All you guys said you would pray for us; I don’t think you are, with all the struggles we are having! Hahaha, no, I am just kidding, although this year has already been long. There are so many things to talk about that have happened just in the last month. But I think the most important thing has been the challenges of homeschooling. It turns out that homeschooling is really hard!!!

With kids that until this point, we had no hand in raising, it seems much harder to teach them than with Evangeleen, our biological daughter. We have been in a constant struggle trying to teach kids things that are way above them because of the requirements of the government. It felt like we just kept banging our heads against a wall, then grabbing the kids' heads and banging them against that same wall. We have been teaching in every way we can think of, just to get something to stick, which wasn’t working. The results were anger, frustration, tears, hugs, and apologies.

**Some tears and apologies going on here**

See, we have requirements from the government of where they think the kids need to be. These requirements made no sense to me because Thai schools and even Chiang Mai Adventist Academy (CAA) are such amazing(I wrote a negative word here first, but my wife reminded me I can go to jail for that in Thailand and changed it to amazing. Probably, better to do that anyway, there is nothing negative about Thai schools or our beloved CAA, they are fine schools and I would encourage you to send your kids there. I just won’t send my kids there) schools. All of our kids have made it 2 years in both or just CAA and finished unable to read and do basic math. Even Preaw, our first child, who was in her junior year, mostly from Thai schools in Bangkok and then 6 months at CAA, could barely read or do math. She was about to graduate from our beloved Adventist school and couldn’t do basic math or read well.

**More tears and apologies going on here**

Preaw came home from school one day and started doing her homework. I saw her struggling with her math and decided that I would help her. She was doing calculus, and I thought I would give her a hand. As I started to help her, I was looking at her work and was thinking, “Man, I must have forgotten everything! I have no idea where any of these numbers were coming from!” As I looked closer, she was just writing down numbers. As I asked her to do certain problems, I saw that she was having a very hard time doing even basic steps. So, I kept doing easier and easier math until we got to adding and subtracting two 3-digit numbers. She couldn’t do it. I said, “OK, this is a problem, but at least they won't let her pass, so we will have to make a plan.” She got her grades a month later and she had pulled a 3.5 GPA in calculus!!! I was in shock and had her do some math to check. Nope! Nothing changed, she still couldn’t do it. We didn’t enroll her the next year and started our home-school journey with Preaw.

We tried to keep our kids in the school, but more and more problems were arising, and the expectations for the kids in school, from the school, kept dropping. We expect things like drugs, drinking, and sex to be a problem wherever there are large groups of teenagers, but when you are making the kids memorize Buddhist chants, and Buddhist prayers, asking kids how to mix Buddhism and Christianity, and passing kids who can’t read or write, it becomes a big problem for us. My wife also stumbled upon the largest drug bust in school history while taking one of our boys out of the dorm.

So, the point of that rant and story is to explain that the expectations for Thai schools are really low, but the expectations for home-school are really high. This was leading to a lot of stress for us because the expectations were too high for our kids, and we were scared they were going to shut us down if we dropped our kids down to where they actually needed to be, to benefit from school. So, we called up the government association in charge of homeschooling and had them come over. We had them try to work with our kids, and I asked them every question under the sun trying to find resources and solutions for us.

A few thoughts on this: Two of the biggest differences between Thailand and the US are, one, lack of opportunity, no government programs like financial aid, and no help like welfare or unemployment being a survivable amount. I know a lot of people have a lot of feelings about welfare, but I think it has a great purpose, even though some abuse it. The second difference is the lack of resources, this is very similar to number 1, but along with a lack of government funds, there is also a lack of books in Thai, lesson plans in Thai, homeschooling information in Thai. Everything that you need to be great at home-school is in English. This is something that has plagued our thinking for a while and something that has helped form our ministry. Being a Christian without English is very rare; to find Thai people who believe in Jesus and don’t speak English is rare. Bibles are translated from English to Thai, not original languages to Thai; books from even famous pastors in the US aren’t translated to Thai, same with Bible movies and TV shows. This motivated us to try and raise kids that love Jesus and speak Thai. Everything we do is mainly in Thai, and we don’t want them to think that Christianity is a western religion.

There were very few, almost no resources in Thai, and only one solution. They told us that we had to take them to the doctor and get a learning disability diagnosis. Since that was the only option, that’s what we did. We took the 3 kids that we are struggling with, and they were all diagnosed with ADHD. While doing that, we had to have them take IQ tests, and the results were as we expected, 98, 80, and 79.

IQ is a way to measure a person's intellectual abilities and potential. Imagine it like a score that tries to sum up how well someone can understand complex ideas, solve puzzles, remember information, and reason through problems. I didn't know much about IQ scores until this and have since learned that, past 8 years old, IQ scores don’t change much. Although IQ is just one measure and doesn't capture everything about a person's intelligence or potential, it helps us to re-calibrate our expectations. With this re-calibration, we are able to re-examine the things that are the most important and the things that the kids want to learn. The results were disappointing, but we believe that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and these kids will obtain wisdom and knowledge from God and be able to accomplish great things.

So, please continue to pray for our children, that God will heal them and use them with their own God-given skills as tools for His glory! All that we want for them is to use whatever skills they have, whether great or small, for God’s glory and not their own!

This week my wife and I took a few days off and used that time to pray and ask God to give us some goals! So I will be writing shorter things much more often. My goal is to write once a week for 6 months and then move up to twice a week in August. It will be tough to find the time, but I think as I become more intentional, it will become easier! I am used to writing twice a year, not twice a week! We will also be trying to do a better job with pictures and videos as well. So, be on the lookout as we try to keep you more informed with what we are doing, the struggles, and the victories!

Kids from hard Places

GROWTH

Love instead of anger