31 March 2022

Unity in adversity 

It is the shared recognition of the abundance of God’s blessings coming down to us that truly unites people.

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"The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

- Deuteronomy 31:8

It has been such an exhausting, stressful and challenging month for us at YCF. We would like to firstly thank all who have been keeping and supporting us in prayer. We are truly so blessed and thankful for all the love we have received.

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This month, we were faced with the worst situation we could imagine, something we have been trying our best to avoid since the pandemic started. However, we are very glad that the Lord has seen us through the ordeal, and He has seen us through and walked with us throughout the whole journey. We have always been very thankful that our home and the children under our care had not contracted the Covid virus but this month we were greatly affected as almost all the children along with some staff and adults got the virus. We are not exactly sure how the children got affected as they have been kept home from school and only went to school to sit for their final examinations and went out to get their vaccinations. It started with one child showing symptoms and then as we saw more children displaying flu like symptoms we got concerned. We immediately scheduled for everyone to get tested and thankfully we were able to secure the help of the district health care services to come in to conduct the tests for us. To our horror, so many children were tested positive and the next thing we dived our heads into were to sort out isolation and quarantine arrangements. We had to keep those who were still negative safe and well away from the positive ones. It was much to handle, we were shorthanded, and the children had to be cared for even more as some were really with bad symptoms and they had to be fed, given their medicine on time, checked on and to ensure everyone else was well. Those weeks were rough but thankfully we have emerged from that darkness and now we can stand in the light, as our children have all recovered and no one is testing positive anymore.

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It was indeed a down time for us this month, struggling to care for each other as we all fell one by one to the virus. Nonetheless, with community and God, we pulled through. Due to the pandemic, the children’s final examinations were also greatly disrupted and so some had only sat for a few papers while some had completed all. It is such strange and confusing times.  To us it was still important that we spoke to our older children, those who were graduating or moving on to choosing and deciding on their majors or subject combinations in high school, so we found time to sit them down for talks to check in and advise them. With all that is going on, all graduation ceremonies were ceased hence we were not able to celebrate with this graduating batch of children as how we usually do, by bringing the whole YCF family down to witness them receive their graduation certificates and to take lots of photos with them. It is okay as we know this will help to ease the curb of daily infections and we all want the situation to get better and so we will do our part. We have also just recovered from such a crazy month and so the wise decision was to take things slow and to ease by to life.

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We pray and we know that April will be an even better month, we have emerged from this covid experience even stronger and we know that we are blessed to have each other to care for one another and we look to Jesus to continue to pave and lead the way for us.

28 February 2022

Emerging stronger because we are together

This short month has kept us on our toes, the Omicron virus has highly transmittable as it is has proven itself to be worldwide really put us to the test when we had a child who caught the virus from school and tested positive. It was nerve wrecking and stressful for the management team as we had to ensure that our other children were safe, and we had to prevent any potential spread. As we have many children staying together in one common place and we do most activities together it was really a head scratching time for us as we scrambled to find ways to help the child who was tested positive and to also monitor the other children.

 

Thankfully, we were blessed by receiving help from the social healthcare system as they sent in teams to help conduct the Antigen Test Kits for free to test all our children and staff. We would not have been able to afford to pay for the tests without their help and it was most necessary as we had to make sure that everyone else was well and if any of the other children contracted it, we would quarantine the child immediately to prevent the spread. We wore masks at home, ensured that the children maintained good personal hygiene and that they were socially spaced out during meal time, church services, home based learning and whenever they were doing any activities.

 

We also made the decision to keep the children at home from school as we are very afraid of them catching the virus. It is sad that not all schools are able to manage the situation and so the children in school have been contracting the virus from one another. We did not want to risk it and so it was after much consideration that we kept them home, even though their examinations are coming up, but we told them that they had to be responsible and hardworking to revise for their examinations. Our child who tested positive was sent to a quarantine facility and was well taken care of there until the PCR test came back negative. Thank God for His goodness in watching over us, it was a difficult time, and we were rather shaken, however, the Lord is good and He delivered us.

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On a happier and lighter note, this month we celebrated the graduation of another one of our older children who graduated with his degree in Accounting. We are so proud of him and his achievement. He has currently found employment in Bangkok and has started work. Thank God that we were able to join him during his graduation ceremony at his university and we could bring some of the older children along to add to the cheer and celebration. Each time one of our children graduates, we cannot help but be filled with so much pride and joy. It is truly because of the Lord’s providence, the hard work of our YCF staff and generous sponsors who make it all possible for such achievements.

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The countdown to the end of the school year has started, our children have been preparing for their examinations. Some have already sat for their papers and have a few more to sit for. Please keep them all in prayer, it is something different from previous times, but we have no choice but to embrace the new normal and to work around or some would say work with it. The children are excited for their school vacation. We hope to make a trip to the beach in Hua Hin and bring all the children.

 

If you would like to find out more about the trip to the beach or donate to the trip, please reach out to us at youthcharityfoundationthailand@gmail.com .

 

It is always good to have a getaway, especially so as in the last year, the children have all been cooped up at home and we feel that it would be good if we could head out for a short trip. The new children have not been to the sea, as many of them are from the mountains and have seen the sea before, so they are even more excited. We hope we will be able to raise sufficient funds and take the whole gang to the beach. We are excited and we are also happy to be entering into the third month of the year. Stay safe and take care everyone, God bless.

31January 2022

Taking comfort in His covering 

We started the first month of the year with good news that schools were reopening and our children were able to return back to school physically. Everyone was so excited with the news and the children could not wait to say goodbye to home based online learning and were all so eager to go back to their respective schools to meet with their teachers and peers. We know that it is still risky as the exposure to others will be something beyond our control and so we reminded our children about the importance of staying safe and vigilant at all times by keeping their masks on, practice safe distancing and to take care of their personal hygiene. 

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It has still been quite chilly on some days and we have been encouraging the children to soak up as much sun as they can and have been keeping them occupied with activities such as helping to catch the fish out from the rice fields, which the boys love and enjoy every second of and the girls have been of great help cleaning up and helping with the cooking. 

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January passed by too fast, every day just went in a blink of an eye. We have been trying to get back into the routine of things despite being interrupted by changes from time to time. In the last week of the month, we have been facing a few Covid19 Omicron strain scares as some of the middle school children's peers had contracted the virus and their school informed us of the positive cases. To be honest, it has been stressful, worrying about the children, worrying about the virus and just being so helpless in this situation. We have however, been fortunate to be blessed by good friends and volunteers who have been helping the children with the Antigen Rapid Testing and they have been so gracious with their time to come down to help teach and administer the ART or here in Thailand we use the term 'ATK' - Antigen Testing Kit. Most of the children were frightened just at the thought of having a long swab stick poked into their noses and were unsure of the whole procedure, but with the encouragement of their friends and the gentle hands who helped administered the test made it bearable. 

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Please pray alongside us, we are not sure now if or how many children may have caught the virus. We are also stressed knowing that there may be a few of them who may be affected and of course we do not want to risk the others to the exposure. Pray for the staff team as we manage the situation now and for the Lord's strength, covering and grace over us. All we can do now is to put our trust into the Lord and know that He will hold us and see us through.  We want all our children to be healthy and well and we will do our best to continue to care for them despite this curveball thrown at us. Together we are strong and with the Lord we are stronger and will come out of this challenging and stressful period.