Share the Joy this Christmas Season

Hello!

Thank you for your willingness to “Share Joy this Christmas”. We are incredibly grateful for your contributions to our project and are happy to report that we were able to share the Joy of Christmas in these last days. We started with a Christmas Party for the students that come to our free English Classes. We had some nice food and gifts for them and spent an enjoyable time hanging out with them. Followed was that by a Christmas Party for our women in the street where we all stay. Part of the Party was that we did some caroling and visited all of our neighbors, sang some Christmas Songs for them and blessed them with a little gift.

But then our big Christmas Outreach was on Wednesday the 18^th of December. In the morning, we packed 1500 gift bags, and, in the evening, we went out into four different redlight districts in our city and distributed the bags to the women. Inside the bags was a specially printed keychain – we had printed “You are special” on the keychain and used this as an opener to start conversations with the women. We were a bit shocked how many very young (barely 18 or even under) woman have started to work in the bars of Pattaya in the last weeks. Many of them told us that they were only one or two weeks here. We gave them one of the bags and invited them to our English Classes and our vocational Training options. Some of the women that have been in Pattaya already a bit longer, remembered our team from last year and every exited called out to bring us into their bars to receive the gifts. Some were a bit skeptical about receiving a gift – but very happy when they realized it was really just a gift with nothing attached to it! When our teams returned, they all shared about their experiences and even our new women were excited that they had the chance to help distribute these gifts.

On Thursday the 19^th of December had then our internal Tamar Christmas Party – a wonderful time of games, fellowship, singing of songs, listening to a message, tasty food and for sure some nice gifts. For some of our women this is the first time that they celebrated Christmas, and they got into the festive mood, dressed up and enjoyed the party. The children were especially happy about their gifts and toys but also our women loved receiving the gifts.

Thank you, that you made it possible for us to bless these wonderful women and children with a nice gift this Christmas. Especially for the once in the Bar we wanted to tell them – you are special, you are loved – you are not just someone that gets used in the bars, but you are important! We trust that in the new year we will see some of these women again in our English Classes and during our Outreaches and hope that the gifts that they received will be the first step for them into a new life!

Thank you for your partnership!!!