June 08, 2007 – Friday

[author: Hannah]

Today the entire group went to Prong Jai ICS campus with Darren.  We moved desks, chairs, and metal cabinets from each room and boxed up things from the school office.  It was very hot out today and we were all getting dirty and working very hard.  We met one of the Thai maintenance men who works at the ICS schools, his name is “Eck”.  He led us around the campus and showed us to each room and helped us move and load everything.  Our team got along with him very well and he was very fun to be around.  After working for about 3 hours, Eck went and bought Thai food for us from a street vendor.  We all gathered around the table and feasted on green curry, chicken fried rice, pad thai, and delicious fresh fruit.  Eck sat there for about 15 minutes trying to memorize all of our names…I’m still not sure if he remembered them all.  One of the school office secretaries, Maria, ate with us as well.  After lunch we finished working and loading boxes and furniture and we took apart a swing set.

After working long and hard, we all played a full court basketball game, guys against girls.  Eck was an amazing basketball player but I am pretty sure the girls beat the guys.  Shane fell and rolled on the ground once too, scraping his knee up pretty badly.  The girls won and we all piled into the van and drove to the Bang Na ICS campus.  We finished unloading some monitors and electronic things, and then took a refreshing dip in the pool.  The Gentry’s and George, Stacy and Kylie joined us all and we spent a couple of hours fighting with noodles and throwing splash balls and footballs at each other.  We ate pizza for dinner and then went to George and Stacy’s to practice our songs and our skits.

It was a long and hard day but we all had a ton of fun ministering and fellowshipping with one another.

June 07, 2007 – Thursday

[author: Marc]

Today, we started our first day of ministry here in Thailand.   International Community School (ICS) currently had two campuses, Prong Jai and Bang Na. With the Bang Na campus being newer than the Prong Jai campus more and more students began to attend Bang Na instead of Prong Jai.  As a result, ICS decided to merge campus.  Our ministry was to help them get ready for the movers.  The team split into two groups.  A small group of three, Sam, Leanne and myself stayed at the Bang Na campus to help them with their computer labs.  We helped the IT person unpacked new computers and hook them up in their middle school lab.  We also moved some new monitors up to their library to setup.  The second group which consisted of Amy, Laura, Shane, Andy, Hannah, Erin, and Rebekah went to Prong Jai.  There they broke down metal shelves and loaded computer to be brought to the Bang Na campus.

Since the team was joking around about Sam and I having a easy day, we went with George to help move a refrigerator that they had bought.  In the process, we were volunteered to help move an ICS teacher to their new house down the road. After we got back around 7:30 p.m., the team ate chicken and fried rice from a local street vendor near Dave and Diane Ford’s house.