We have two really exciting pieces of news to share with you.

We have welcomed new baby Alex to our family this past month.

Photo of Alex 9 days old

Alex’s mum came to live with us from Pattaya, needing help to escape the lure of the sex industry three months ago. Our prayer is that she will settle here and love being part of our family, as she mothers her baby boy, Alex and that she will be content to leave her past life behind to start afresh. We need wisdom as we seek to help her with this adjustment.

Other exciting news is the progress that has been made in the past month on our hospice. With a team of workers from Adelaide, Australia we made huge progress, I will let the photo’s tell the story.

Our goal is to have the roof completed by end of November with the help of some Thai labourers. Then we need an electrician, plumber and tiler to help in the new year. It’s exciting seeing this project of many years coming near to completion. I personally would love to see the facility operational by this time next year. It’s a shame we need it but sadly it is true that many people in our area are dying of AIDS each day. We want to offer a place of peace and hope for people in their final stages of AIDS.

Our 2010 calendar is back from the printers, if you’d like one we’d be glad to supply that, as we’d love to sell all our calendars, they make a great Christmas gift at $10. Let us know if you’d like one, click reply on this email and order one or more, we will add postage cost and let you know how to pay, depending on which country you are from.

I also want to include a poem written by a nurse on our staff, for Mai, one of our little HIV+ girls.

Deep Eyes

Deep Eyes. They tell a story.
A past no longer talked about
Of sickness, of abuse, of desperate searching for more,
Of hunger, of pain.
Deep eyes. They tell a story
The disease has its grip. A curse, a sin
Passed down from generation and held within.
At times it lies dormant but always shows its power,
The control it has on an unwilling body.
Deep eyes. They tell a story.
Lost within, the hurt, the pain, the confusion.
Yet helpless? …..NEVER!
To give up would be the end
There must be more…….
Deep eyes.
They tell a story.
Holding onto hope. Hope of a body made new.
No more pain. No wore suffering. No more tears.
Where does this hope come from?
Something much bigger.
Deep eyes. They tell a story
Look up! Where doe your help come from?
Your help comes form the Lord!
The Maker of heaven and earth!
For Mai Girl
By Crystal Sutton

Photo of Mai taken by Crystal

Bernie’s Bike Ride…. A fundraiser worth supporting. An Aussie guy named Bernie is in USA right now riding his bicycle from New York through to San Francisco on America’s “northern discovery trail” (google it, if your interested to know more). It is a 8,000 km ride which he will complete over the next 4 months. His purpose is to raise awareness of and raise funds for two projects;  one in Cambodia and the other, our own project in Chiang Rai. If you want more info please e-mail office@baannamjai,org. I have an electronic brochure I can send you. Will you partner with Bernie, to encourage him on by sponsoring his ride? His goal is to get 1000 people to pledge $100!   He also thought that if just 100 people would commit to getting 10 others (colleagues, friends, relatives, whoever) to commit to give $100 for his ride, his ride would be more than worth it. Will you be one of these people? You can help!

Here’s how. You can email me (penny@baannamjai.org) and let me know you’ll be one of the 100 who will commit to finding 10 others to give the $100. OR you can just go online now and be one of the 1000 people who give $100.

So here’s how to give… go to Australian Relief and Mercy Services (ARMS) website
www.arms.org.au on the left hand side, green menu bar, find where it says “Donations”, click on that. On the next page find small yellow letters ’secure site’, click on that. Fill in your details, then at donation information, select “International Projects” then “Bernie’s Bike Ride HOOH” then you’re all finished! Thank you very much for supporting us and for encouraging Bernie! Your gift in this way is tax-deductible.

Please can you also email Bernie and let him know you’ve given or just to encourage him on his ride. He will check his emails some nights at the end of his day of riding and be encouraged to continue on if he knows the pledges/funds are flooding in. bkscan24@yahoo.com.au

We are going to use the funds to complete our medical assisted facility/hospice which is currently about half finished and a team from Adelaide are coming in Sept/Oct this year to volunteer their time and expertise to complete the job. These photo’s are of the progress so far. It is very exciting for me to see this project of many years coming near completion. Better still will be when I see it serving people in need.

Penny for all the team here at Baan Nam Jai.

The school year in Thailand is from May through March. This week, all our children are completing their end of year exams and will be on their long ‘hot season/summer’ break for 2 months from this weekend.

We are planning lots of fun activities for the children’s school break. Last year we went to the beach, do you remember? Many of you gave so generously so we could go on that special trip! We had so much fun, the kids still talk about it. This year we are staying around Chiang Rai but don’t feel sorry for us…….we are going to have fun at home, plus visiting the local swimming pool some days, as well as doing a couple of ‘day trips’ here & there. The kids are looking forward to a trip to the zoo in Chiang Mai. Maybe next year we’ll look forward to the beach again.

Mai’s depleted immune system has caused her to struggle health-wise of late and she has not managed to keep the ‘bugs’ away. She had a short stay in hospital with pneumonia one month ago and is currently ‘fighting’ a bout of bronchitis. Please pray for her health. She still manages a smile, isn’t she gorgeous! In fact, many of our children and staff have struggled somewhat with their health of late, so we need extra prayer in that area.

Our mums have begun making crocheted handbags and purses to sell (their latest income generation project), so if you are interested in purchasing one, they are taking orders. You can ’special order’ the size, colour and shape (either oval/round or square). Email your order to: quan@baannamjai.org  we will need to add a small amount for postage, depending on where you live but the handbags are very cheap. Quan will let you know the cost when you order, as it depends on size.

Thanks for remembering us, we hope you enjoy the photos in our newsletter. Please do keep remembering to pray for Penny’s health, that her cancer would go away for good! Plus if you could pray for the new mums and children that will join our family this year, as now that we have completed more buildings, we are ready to take in more mums and children.

Blessings to you all and thanks for your prayers,
Penny and all the team here at Baan Nam Jai

We’ve had such a great year! The children have grown so well and so strongly, many of them have started school and done so well. We are so thankful to God for their lives and their health. The mums in our care are growing stronger too and it has been a joy to develop more of a program for them, as they have become even more apart of our big family! We’ve seen miracles happen regularly and we are so blessed to be serving here in our community as we find needs that we are able to assist with.

We so appreciate your love, your support and the different ways so many of you partner with us for the people of Northern Thailand affected by HIV/AIDS. With the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day only a week away at December 1st, we wanted to thank you for your partnership in our efforts to assist families affected by HIV in our home here as well as in our wider community.

In 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the first World AIDS Day in an effort to raise public awareness about HIV/AIDS issues, including the need for support and understanding for people living with HIV/AIDS. The day is also an opportunity to highlight the need for continued development of education and prevention initiatives.

Over the past 20 years, World AIDS Day has been established as one of the world’s most successful commemorative days. It is now recognized and observed by millions of people in more than 190 countries around the globe.

With Christmas just around the corner we are aware that many people like to give, so we have prepared a Reverse Christmas Gift Certificate, with which you can bless our project in place of a normal Christmas gift to a friend or relative. If you would like to have some of these sent by post to you please email and let us know; we need your postal address and to know how many you would like.

We also have calendars for sale at $10 each, please let us know if you’d like to order one or more and we’ll post them to you.

Thank you for your support, encouragement and ways you partner with us, we appreciate your care for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Thanking you,
Penny and all the team at Baan Nam Jai

Our second baby home is very close to being finished! We are all pretty excited as this home has been a 2 year + project in the making.

With almost two homes completed we have decided to have a boys and girls home, so we expect to be able to move the boys out of their rooms in about one month and into our new house which we are believeing will be done by then. Aphae one of longer term Thai staff has risen to the challenge of being house manager to the boys home! Please will you pray for her, she is a courageous, humble and teachable woman.

Can you please remember Susie also, and the girls who get to stay behind in the other house. Our goal is that with two established homes of children, it will be easier to add more young children in need to that more stable environment.

Final bit of good news is that one of our mums was able to leave us this past week to return to live with her family. As you know part of our mandate is to keep families together wherever possible and her family had come to the point where they have become much more accepting as they’ve been educated about HIV/AIDS and felt they no longer needed to be scared of having her and her baby daughter live with them.  We applaud their decision and although we really miss baby Bendra and her mum, we are so glad for her that her family no longer ostracize her because of her health. That was awesome news for all but didn’t stop the tears flowing the morning she left.

Thank you for your concern and prayers for Josiah. The news is good! He had surgery and got 5 stitches around his little index finger. He has been on IV antibiotics since his surgery and has been very brave. The doctors said that he will be fine and will be able to keep his finger. Also, he is healing/recovering so quickly that the doctors said he can come home today.

Thanks again to everybody, and keep your eyes peeled for a general Baan Nam Jai (Home of the Open Heart) update coming very soon!

Luke (on behalf of everyone at Baan Nam Jai)

This is very quick email going out to all of you to ask you to pray for Josiah, our youngest. He was just hurt in an accident playing and jammed his index finger in a door very badly, resulting in a part of the finger being severed off.
He is at the hospital now and we are trying to get the best possible care for him and hoping that he will be able to keep his finger intact and whole. This is obviously very distressing for the little guy and also for all the rest of us here. We really want for him to get great care and have the best chance of keeping his finger. Please pray for him and the doctors, etc.
We will keep you updated as details become available.

Thank you.
Luke (on behalf of Home of the Open Heart)

The way we structured the trip was to send the kids down in two groups, as 11 littlies going all at once is harder to organise logistically. So the first group of 6 kids, which included Belle, Bom, Foon, Bam, Mae and Jonathon went first, much to the dismay of the second group of Garin, Hope, Nui, Mai and Josiah, because they had to wait. A hard thing to do for a 6 year old, especially when a trip to the beach is involved!

The trip down…

The flight from Chiang Rai to Bangkok was the first time most of the kids had been on an airplane and it was certainly looked forward to with incredible anticipation. Highlights from the flight included a huge fascination with the safety instruction leaflets, watching all the other huge planes out the window, and Jonathon making friends with the airline hostess and then asking her if she wanted to be his girlfriend. She politely declined, but not without giving all the kids a free snack first! What a charmer Jo is. Next was a 4 hour drive to the ferry which would take us all across to the island, called Ko Chang, where we were staying.

Sun and sand…
Each group of kids went for a week and had a blast swimming, building sandcastles, collecting shells and eating lots of yummy food! Each one of the kids grew more confident in the water as the week went on, and a few gained enough confidence to swim unassisted for the first time ever!! They all loved spotting fish and many hours were spent looking for weird and wonderful sea creatures. It was really lovely to see each child have so much fun in this new and exciting environment. A friend of ours from Chiang Rai lent us an inflatable rubber boat and the kids had a great time in that playing “speedboats”, which involved getting pulled around as fast as possible in the shallow water by Paul, Dave or Luke. For some reason the boat was always getting attacked by “sharks”, but don’t worry, the sharks at Ko Chang only tickle kids and roar a bit, they don’t bite, so no one lost any limbs

Thank you so much to everyone who was involved in making this happen, and for the generosity of those that gave money for the kids airfares and accommodation expenses. Everyone had such a great time and I know every one of the children will remember this trip for years to come. Hopefully it won’t be too long before they can go again. It is so nice that they can have amazing holidays and fun trips like this one and we really value having such a great support crew (that’s you!) around us.

Until next time,
Luke Wilcox
(on behalf of everyone here at Baan Nam Jai)

FIRST – I am not sure what the temperature is in your part of the world but where we live it is HOT, HOT, HOT! and we have been given some some money to take our kids to the beach, so on April 19th we are going to the beach!!!!! We are VERY excited about this and if you want to see some fun photos of our beach trip please write to us at communications@baannamjai.org and ask so we can send you some once we return. We’ll be gone for 10 days! Yeah! Here are some photos of us getting ready to go to the beach.

SECOND – A friend has very generously offered to help us get our second baby house completed by offering a MATCHED GIVING PROGRAM. Our goal is to have this building completed by June/July. Now that we have “matched giving” pledged to us, we only need $25,000. That isn’t much really, and we have already received 2 gifts since the matched giving pledge for the baby home, one is 1,020 UK pounds (yesterday) and the other $400 (last week), so it is even less than $25,000 now!!! We are so excited, as we know that this is a great incentive for giving, if you are wanting to help; please donate through ARMS website (www.arms.org.au). Click on the ‘Donations’ link on the left hand menu bar, then click ‘Secure Site’ and fill in your details for giving via credit card. Please be sure to clearly note in the ‘Notes’ section that your donation is for ‘Home Of The Open Heart – second baby house’. If you would prefer to give using a method other than credit card, or you would like your donation to be tax-deductable, please email sponsorships@baannamjai.org for details. Alternatively, email us if you want to direct deposit/wire funds into our Thai building account.

also…….on March 24th, 9 of our children began the “summer school” at the new Thai school where they are all be attending school together. Our 4 oldest children, who used to go to school at FLC (Family Learning Centre) have moved school, to join with another five our other littlies who are now going to the local Thai school, just 5 minutes from home. they have settled in VERY well! This picture is of Susie picking the kids up from school. They don’t have to wear a uniform yet because it’s still summer school.

Current Prayer Needs
* for all the staff, as we work together as a team.
* for families affected by HIV/AIDS in our community as we reach our in friendship to them
* for Penny who needs healing in her body.
* for the children & HIV+ mums who are coming to join our family once buildings are completed.

Thanks heaps for praying for us, thanks for your care, your love and your partnership with us. It means a lot to us all – to our kids, our staff and our mums with their kids!
Don’t forget to check out our website at baannamjai.org – when you get a chance.
Blessings returned to you all!

On behalf of everyone at Baan Nam Jai.

In April 2004, we had two teams come to begin the construction of our hospice center. They were able to finish digging the footers and pouring the foundations for what would one day be a place to care for mothers in their later stages of HIV/AIDS. Due to a lack of needed funds and work teams, the hospice foundation laid bare for three years.

On 11 October 2007, a team comprised of four churches from Adelaide, South Australia arrived at Home of the Open Heart to begin construction on the first floor of the hospice! Through this team, God provided both the funds and the workers to see the vision of this hospice live on.

This past Saturday, 27 October, we said farewell to the team. You can check out the website for pictures of the construction process and soon we will have their completed work online. Follow the links below to see what has happened over the past month.

We still have a need! To finish the construction of this three storey structure, we need an additional $100,000 USD. Please join us in praying to see these funds come in.

If you would like more information on how to give, please see our website or email us at: office@baannamjai.org

Thank you for your prayers, friendship, and support! And a special thank you to this amazing team from Adelaide!

From all of us at Home of the Open Heart