Hmong Student Center-Chiang Mai

On Good Friday our team met with one of the Hmong leaders in Maerim near Chiang Mai at the Hmong Student Center there. The center serves as a home for Hmong students to stay while they study in the city away from their families in their villages. It provides them with a Christian environment in which they can be nurtured spiritually as well as physically while they are away from home. It also helps them by providing a group of students to study and interact with so that many of the students don't get pulled into drugs and gang activity that they might find if they were left to themselves.

Formerly the center was funded out of the pockets of individuals in the Hmong community, until CWEFT recently partnered with them to provide half of their monthly needs for food and property rental. We met with this man to learn about how the project started how the students are helped there and to see what problems they face. Currently the students live in semi-permanent housing structures similar to a pole barn because they can't build on property they don't own. Our long-term hope now is to start a fund so they can purchase the land ($90,000) and then maybe bring in short-term teams to do building projects. Our short-term goal would be to find supporters that can help supplement some of the monthly costs for food and other amenities.
Due to some scheduling conflicts we weren't able to visit the other student center in Chiang Mai, instead we went to the village of this Pastor's which was located way up in the hills. He let us into the church and then we were invited into the home of this woman who is 90 years old. It was a really unique experience spending time with her. She spoke only the Hmong language, and we had the opportunity to pray with her. She goes to church every Sunday, she said and wished God's blessings to be with us. Here are pictures of the rest of the student center campus, and the village.