NTM Part 4 - VILLAGE

Sat trip up to Hui Pu village was filled with laughter and songs. CHOL kids sang and sang, out of pure memory with loads of action too. It was during this ride that we first heard the Hokkien songs. Oh my, it took me a while to know they were singing hokkien......haha.... Still remember the hokkien song Shing asked me to listen of which i probably understood 1%.

Back to the journey.....the children suddenly called out to us to look up and so i did....angela, eveready with camera in hand, clicked and took this pic. What did we see? Superman? Superbird? Nah.... it was a kite in mid air at a certain 5.15pm in fang :)

Children taught me to play this sek sek hand game and i kind of perfected it coz no one was able to beat me thereafter (hee hee). Some pics to show all the happy faces.....

annie and me

the boys, Adam, John & Enoch

Solomon, Evangel & Melissa
Mark, Samuel & me!
the girls, Rebekah & Mary

It wasnt long before we reached the village and it was getting dark (sun sets at 6.15pm in thailand). Robert and the older children immediately set to work, tying up the puppet show curtain, fixing up speakers for puppet story cd and lights for the night...both running on some portable batteries he brought along. By the time singspiration started, it was pitch dark.

Finally the hour to deliver the show arrived, the team a little anxious about coming in at the right timing (story in thai and they kind of depended on me to give the cue). Barely 3 mins into the story, cd player halted, probably for 2-3 seconds. Then it happened more frequent with longer pauses. Alas, no more power to run the remaining one third of story. Had to finish the story and so needed to narrate with dara interpreting, while the puppeteers animate at the back ground.

Science enthusiast will tell us it takes a lot of energy to run a cd player then lights and those batteries were insufficient to begin with :) nvm, it was perhaps a blessing in disguise coz dara interpreted to lahu which meant more could understand. Thank God team finished the show and Hendrick delivered the gospel message.

During the message, we hid behind the curtain to prepack notebook with the craft for each individual. It was a challenge to work in the dark with little light from robert's torches. Thank God it went well..... we had just enough of the materials and notebooks for everyone.

The caterpillar game was fun too. Our team had the privilege to demo of which we totally flopped with the speed we "crawled". The children moved like lightning speed and so we realised what a difference 30 years can do :) Ha ha...

Giving out goodies (our prepacked sweets and yummies) plus one big tin of biscuits (from robert) was next. Distribution went smoothly in 2 columns.

Village preacher in the centre, Ya Er is his name.

By the time we journeyed home, it was close to 9pm. Super hungry for most coz we had an early dinner at 4pm, ha ha, and robert "treated" us to a big bump that made our real bumps left the wooden hard flooring of the lorry for a mere 1 second, just before we reached CHOL.

We did some shopping in the morning and bought doughnuts for all to eat for supper. But seemed like the thai instant noodles was an instant and popular hit than the colourful doughnuts. Dara said all Singaporeans like doughnuts.....not me though. I was not too hungry, thot i was at first and so tried eating one doughnut, only to give away to my backup...ha ha... For the entire trip, he was always helping me to finish my food. Angela and BK commented he has become my "pun so tang" (rubbish bin in hokkien)! You know who?