Progress....and rice of course

Alright, Katrina and I are writing this blog together this time, she is feeling much better! Some really cool things have happened over the weekend and we are stoked to share them with you. One of our objectives in coming out here was to bring the proclaimer(audio new testament bible) in Karen and do some listening groups with some of the people. We visited the new group of Karen, I mentioned below, yesterday and brought them lunch. We introduced ourselves and told them our purpose for being there and then had them listen to the bible for about 20 minutes. Everyone was very attentive and seemed to be interested in the Word. After lunch we asked if anyone would like to hear more and many of them replied with YES. Pastor Manat and us will do another, longer listening session before we leave. Very cool! The people were very happy we brought them food and fellowshiped with them. They very recently fled to Thailand due to Burmese Army men attacking them and destroying their homes. This is a group of about 15 people and they will be added to the Forgotten Family.

The other objective of this trip is to create more and better sustainability for the Karen. There are 62 people who live on Forgotten Land now, but very few of them can fully provide for their families with what they can farm from our land. Most of the men and some of the older boys and girls have to look in the jungle for bamboo to harvest and sell or to look for anything edible. Some people have construction jobs, but very few. When Jon Justus and Ryan Blood were here they found some land in which would be great for us to purchase, but would be about $25,000 for about 25 Acres. The owner of this land is the same guy who rents us the Forgotten House and Land now. Jon and I went and met with this man at his house a few days ago while Jon was still here and we talked for a few hours. Turns out he has a big heart for the Karen and wants to help them any way he can as well. He told us we can use his land for FREE and let the Karen farm the land. Each family needs roughly 2 acres to farm and provide for their 4-6 person family per year. This works out great and will provide farm land for almost all our people! God is at work here for sure! We need to bring water down from the mountains to the land so water will be there year round and will cost roughly $1,500. The land is only a 10 minute bike ride away, so it works great for our current Karen families.

In interviews we did with the Karen, we learned all of them very rarely eat meat and survive primarily off 2 meals per day of rice and some variety of vegetable or sauce. They expressed it would be very helpful in properly feeding their families if they had a fish farm. After further investigation into fish farms, Manat and I discovered a Thai family around the corner from Forgotten Land who have a big fish farm pool and don't use it because they don't need it. Turns out this family is Christian and after explaining what we are doing, they said we could use the fish farm pool for FREE and for as long as we want! God has provided once again! We will get this Fish Farm up and running this week and we are very excited about it. This fish farm will hold around 1,200 catfish and should provide enough fish for our entire community to eat fish on a weekly basis. Very cool stuff!

We celebrate birthday's each month for those in our Forgotten community and this month we had birthday celebrations for 6 people, one being a brand new baby girl! We cooked dinner for the entire community of 62 plus all of us and gave them small gifts of rice, sauce, soap, toothpaste and brushes, salt, and candy. These people really appreciate the necessities of life! I, A.J., had the pleasure of sharing my gratitude for all the people gathering with us and to introduce Katrina to everyone. We shared our purpose for Forgotten and how we love them and hope to better their lives; they were very thankful. It was a wonderful event.

I will wrap it up now. The weather has been hot with rain showers in the afternoon, which are nice and cool. We saw the giant gecko, Milo, in the house last night! Ryan found this gecko when he was here at the store down the street, caught it and let it go in the Forgotten house! Thanks buddy. We miss everyone and hope all is well. We are really enjoying ourselves and feel very blessed to be amongst such humble people. Alright, talk to you soon. Love you mama (Mari). Bye Bye.