Final update before we return home

River separting Burma and Thailand. Only a few hundred yards from Forgotten Land

Forgotten House

The five Karen girls live at Forgotten House

Aerial view of River valley. The small cluster of bamboo houses behind the house with the red roof and to the left of the dirt road is Forgotten Land.

A student at the school we run on Forgotten Land.

All Smiles!

Karen man hanging out. Good to see smiles :)

Young Karen man on his boat, scoping out a beautiful lady on the shoreline (Ok, its Josh = FF team)

Everyday life

Headed up river to film some shots for our awareness project

Left to Right: Josh Montoya, Jon Justus, A.J. Jackson


God is Love. He has shown us many things on this trip; one being that He is in control and we must try not to control everything ourselves. Many lives are being changed here in Thailand. We are humbled God would use us to work along side the Karen. We provide the gospel, safety and refuge, a community, sustainability, education, medical care, and immediate relief. We do many things and with Gods grace, we do them well. We will be launching an awareness campaign throughout 2011 and making a DVD from extensive film we collected on this trip. Help us help others. Luv

Blessings,

A.J. and the FF Team

News from Thailand / Burma Border

Pastor with Proclaimer in Karen


Pastor Manat jammin out


Karen orphan who lives at Forgotten house


Dinner





Pastor Ninja Stephen


Wipa teaching Karen students

Greetings to all and thank you for you love and prayers! Our team (Josh, Jon, Miles, and A.J.) are all healthy and safe. We are half way through our trip and it is has thus far been filled with joy, adventure, rice, prayer, deep thought and discussions, rice and fellowship.

The people we serve are the Karen and they are highly opressed. The people in Forgotten land our safe, but those still in Burma face (as we speak) murder, rape, slavery, abuse, displacement, and opression. We are doing our best to help the Karen and their children. There is great need for safety and medical attention among the families, education for the children, and hope for all. They desperately need the gospel and love of Christ within them. Through Pastor Manat and Pastor Ninja Stephen and audio bibles (Proclaimers) we have been ministering to the Karen for three years now. We have had but a few come to the Lord, but we will not be discouraged and will continue to press on. The Lord is faithful. These people hurt and our hearts ache for them. One of the girls who came to Lord is only 16 and was kicked out of her house by her family once they learned she became a Christian. The girl, Wipa, now lives in the Forgotten House. After seeing the changes in Wipa's life, her family now is very interested in the Lord and has allowed her to return home if she wants!

We are defining the mission of Forgotten while on this trip and through God's direction, we will continue forward. We are seeing the Karen children as the future and a great need to foster, educate, and mentor these kids. They can be raised up in the love of Christ to help their people, love, give, fight, and give back the hope we can instill in them. Pray for us.

We thank God for the work of Pastors Manat and Stephen. They are faithful brothers and they want only to minister, diciple and love.

It is beautiful here. Forgotten Land, in the village of Metawah, is surrounded by lush mountains and in the Mai river valley seperating Burma and Thailand. Josh, Jon, and I swam in the river yesterday. It is hard to wrap your mind around the fact that just kilometers from where we were swimming, people are being hunted!

I am victim of this more than anyone, but please recognize how good your life in the U.S. is. How much freedom you have. Remember the Forgotten. Thank you again and enjoy the pics!

Blessings,

A.J.

We're here!

Well, we have arrived safely after 27 hours of flying and layovers and another 10 hours of driving in a bus! It has been an amazing time so far with Josh, Miles, and Jon. Pastor Ajan Manat picked us up in Mae Sat and brought us to Maermat, where we stayed the night with a friend and fellow servant of Christ. We head for Forgotten Land today, which is about two hours north. There is a school here that Miles and Manat funded to have built about three years ago. The school is for all the neighboring Karen children, but it currently lacks the support for a teacher, so we are exploring if Forgotten is to be part of this. Please keep us in your prayers and we thank you all for your love and support. Ephesians 4:1-5. A.J.

P.S. The photography is done by Josh Montoya

Hello Hello! Sorry it has taken us so long to post another blog. We hope everyone is doing well.

Pastor Ninja Steve has been faithfully doing bible listening groups with the families in Forgotten Land, and has been receiving good responses from them. I sat in on this one, even though I can't understand anything, but it is cool to just watch the people listen. The audio bible proclaimers really open doors. We have also been doing these listening groups with the older children at the Forgotten house.


We talked about the fish farms in the previous blog, but I want to tell about what has happened since then. The land owner whom we rent our land from has 6 vacant fish farms in which he is now generously letting us use for FREE to do whatever we want with them. Long story short we will have the ability to raise over 7,000 fish at a time. Whatever the people don't eat, we can sell to provide income for Forgotten. This so cool! We are going to start with 1 fish farm and about 1,000 fish and see how it goes first and once we have it completely figured out and working, then we will fire up the other fish farms. This is going to be an amazing part of Forgotten sustainability for the people.

Below is a picture of the bathroom at Forgotten house. Typical Thai toilet. I'm sure with some imagination you can figure out how this thing works! (notice no toilet paper....but there is a bucket of water) (we brought toilet paper)

The man with half a leg is one of the Karen men who will be living on the 25 acres provided us by the land owner, Sak. This man lost his leg to a land mine in Burma while taking his family through the jungle to flee from being attacked by the Burmese army. He and his wife currently hunt in the jungles in Thailand for food or bamboo to sell. He and his wife will be given land to farm and will be part of the fish farm project. They also take care of their grandchild since the parents died in the jungle of Malaria. If you are feeling like you have had a rough day.....think again and thank God for everything he has provided you!

The picture of the 4 concrete bins, is one of the fish farms we will be using.

The picture of the jungle is the 25 acres the land owner, Sak, is letting us farm and use. It is very close to the river and the main road going to town.

The picture of us trucking it through the jungle with guitars and pots of steaming hot noodles is when we went to visit the new Karen family living by the river. This was 20 minute hike on a very small, very slippery trail! These people are in the process of moving closer to the road and away from the river. The Burmese army has been coming across the river and messing with them recently. Once they are closer to the road and on our land, they will be safe.

The picture of the kids on the bamboo mat is kindergarten. Maam runs the kindergarten for us and works with all the kids. She does songs, education, games, bible stories and lessons, and more. She is wonderful with the kids and does allot for Forgotten.

Well that is all for now. Thanks for all your prayers and love! We miss you all and look forward to being home soon. Blessings!

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.

We made it!

Greetings from Thailand or Swatee Cop. We arrived at about 10pm on the 16th after a 19 hour flight. Our old friend Blue and his new girlfriend picked us up at the airport, along with Pastor Manats good friend, Tamon, who is a taxi drive in Bangkok. We got our bags and zipped off to find a cheap hotel for the night. After driving through Bangkok for 45 minutes going 45 MPH on the freeway, way to slow, we found a place and turned in for the night around midnight. We met Tamon in the lobby at 8:30 and he took us to the bus stop about 40 minutes away. He sang pretty much the whole way in Thai and would then attempt to translate his song to us in English. He was a very happy man! We booked a VIP bus to Tak for 600B ($18 or $9 per ticket) and 6 hours laters we arrived in Tak. From here we grabbed a Tuk Tuk (small, open taxi) to the other bus stop 5 minutes away where we got on another bus to Maesot, 1 1/2 hours away. This bus was not so VIP and the drive was through the mountains. Katrina got a little sick from the roads and the malaria medicine I think. Beautiful mountains! I met some dude named David on the bus from England who has lived in Maesot for 20 years....just chillin...creep. Once we arrived in Maesot we were greeted by Ps. Manat, Ninja Steve, and good old Jon Justus. Good to see old friends. We then drove 2 1/2 hours in the truck to Forgotten Land in Metawa. We caught some rain on the way home, Katrina fell in and out of sleep, and Jon and I talked pretty much the whole way with Manat chiming in from time to time. We stopped at a police check point and wifey had to pi pi island, so she got her first experience of going numero uno in a jungle, spider infested, bamboo outhouse. She was not happy, but did very well! Upon arriving, we hit our small matts on the floor in the Forgotten house, pulled the mosquito net over us, and crashed out. Oh, before that, Jon introduced Katrina to our "proper Thai bathroom"....sooo goooodd. She was pleased, as was I, that it is better than the previous jungle bathroom. Today we have been eating rice for breakfast, checking out the property, playing with the kids, looking at land, eating rice, meeting new Karen refugees who just fled across the border a month ago,(one guy is 19 and had one of his legs half blown off by a land mine 6 months ago!) planning a September birthday party for all, setting up the proclaimers, eating rice, and hanging out. Katrina is not feeling well at the moment, so please pray for her! I will go home after this to care for her, I'm sure it will pass by tomorrow. We have alot planned and work to do. We are doing an audio bible listening session tomorrow with some Karen, so pray that goes well! Katrina sends her love to all, escpecially mommy and daddy, sis and nathaniel. Keep us in your prayers. I will try to update again early next week. Jon and I are going to go hold each other on the small motorbike and ride home now to eat rice. Luv!

2009 Thailand Trip Blog

This is a picture we will be putting up in the Forgotten House in Thailand. This photo is to show the Karen who Forgotten really is and that they are loved!