There is so much to tell you! As I type, new thoughts just keep coming up and it's hard to get everything down in any order. Yesterday, Laura, Tiina and I went with staff member Mary to ChaingMai. (Please understand that this is being written sometime between the middle of the night, and early morning. It seems like we've been here much longer than just a few days,) The purpose of this trip was two fold: Meet with the IJM staff to learn more about what they do, and buy fabric for the Napatha BAM. A BAM, and I hope I get this right, is ministry which empowers people to make a living, doing a handicraft. We started the day 24 hours ago, by taking a Sung Tao to the airport. A Sung Tao is a Pickup truck taxi. More on that later.
As we left the airport, Mary arranged a taxi for us to take us to the IJM office. The office is located behind a coffee distribution / roasting office. As the taxi driver tried to find the address looking for street numbers, we saw a nice young man flag us down. This was Quintin, our contact at IJM. We left the taxi and entered the offices. which were probably in a converted home. The first thing I noticed were the long rows if legal binders that lined the walls. These were the open cases.
In a nutshell, IJM works with families to get birth certification for villagers. NOTE: I asked Quintin if he would be able to condense his presentation into a ELCC sized blurb and maybe skpe in one Sunday. He quietly laughed and said he would love to.
If you are like us, you are probably thinking that getting a birth certificate isn't that important. Here, not having one can lead to being restricted to village boundries, enslavement, jail, and even being kicked out of the country where your entire family has lived forever.
