Lost on Earth

Ok, this is the thank you blog entry, and I apologize, because it is long. I have not been faithful about thanking the people who have sent support to OPC in the form of money and in material donations.

First of all, thank you to Steve and Becky Andersen for their very generous donation which allowed us to pay for the truck transportation to school for the month of July. Their donation also paid for the remainder of the school uniforms for the children, bought several school desks, stationary, pens pencils and other school supplies. Now we no longer owe the public schools any more money to send our unrecognized (therefore not “public”) migrant children to school each month.

Thanks for Jon Schwegler for his donation which paid for the electricity bills for the generator at the OPC shelter. We can only afford to have electricity for a few hours in the evening but the kids enjoy it since we have one, barely working TV that they use to watch soap operas at night. Jon’s donation also will pay for food for the last half of July and the first half of August. Thanks also to Jon and for Megan Aemmer for collaborating on a box that contained more than 20 candy bars (we cut them into pieces and served them as dessert to the children one evening), God only knows how many packets of beef jerky for my little protein deprived angels, and packs of gum that I use to hand out as prizes when the kids do well in English class. They also provided much needed first aid supplies, and best of all, children multivitamins! Thanks also for the Dr. Pepper chapstick.

Ada Cole sent a box with adorable children’s clothes that were NOT made in Asia, which means that they won’t fall apart within weeks of being worn! Thanks for the antibacterial soap, the first aid supplies, and the encouraging note. She also sent more children’s vitamins, so I think that I have enough to hold us over until I leave in November.

Professor Hans Boersma and Professor Mark Charlton made a donation that will pay for our school transportation for August and the rest will go towards paying the salary of the Learning Center cook, a delightful woman who works from sun-rise until sun-down. We were not able to pay her in June, and we are very grateful to her for being understanding and not walking out on us.

Thanks to my mother and father for their donation which was designated specifically to buy underpants for all the kids. Our properly underclothed children smell better, although I still can’t get the little boys to stop peeing on the Learning Center fence. I’ll leave that job up to Blaise. Thanks to Meme for her donation, which will be used for our orphans (we have seven real orphans at the moment) to buy lunch at school every day. Only the kids who have relatives living in Thailand get spending money, and our little orphans don't have any support, thus they don't eat lunch during the week – until now.

Now that all the thanks are out of the way, here is what we still need:
A used truck. This is our most urgent need because the man who drives the kids to school charges us a grossly inflated price for transportation and has threatened to spread bad rumors about OPC if we try to hire someone else for less money. A used truck (a good one) would cost about 200,000 THB or ~ $5000 dollars.

Bedding. With the recently increased violence across the border Thailand has been swamped with many more refugees, which also means many more children who have been orphaned, displaced, or abandoned. OPC had an unexpected 20 children show who needed emergency assistance and we do not have enough mattresses, pillows and blankets.