share stories with her. It was raining all day so after dinner we went to the mall and pon loves getting her nails done so we did that with her. We invited her to go to church on Sunday and hoped she would come.
Suday morning we went back to church at Abundant Grace church where we had been before. But this week we got there early for the singing! It was such a neat experience to worship in English and Thai with other believers. We both really enjoyed praisig God in such a unique environment :) The sermon was also very good and challenging. Pon did not come to church so we were a little disappointed. But she did call us at lunch and wanted to meet up that afternoon before she caught her bus back home. So we had bible study again with the same 4 kids. Abby taught about love and how we know that God loves us through creation and Jesus coming to earth. We wrote out bible verse in English for them and spent time explaining what words meant, like created, image, eternal, perish, holiness and glory. It was very challenging to describe without all the religious words we are use to what these terms meant. But our favorite part was teaching them the meaning of John 3:16 and seeing their smiles when they understood in Thai. What an awesome feeling! After Bible study we met up with pon to shop and eat at the walking street. It stopped raining and was a beautiful night! We all bought some fun gifts for those back home and even bartered on our own for lower prices. We are getting the hang of this culture! It was great to share one more fun night with pon and show her friendship full of Gods love. She may not have gone to church with us but she definitely knows that we came here to show Gods love to her people and we will continue to pray that some of the other Christian teachers at the disability school will keep witnessing to her. We pray someday soon she will be our sister in Christ!
Today we have been working on lesson plans and are making worksheets for the classes tonight. We also spent an hour and a half doing laundry and we are both so very grateful for washers and dryers back home... No more wringing out wet clothes over and over again in another week! Thanks for checking in!