Day 2; "Play" is invaluable

"If I were to die from some unforseen circumstance, would I want Christians to come play with my kids? Absolutely!" said Mark Oshman, the leader of our Okinawa missionary crew.

Some folks in our Christian military realm feel that going to Thailand to "just play with the kids" is not a good reason to go, nor is it really considered "missionary work."

Keep in mind these kids have no parents, or if they have any family members out there at all, they can't afford to keep them, so the Thai government considers them orphans.

James 1:27 calls us to care for widows and orphans by stating, "Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you." (NLT)

Pretty plain English to me.

Saturday we played most of the day with the kids at Im Jai in a large room (pictures to come) playing soccer, giving piggy back rides until we collapsed, and playing games like "duck, duck goose!" and an interesting one I never heard of before called, "slide your buns" or something like that. Basically, you round up some chairs in a tight circle and leave one open for the person standing in the middle to sit down. But that person must grab an open seat while the circle of folks sitting continue to "move their buns" quickly from chair to chair in order to make it difficult for the "monkey in the middle." Amber from Colorado got it started and the kids loved it. By "buns" hurt afterward:) Again, I took limited video of the horseplay, but I felt God's tug to focus mainly on playing with the kids that demanded my attention most of the day.

We also split up the teams and took the kids bowling and swimming. I was on the swimming team. Darn tootin'-after being in the hot sun sweating, playing with these kids hard all morning - bet ya batooty I'm going to a pool! At first we thought their version of a "pool" was going to be some pond out in the middle of something. But it was an actual pool with chlorine so it was good. We played "marco polo" games, threw the kids around (the boys especially loved it) and did "chicken fights" (again the boys' cup of tea). The girls had fun too.

God smiled on us this day as we took care of His children.