12th August is the Queen’s Birthday, and also Mother’s Day in Thailand. The Childrens’ Homes love to celebrate this, of course; and this year was double the fun, with an extra public holiday declared by the Thai government, making 4 days in a row off school!. Thursday was a busy day, with youth and adults helping to prepare the BridgeWorks Centre for all the visitors. Some of the children cooked special cakes for the event – a mammoth effort which took all day! Some of the New Heights team (Canada) helped out with this – we ended up with very colourful and luscious cupcakes – enough for 200 people!
On Friday morning, several Homes gathered at the Centre – the ones from out of town stayed overnight. Five Homes, the BridgeWorks Youth, a few more ring-ins, and the Canadian team all vied for the “BridgeWorks Cup” – a 2 day soccer tournament. Those who didn’t want to play soccer played in water, cooked food, took photos, played games, and generally had lots of good social time and fellowship together. Torrential rain in the days before the gathering had reduced the field to a muddy quagmire, but no-one seemed to care, even when it was getting hard to recognise who was who with all the mud everywhere!
In the evening, a time of worship was followed by honouring all the Mums that were present, and then a fireworks display. The soccer continued the next morning, with New Life Home from ChiangDao taking home the Cup (and letting every-one know about it!) So much fun (and so much mud!). The Canada team had bought goodie bags for all the children and youth (how did they know they would need so many?), which finished off the day on a fun note.
Apart from all the mud, one of the memorable things at this gathering is the wonderful relationships growing between the children from the various homes, and the community spirit that is evident between the homes and leaders. (Oh, and did I mention the mud?)