News From Faa

[Blogger's Note: I received the following from Faa yesterday].

Hi everyone,

How are you doing? I hope all of you doing so well! and enjoy with SNOWS!! i wish i should be there when it is snowing.I miss all of you so much and thank you so much for your prayers!.

The kids doing good and very excited to pray for new house, I was excited to see the kids go to school, every morning my tears came out every because of God's grace for us day by day, i don't know what i have to do but just pray to God and praise what God had done for the kids and for me.

Please pray for Seksun he have appointment to go to the hospital to see the doctor dentists on Friday he doesn't like and very scare, i understood what he feel.

I am still awake cant sleep, very hot weather for me now I need to sleep so much but i cant because of the next block with us they build contraction very noisy and the people drink alcohol everyday i am pretty scare!!!

I was happy to be home and have a lot of fun with the kids. See the people work on the street i wish all of you can see someday. I cant drive motorcycles yet cause my driverlicen gone for 5 months and i have to waiting till next week cause i have to prepare the document from the hospital i don't like to go to see the doctor but i have to.

I have some new house pics looking for from my sister took and i went to see it is good and some have to do so many thing too.

Today i went to visit a couple married they share story about rent house to staying in the city they told me a story by tears because of when they live there and the owner knew that they are hill tribe let them leaved from the house they rent between 3 hrs. and they stayed there only 8 days and payed 1,000 baht. The owner throw out the money deposit on the ground the owner did like them animals. I feel so hurt and sad so much when i heard this story make me cry and cry.

Please pray for us.

Faa Sumitra

Introducing Faa and the Ministry of Grace Refuge Outreach Worldwide (G.R.O.W.)

My name is Faa Sumitra Choemue. I was born in a small village on the northern mountains of Thailand. When I lived there as a little girl, there were no hospitals, electricity or running water. I am from the Akha tribe, an ethnic minority in Thailand and I am the youngest of 12 children. Five of my siblings passed away before I was born.

Because my family was very poor, soon after my mother died I was sent to a Christian Children Home in Chiang Rai. My father had become abusive and beat me repeatedly. I had to flee my home. At the Christian Home I learned about Christ for the first time and received Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was 15. I have great memories of that Home. It was there that I memorized my first Bible verses in Thai and to this day I still consider the Christian Children Home as “my home.”

Because I graduated from school, I had to leave the Christian Home. I had no money and no place to go, but I had one main goal in mind – I wanted to go to college. I was so determined and God placed people along the way who helped me. I worked hard and by God's Grace I got a Bachelors degree in Business Marketing from The Far Eastern University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was the first and only from my family to ever graduate from the University.

During my college years, I heard a lot about street children who are victims of the sex trade industry in Thailand. I felt like I needed to do something to help them. I began to spend time with these children and every time I did that I cried and cried. I couldn’t stop crying even when my eyes were open. My heart was broken for them because their story was very much like my story. I started asking God to help me to know how I could help. I wanted so much for them to stay in a safe place. I couldn’t stop thinking about this. I thought that eventually I was going to do be able to do something to help the children.

Then something happened that convinced me that my time had come. One day I went to one of the worst neighborhoods in Chiang Mai to meet children. While there, I met a little, homeless orphan who was forced to work selling flowers to tourists at the street corners. He was six years old, very small and thin, no shorts, only a long dirty t-shirt on. His body bore the markings of many beatings from bamboo sticks. He was truly a modern-day slave. I looked at him and thought he was only three. Because he spoke my language, he opened his heart to me and with many tears told me how much he wanted to go to school but was not able to because of his miserable situation.

From that time on I prayed more earnestly and asked God to help me learn whatever I could to be able to help the street children. And God did answer my prayer! By God’s grace, even though I had little money to support myself and my family on the mountains, I was able to support four children while I was in college. (Today, this boy lives in a Christian Home and he loves the Lord!).

While working with street children, my heart was broken for them and I saw the need to provide them with a safe place to live, a home where I could take care of them and invest my life in their lives as a normal family would do. I prayed that God would let me start a home for some Akha children who were at risk. I wanted to start with Akha children because I am familiar with their language and culture and can relate to their story.

God answered my prayers and gave me and my sister our first two children. I felt that God was confirming my calling to provide help and support for these children, as well as a safe place for them to learn, grow, and be introduced to the Lord Jesus Christ. Though I am still far from realizing my dream, I keep jumping out and trusting God to provide. It is very difficult to help the children without any kind of support from anywhere and that’s why I am asking my brothers and sisters in other parts of the world to help me reach these children with the love of God.

My sister and I, by faith and trust in God alone, started a home in Chiang Mai with the specific purpose of rescuing children and youth who are at risk. We now have 3 girls and 2 boys living with us. I would like to have separate homes for girls and boys and my goal is to convert our first home into a home for girls, ages 5 to 9, right away. I would like for the children to know about Christ like I do and I would like to see them become good Christian leaders and be able to help others when they get older.

In order to do that, I need your help. You can help us by praying and also by giving financially to this ministry. While we are in the process of incorporating G.R.O.W. in the U.S., you can start contributing right away. It takes resources to combat the evils that child prostitution has wrought in my country, but I believe that God’s people are already rising to the occasion and making a difference. Checks can be made out to G.R.O.W. and mailed to P.O. Box 1862. Wooster, OH 44691.

Thank you for your interest in the ministry of G.R.O.W. Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. Please know that my commitment to this ministry has roots that go deep inside my soul. Even if everything around me changes, I want you to know that my dream about helping these children will never die. As God enables me, I will do everything within my power to help these children find hope in Christ and hope for the future.

Should you have any questions, please call Pastor Ivanildo at 330-466-8055 or e-mail him at itrindade@woostergrace.org.

Thank you!

Your sister in Christ,

Faa Sumitra Choemue
sumitrafaa@gmail.com
P.O. Box 1862. Wooster, OH 44691
P.O. 254 Muang Chiang Mai 50000, Thailand

Faa arrives in Thailand

I just got a message from Faa saying that she arrived in Thailand. I was not able to speak with her but at least I know that she is safe at home now.

Thank you for your prayers!
Pastor Ivanildo C. Trindade, Associate Pastoe of Outreach Ministries, Wooster Grace Brethren Church - Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

What I Have Learned from Faa

After spending some extended time with Faa, here is my top ten list of things I have learned from her:

10. You don't have to be "powerful" to become powerful. Faa came from the hill tribes on the mountains of Thailand. As an Akha young girl, who lost her mother before the age of 13, and with an abusive father to boot, she was at the bottom of the totem poll, but this did not stop her from becoming the woman of influence she wanted to be. Today she is admired by one and all in her village and is offered as an example to the Akha world.

9. Real power comes from having faith in God. For the longest time in her life Faa had no one to talk to her. Her questions could only hit a silent wall and fall back to her. But then she discovered God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and from then on she became unstoppable.

8. You don't need money to be happy. Faa is one of the happiest people I know and yet she is one of the most detached from money persons I know. She only notices money for a single reason: to help rescue children from suffering.

7. You only need the Bible to become wise. To hear Faa talk about some of the toughest decisions she has had to make, you would be tempted to think that she has a doctorate in conflict resolution or personal management. But you would be wrong -- for the greatest part of her life, Faa has only had the Bible and the wisdom she has acquired from reading and memorizing it.

6. The more you suffer the more you yearn to rescue those who are suffering. One of the reasons the church in the U.S. is drowning in a big pool of indifference is because people have it too easy here. Try being physically beaten for three years in High School because you refused to pray to a false god. Try going without food for days, being forced to live in squalid conditions and doing all kinds of menial jobs to survive and you will begin to understand Faa's passion for those who suffer.

5. Courage is NOT related to size. Faa is tiny and appears very fragile, but she is one of the most resourceful and fearless people I know. I have found myself at the other side of a disagreement with her and without going into details, let me just say: I didn't have a chance...

4. Poverty does not have to lead to corruption. Faa has on numerous occasions been offered tons of money to do things that are contrary to her convictions. To date she has refused every time even when she desperately needed the money or her life was in danger for refusing to take it.

3. Bitterness is never invincible. Faa's deep pain from her past has not driven her away from those she loves. Her reconciliation to her father, whom she loves deeply, is a tribute to the power of forgiveness that is only possible through Jesus Christ.

2. A cause always has names and faces. Even before Faa was able to articulate her vision in English, she could talk about the children she was already helping. She knows their names, their history, their aspiration, their desperation and she breathes and yearns to break the chains that have kept them from achieving their God-given potential in this world.

1. When you know God you can take on even the most vile industry in the world. Trying to rescue children from the sex trade industry in Thailand is a gigantic undertaking. But just like David Faa is bringing down some menacing giants, with God's help.

P.S. I am not ready to canonize Faa yet -- first you have to be dead (which will not happen in a long, long time, Lord willing) and then people have to pray to you and show incontrovertible evidence that their prayers have been answered. That is, if you are Catholic... So that's not happening any time soon. The point being, she is obviously not perfect, but I am casting my support with her and her cause because I believe in her calling and in the power of the God who called her for this work.

Pastor Ivanildo C. Trindade
ivanildo@vzw.blackberry.net