First I’d like to apologise for this weeks posts being a little out of order. Its been a busy week and in my rush to come and update i forgot the neccesary for my Xmas day update. this will hopefully appear tomorrow.

But big news of the week is that we now have 5 new arrivals.

We are happy to announce that we are now caring for another 5 children, bringing the total number of children at Stratton House to 8.
Responding to a call from Nan province, Boon and I traveled to Nan on Boxing day to assess the childrens circumstances and make a decision on placements.
It was a long trip, having also to pick up a relative of some of the children concerned, from Mae Wang, in order that she could liase and translate for us. As you may know there are many regional languages in use in Thailand, so we could not just rely on Somboons Thai.
It took nearly 9 hours in total and we arrived at our first destination,the town of Phua, in Nan Province at around 5pm.
Here we met 3 of the children; 7 year old Som and her sister Nu,10 and Tai a 12 year old boy from the same village.
The girls house was very basic and spartan with a large extended family living with them.

 We were told that they had 5 siblings and that their parents needed to work in Chiang Rai.

The struggle to provide for the whole family and the wish for at least some of their children to have a better chance led them to contact us.
Whilst we were there a neighbour came to ask if we could help his son, Tai.

Tai is a quiet boy, a keen artist we have discovered, and it appears that the main worry for the father was that they live in an area where it is common for teenage boys to slip into bad ways and he desperately wanted to keep his son away from this possibility.
With the evening closing in it was decided that we would visit the other children the next morning and Boon and myself went and booked into a small guesthouse in Phua.
With a seven o’clock start the next morning, we first met up with our liason lady back at the first village before heading off to Tung Chang, another 30kms down the road, and up into a nearby Hill Tribe village.
This was the most difficult part of the trip as the family concerned were asking for placements for  girls.
At present, whilst we are still in the registration process, and so without major sponsors, we have had to limit the placements we offer right now, to ensure that budget pressures do not become to great to quickly. With the two girls we had already agreed placements for we only had one more placement to offer for now.
We explained this too the family and let them know that there will be further possibility for placement once registration is complete and we can hopefully find companies that may support us.
They then had the difficult descision as to which child would come with us.
It certainly doesn’t take long to make a decision on offering placement in such villages, when you see their living conditions.
Although these villagers clearly have pride in there homes and everything is made to look as beautiful as possible many houses have now proper flooring and where we were, one very basic toilet is shared between several houses.
It was decided that 12 year old May would come this time with the possibility of her friend joining us later in the year.
Also from this village we met 16 year old Dtu.Due to his families circumstances he has not attended school for the last year. With no schooling and little work prospects his family asked us to help.
It was a tearful morning as decisions were made and children boarded our bus for the long haul back to Chiang Mai. Nu and Soms mother travelled with us to see the home for herself before returning to Phua the next day.
And so we move forward to 2010 with a much extended family and hope that more of you out there find us and find it in your heart to help in anyway you can.
For more photos please vist our photo album here.