Official Blog of FARMS International

This is one of a series of posts written by Jaime Garcia, a young missionary who we have partnered with for some work in Thailand. Within the congested city center of Chiang Rai, Thailand, resided a young boy named Aja. Throughout his meaningless childhood, he worked as a service station boy. Many like him, were well acquainted with the oppression and dangers of being a pump boy. Corporate gas stations usurped hundreds of young, uneducated boys to become pump helpers. Aja’s bare necessities were barely met by the measly wage. A decade later, he found himself still slaving at the station. His desolate future began to etch painfully into his soul. The vanity of the whole affair created an acute sensation of meaninglessness. He despaired, and longed for something, anything at all, other than endlessly rushing petrol into drivers’ vehicles. His heart was sick, yet his mind was brimming with dreams. Aja, his daughter, wife and mother outside their home they hope to replace Around thi...

This is one of a series of posts written by Jaime Garcia, a young missionary who we have partnered with for some work in Thailand. Akha ladies in traditional dress On the rolling hills of Chiang Rai Province, Thailand, a quaint village was nestled deep in the throbbing heart of the mountains. For centuries, this remote settlement had been called Mae Suai by the locals, meaning ‘the beautiful matriarch.’ During the 1960’s and 70’s, turmoil in the Laos and Myanmar forced tens of thousands of minority peoples to flee their villages. They slogged through precarious tangles of overgrown jungle, to cross the bloodstained, Thai guarded border. With great anxiety, throngs of newcomers arrived in ‘the land of freedom.’ Thailand became, for many, a place of asylum and opportunity, and for the Akha people, a rugged group of hunters and once-famed warriors, it became a place to proliferate their heritage unfettered from the oppression of their homelands. The Akha people were known for bei...