El Shaddai Childrens Home

New Name for the Ministry

Thailand Daddy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:02:05 +0000

The new name and address for our Canadian Ministry office is:

World Mission Continuum

Box 32056

Edmonton, Alberta

Canada

T6K 4C2

Logan Lake Team completes a boys room, Kitchen Roof

Thailand Daddy — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:17:03 +0000

The team from Logan Lake Church On The Hill worked tirelessly on an addition consisting of a washroom, change room and bedroom. During the construction they completed a roof over the pad that we poured for the boy’s bathroom in August on my last trip. After that they proceeded to build the walls for the washroom, showers and toilets. Tim and Harry worked tirelessly day after day to complete far more than anyone expected in the 20 days that they were in Thailand. Cathy and Diane kept busy helping Terry with the day to day work in the home and teaching English, Music and generally having fun with them. It was a hot humid time for them as the rainy season was hanging on longer than normal and causing flooding all over Thailand, SriRacha was one of the few areas uneffected by the flood waters. But it was effectted by a large number of people displaced from Bangkok and surrounding areas during their stay causing major traffic issues and a lack of basic food supplies in the stores.

The start of their work.Smoothing off the walls

What they started with.

Building the walls for the bathroom.Building the roof.Still working on the roof.

Working on the walls.

Completing the roof between the bathroom and existing house.

A wall just about done.

Pouring the rest of the floor for the changeroom and bedroom.

Smoothing the concrete.

The finished floor.

Hard work.

Isaac

David

Hannah

Steve working hard.

Ruth

Esther

Victor

Alan

Naomi

Jessica

Matthew

Playing with the kids

This is what teams do to help when in Thailand.

Thailand Daddy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:24:31 +0000

Right now there is a team from Logan Lake CHURCH ON THE HILL (combination Baptist and Pentecostal Church) Which consists of the Pastor Harry, his wife Diane, Kathy and Tim. Check out their Church website at www.coth.ca

They are spending 20 days in Thailand helping Terry with the children, teaching music, english and working on numerous projects.

The Children are out of school for the month of October so it’s a welcome relief to have help at this time. The guys are and have been busy building a roof over the boys bathroom (under construction) building walls for the bathroom and generally fixing anything that needed fixing. Like wiring that decided to shock them numerous times with 220 volts while they worked with electric tools, or a melt down of the undersized /overloaded wiring in the kitchen wall. Things like this happen when I’m not over there and we were lucky to have two very handy guys there to fix things up for Ter and the kids.

The guys have also taken the boys fishing in the local water reservoir, after taking a bit of a detour (maybe getting lost? in the local roads) to get there. Luckily they haven’t been affected much by the flooding that seems to be everywhere else in Thailand. Except for the fact that food shelves are starting to get emptied almost as fast as the new stock arrives (if it arrives). The ladies have done some fun stuff with the girls and Terry and everyone seems to be in good but hot and tired spirits. Seems it has been raining everyday and has been hot and humid.

Right now the flood waters are starting to hit Bangkok and we hope that the airport remains high and dry so the team can leave. Or do we want them to????? Maybe they wouldn’t mind more time in the warmt of Thailand before they return to Logan Lake weather in Canada. But I’m sure their families would love to see them.

Either way they will come back changed by their time on the Mission field.

We pray for a safe trip home when they leave on saturday.

And the EL Shaddai Home thanks them very much for all their time with us.

Blessings Ter and Dave

New address for A&D World Missions Canada

Thailand Daddy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:33:41 +0000

Our Ministry Foundation has moved it’s office to Edmonton.

The new address is as follows:

A&D World Missions Canada

PO Box 32056

Edmonton Alberta

Canada T6K 4C2

Phone 403 380-3352

1-800-958-3352

website thru www.continuummedia.com

email: adworld@telusplanet.net

Our family would like to thank all the people that have supported them. We pray for you regularly.

Blessings El Shaddai family, Terry and Dave Wharf

Moving to our new home!

Thailand Daddy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:22:43 +0000

New EL Shaddai 2 House

Just returned from a 6 week trip to see the family in Thailand. They have been struggling with the lack of a yard for the kids to play in. The Lighthouse building is just about totally rented out, which means no room in the parking lot for cars never mind kids to play. Many mornings Ter and the kids had to push vehicles around in order to leave the parking lot. Many times when we came home someone would be parked in our reserved spot, so we’d have to track them down and make sure they knew it was reserved for the Children’s home.

Anyways Ter saw a house on one of her many trips home from school and told Mark that that was our house. Mark said “it’s not our’s there isn’t even a sign for sale or rent”

To make a long story short in a few days a sign for rent appeared and Terry called to see if we could rent it. The owners said whoever brings a damage deposit first can rent it. But they wouldn’t let Ter drop off a deposit, instead they had two other people interested in renting. The first one wanted to park heavy equipment in the yard so they turned them down. The next couple they didn’t like for some reason so they didn’t rent to them either. They weren’t really excited about our children moving in but after talking to our Ministry staff who told them “this mom won’t let these kids wreck the house” So they rented it to us. The house hadn’t been actually lived in for many years so now we had lots of cleaning and paintint to do. The owners thought the paint was beautiful, but to us it looked dirty and old.

: Beautiful paint job

Before any cleaning etc.

As you can see from some of our pictures this is some of the work we had to do. It meant cleaning tons of jinkgo poop out of the window openings, cleaning all the screens, windows, security bars of large accumulations of dirt.

: Naomi and Ruth cleaning windows and bars

We had lots to clean, fix (like windows leaking water inside the house) and paint everywhere before we even started to move anything over from the old place. The yard stuff, playground, cement table, benches and bamboo hut we moved with the help of some of the Bible College students and our kids of course.

moving stuff

The house is only a 4 bedroom and 2 bathrooms so we had to build a bathroom out back for the boys so we had to install another tank for the toilets and run drains for the showers and sink. So the boys got to dig a big hole (amazing how they all turn it into a fun time!) for the tank and pipes.

Digging the hole for the septic tankEven the little ones want to dig.

More to come later, Dave

Back from spending time with my Thai family

Thailand Daddy — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 03:13:38 +0000

Sorry for being so long in posting, but when you are busy these computers don’t get a lot of time spent on them. Besides it takes sooooooo long to upload anything in Thailand that I wait until I’m back in Canada. Spent 5 1/2 weeks with the family, most of the time in SriRacha but we did get a chance to travel some.

The kids were just finishing their school year so some finished before the others (no ryhme nor reason to the school schedule) which meant many trips to pick up and deliver kids to and from school. Due to exams etc. We always have a busy time when school is just ending, picking up stuff for last minute reports etc. Anyways about school. Back in the fall they switched the hours so the kids stay at school and “study” from 3:30 till 5 So we got called in to see one of the teachers at school and when we got home we had a meeting with all the kids. Explained that we’d been in to the school to see some teachers and we found out that some of them hadn’t been staying in class. So we asked them who wasn’t staying in class? Most of them confessed that they hadn’t been staying and studying but rather playing around outside. Exactly what Terry had told the school when they sent surveys home to the parents. The sad part is that the kids didn’t do any homework at school or at home as they said ” we did it at school” yeah right! Typical kids eh?

Lots of house work and vehicle repairs to keep me busy while I was there. In fact so much my wife thought we should take a day to ourselves ( after the kids were in school) and go to Pattaya for breakfast and spend the day doing whatever. Well so much for that, the old jeep we were driving died and I spent the day trying to get it running. Meanwhile Terry sat reading a book, watching me lying under the jeep. Finally I got the fuel line bypassed (plugged solid in the tank it turned out) with a hose thru the bumper and into the tank. Good enough to get us home and back and forth for the next week picking up kids etc. (our other truck was in the body shop) So much for a fun day by ourselves.

We planned a trip up North to Chang Mai with the family as a bit of a holiday and on the way we spent a couple of days in another city. While there I noticed 3 young boys sleeping on the step of a building next to a 7/11. We pointed them out to our kids and they noticed that they were there for the next couple of days when we passed by. We explained to them that that could have been them if things hadn’t worked out with them coming to our home. I think it hit home with some of them, they were pretty quiet for awhile. You could see them thinking pretty hard. They need a few sobering moments to make them realize what they have now and how things could have been for them.

It was a great time overall.

More to come later Dave

Christmas in Thailand

Thailand Daddy — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:46:09 +0000

So do you ever think your kids aren’t grateful for what they have and all that you provide for them? Well we do think so every now and again. Now all our kids in the home came from different situations, but they all came from poor families. Sometimes they don’t realize just where they’d be if we hadn’t taken them into our home. We’ve struggled at times trying to come up with a way of educating them about this without point blank telling them “ Look this is where you would have ended up, sex trade workers, drug addicts etc”

So we thought one of the best ways would be for the children to work with under privileged children to see for themselves what their lives could be like. Through the Ministry we have made contact with some groups and Terry started taking the kids to different events. One of these was over the Christmas period. A lady from our International Church in SiRacha has an out reach in Pattaya (about 1/2 hr away) for children and needy people every Saturday. For Christmas she had Santa come and give out gifts for the children. Terry took our children to this event to help out and let our children see up close what happens with these children.

Terry called me after to relate some of the things that happened to her during the celebration and I thought I’d pass them on. At the beginning she was standing just watching the goings on and a little boy came up to her and kept tapping her leg. Once she looked at him he just proceeded to lean up against her and watch too. Once he was called up to Santa to get his gift he brought it back to Terry, he’d never had a gift before and didn’t know anything about unwrapping it. Terry showed him what to do and he was off to the races, amazing how fast they learn. There was 115 kids there so it took awhile to pass out presents, during that time Ter sat down in a chair. Not long after a little girl comes up to her, pulls Terry’s arms off her lap and proceeds to climb up onto her lap. As soon as she sat down she leaned back against Ter’s chest and fell fast asleep. Terry says to me “what gives? These kids just pick me out and settle in” I said because you must look like a loving caring person they can trust, our kids giving her hugs and kisses might have had something to do with it.

Our kids came home with a different outlook after they mingled with kids that suffered daily abuse, got pimped out for a parents next fix and slept on the streets when they had no safe place to go. You have to realize that Pattaya is the sin city of Thailand and these kids are exposed to it all day after day, year after year and many have no choice as they are forced into some kind of service. Terry came away with many different stories of people dropping their kids off at the outreach as they needed somewhere safe for them. Women showing up beaten by their spouses or boyfriends and returning to them so they don’t hunt them down and possibly kill them.

In the end we hope it sinks in to our kids that it could definitely be worse for them, even if they do think it’s so tough sometimes.

Another thing Terry did with the kids was to bake ginger bread men and then go carolling around the neighbourhood and hand them out. Interesting times were had by all, many people tried to give them money for singing (turns out when some other groups do this they expect to be paid). They couldn’t get that we wanted to bless them and their families in this time of giving. After all that’s what Christmas is all about!

Christmas morning

Christmas tree

In the end it does our kids good to get out and help others.

Dave

So just why are the kids wound up?

Thailand Daddy — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 04:30:29 +0000

I hadn’t hardly been home and Mom texted me to say that the kids were just wound up like crazy. At first she thought it was because the weather was cooler but ??????? Who knows, maybe it was because Dad had just been there? Christmas is coming? They had been out of school for a few weeks? You just never know do you? Or was it because Mom was feeling lost without her husband there so things were driving her crazy?

Anyways things have settled down to a dull roar in the home again, the kids are back to school which is another story. I would say for another time but I won’t. So here it is. The schools set home a questionaire for the parents to vote on what time they wanted the students to stay at school until. As it was the children were done at 3:30 which gave the children time to do homework when they got home before supper. But with going to school until 5:30 they wouldn’t have much free time for anything before supper. Of course the extra time at school is supposed to be for doing homework and studying. But from past years when they’ve done this we know it’s just a fooling around time for the kids due to the lack of supervision. Of course most of the Thai parents want the later days so they don’t have to go get their kids until later. Terry filled out the forms for all of our kids saying that we wanted them home at 3:30. So after the kids returned the forms to school the teachers had them fill out their own forms. Then one of the teachers told Hannah that she’d give her another form for her mom to fill out again. This was because she filled her’s out saying that she wanted to go to school until later and the teacher said your mom will change her’s too then. Hannah said ” Not Mom, she’s already filled out the forms and she won’t change”. But we knew what the decision would be as they did this every year. LOL :) It sure makes a long day for the kids, 8 till 5:30 even the ones in kindergarten. It does give us more time to do things during the day but it is hard on the kids.

It’s amazing how things work, kids find things to do no matter what. Like the one of the last days I was in Thailand, I come around the corner to find most of the younger kids throwing rocks. Okay throwing rocks by itself is no big deal but when they are throwing at a sibling, sitting on top of the swing set, it’s a big deal. Now he (Isaac) was playing it safe, he had a 5 gallon bucket over his head. I guess that’s how all the rocks end up on the neighbour’s roofs.

Just like the picture of the kids playing in the rain water they found coming down the mountain while we were out camping at Kok Chang Island. They had a great time in the water and they didn’t need any fancy computer games etc to do it, just an imagination and someone else to do it with!

Anyway’s I watched the kids open their stockings on Christmas morning from my daughters in Canada and they all seemed to be a little more relaxed, not so wound up. Just having a great time with family.

So from our family in Thailand to your family wherever you may be over these Christmas Holidays. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Latest trip to see the family

Thailand Daddy — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:22:41 +0000

I’m back in Canada after spending 3 1/2 weeks with my wife and family in Thailand. I was met at the airport by most of the children and a huge banner ( in picture)

What a great family

It was a great surprise as they should have been at Thai Church at that time but because I hadn’t been there for so long everyone wanted to come to the Airport to met me. It had been just about 10 months since I’d been home, which is wayyyyyy too long, due to work issues etc in Canada. But now we are back on track so the longest time away will only be 4 months or so. You know you see them on the computer with video feeds etc but it’s still not the same as in person. It was hard to keep the tears in check but in reality I was crying like mad they just didn’t know it ( I know a few escaped while walking up to them) They all gave me hugs and of course noone wanted to be left out so they all tried to hug me at once, which I didn’t mind as it was a great group hug.

By the way the other people in the Airport sure watch us as they see this group of Thai kids welcoming home Dad who is a caucasian. We never fail to attract attention wherever we go. Many Thai’s will come up to our kids and start asking questions about the family and our relationship to the kids and it’s heartwarming to hear them say that’s our MOM and DAD!

Group hug!

After you’ve been away you have lots of things to work on, discuss and deal with. One major one was that one of the older boys had left the home just before I came. Caleb had been with the home for many years and we’ll miss him but he is at that age that knows everything and noone else does so he wanted to leave. He told some of the ther kids stories about why he had to leave before Dad got home but really it boiled down to ”I” . Meaning that it was selfishness om his part, he got very demanding with Terry telling her she had to take him back. Back being to his village in the North by Chang Rai immediately of course when you are a parent by yourself you just can’t pick up and cater to 1 out of 16. She told him you will have to wait until Dad comes home and he’ll take you back but he insisted that he had to leave right away and he couldn’t wait. Anyways she arranged for someone to return him (as he was underage he had to be returned to the family or village to sign him over and change his govt paperwork etc) Terry asked him when he said he wanted to leave ” have you thought this thru? You aren’t part of our family anymore, you’ll have to make your own way etc” but he just wanted out so he could show everyone that he could do it on his own (kind of on his own as his parents supposedly were going to pay for living expenses and he was going to stay at a friends house) It turns out that he has had both parents and they are doing quite well now and had been for some time now but wanted him to “get as much as you can” from those people. Sad to say but his heart has never been right and he was always whining that we loved the other kids more than him. The other children open up to tell you the truth of what has been going on once he left. Which goes something like this, he wanted to have a girlfriend, cell phone, freedom to do what he wanted, his parents had been sending him money and gifts for a long time now and he was always grumpy around the other kids. (we’d always see a positive change in the house when he was away at school camps etc) So when he was actually leaving the house Terry told him to pack all of his belongings, he filled a backpack and said “I’ll come get anything else some other time”. Ter said no, whatever you want you better take as everything else will be gone after you leave, Oh he thought he’d just pop in whenever to play with the kids and pick up stuff and kind of keep it there for when he wanted it. That was probably one of the biggest shocks he got when he was told he wouldn’t be able to just pop over whenever, we still had our family schedules etc and he wasn’t going to disrupt our household just because of him! So he left with a few garbage bags and a back pack filled with his school books and possessions.

So one big thing we both needed to do (AGAIN) with the kids was explain about what was expected of them and the rules of the house. So we sat them all down one night and asked them to list off the house rules and I wrote them on the whiteboard. They came up with all the usual, don’t lie, don’t steal or cheat, don’t fight, obey your parents etc and we asked if you were living somewhere else what rules would you have to follow? About the only one they could come up with was “speak English in the home” everything else they’s have to do. Also we’d heard some stories that Caleb had told them about why he had to leave right away which boiled down to him saying that “Dad was going to deck him when he got home as he’d hurt mom”. (of course he’d never hurt Ter anyways but it sounded good) We explained that when someone wants to shift the blame from themselves when they are doing something wrong they will make up stories so they don’t look bad or at fault. And when we asked them would Dad deck someone they said no, not unless they were actually pyhsically hurting us or mom, Right now you know the truth and don’t believe the stories you hear from someone who’s doing wrong as they will always try to blame others.

One of the big things that we were supposed to do this trip over was recieve a set of new born twins, after many listless days and nights waiting for the phone to ring for us to go get them from the hospital it never materialized while I was there. Two day after I left Ter recieved the call and made arrangements for spomeone to lokkafter the family while she and Naomi drove down south to get the babies. The night before she left she prayed to God (as something wasn’t right) and asked him to let her know if we wouldn’t be getting the babies before she got down there. As it turned out while on the way to get them she recieved a phone call saying the mom was going to keep them as a Christian group was giving her a job and was going to help her with the children. Praise God

Ter had gone out of her way getting prepared by buying baby stuff, reorganizing rooms etc but it was still better that the children could stay with their mother.

I have lots more to post but It will come later,

Thailand Daddy

So! What do you do when you’re asked to take more children??????

Thailand Daddy — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:15:06 +0000

It happens on a regular basis (getting asked to take children into our home) but sometimes it’s more special than others. Sometimes we get a knock on the door and someone is there asking us if we’d take their child? They have seen our kids and everyone in the neighourhood knows that we are a Children’s home. So when someone wants to get their child thru school, learn english, have half decent clothes and just generally looked after they come banging on our door. It’s hard to say no but we have to or we’d be overrun with everyone’s child that they don’t want to put the effort, time and money into themselves. We are white so of course we are “rich” (in their eyes anyways). I even had a policeman ask me one day to take his boy, he knew that this was a christian home, so we could teach him english etc. I asked “so are you a single parent” wanting to know why he wanted us to take him.

“No” he replied, “I know you do a good job as I’ve seen others come from this home before” meaning when my brother and sister in law lived there with their 33 children. They have been in Thailand for 30 years now.

Like this time we’ve been asked to take two children (twins) that haven’t been born yet. (coming soon, beginning of October we’ve been told) From a young single mom who has no means to provide for this double trouble family, nor any desire to. To bad they didn’t think about that when they jump into bed with someone eh? It will be a quick trip to the hospital once the babies are born as we have to be there to take them home one day after they are born. These two are coming from the south of Thailand so that means a 12 to 15 hour drive to get there, means travelling straight thru (oh well won’t be the first time we’ve done that) Should make for an interesting trip home.

Terry and I decided awhile ago that this would be our family and that we wouldn’t take any more kids but maybe the next home could get started with these two. It’s nice to get babies as they don’t have any bad habits, like stealing, lying and generally anything they had to do to survive etc. So I guess it’s still not a done deal but if it’s meant to be it will be.

Take care everyone, more details to follow soooooooooon. Dave