A letter from Amy Davisson Galetzka serving in Thailand
april-june 2014 - a prosthetic leg project
Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you for your love and support.
Personal Update
This was a busy time for our family. Nadia had an aggressive strep virus in April that caused an abscess and she needed to go under general anesthesia, with a breathing tube, to have the abscess drained. We were not in Thailand at that time, but visiting in Colorado. She ended up in Denver Children’s Hospital for five days recovering (one night in the ICU, which her doctors said was unexpected). She had a great recovery. We thank God for amazing care throughout her time there. I was so blessed to have some friends in the area who visited us in the hospital and my dad, who was on a trip to Colorado at the time, being able to visit.
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Doh Say and Nadia—shirt for Run for Relief
A positive thing that I was blessed to be a part of was an executive certificate course at Georgetown University for Nonprofit Management. It was a diverse group of nonprofit leaders and an amazing information-filled eight days. This was a great step out of my own work world to learn about what other people are doing and get some new and fresh ideas about good management and just excellence in running an organization in general. Later in the year I will conduct my own mini-workshop for the staff at Pan Rak Foundation to share some of the key things that I learned. For my final project I wrote recommendations, based on my learning in this course, for the boards of Pan Rak and Thai Christian Foundation (the foundation that provides most of our funds from the U.S.A.).
Lawa/Wa Prosthetic Leg Project, May 2014
The Lawa (in Thailand) and Wa (in Burma) are the names of a people group. The report below comes directly from our Executive Director’s report on the event we helped facilitate.
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Mu Gay and Nadia
Pan Rak (which means ‘sharing love’ in Thai) Foundation brought 62 Wa State, Burma (Myanmar), land mine victims and one Karenni boy born without hands or legs from Burma. The Mae Lao Hospital brought an additional 62 patients from Thailand. All of the prosthetic legs were made by the Prosthesis Foundation of H.R.H. The Princess Mother of Thailand. The patients from Burma stayed at a church near the project site May 10–16.
The doctors, Wa leaders, and our prostheses committee celebrated before giving 125 patients 184 legs. It was an international relations event: Gen. Kumthon Sintawanon from the King’s Privy Council came from Bangkok to officially present the legs on Friday before the Wa and Karenni returned to Myanmar.
Dr. Therdchai Jivacate led his team of doctors and about 30 technicians to set up a mobile prosthesis factory at Mae Lao Hospital in northern Thailand. Wonderful things began to happen. The Immigration Police gave a donation of 952 dollars to Pan Rak as the Wa patients crossed the border and the Highway Police escorted them to the church.
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Family photo, Easter 2014, during Nadia’s recovery
The Karenni boy, Aung Kyaw, and his father travelled for four days in Myanmar and one day in Thailand to attend the event and get fitted with legs. We rejoiced as Aung Kyaw walked. He and his father found new faith in Christ and were baptized. On Thursday night, we had 10 baptisms in the new church baptistry with the church’s hostel choir singing in the background. We are praying to get hands for Aung Kyaw the next time.
With the support coming from the Thai Christian Foundation, the Pan Rak Foundation provided transportation, bedding, food, towels, toothbrushes and more supplies for the patients. They also supported the building of extra toilets for the church.
We hope that we can continue to have these events in partnership with the Royal Foundation and others in Thailand every two to three years.
Coming Up:
July: Pan Rak Foundation Board meeting in Chiang Mai. I will help prepare for that gathering of the Board as management and program leaders come together and share in strategic planning, prayer, decision-making and updates on the programs and people that Pan Rak works to support.
Early August: Six-month audit of our Pan Rak finances. This is a regularly scheduled audit.
Prayer:
• Good health for Nadia and Johnny and me as we continue to travel quite a bit, both for work and so that we can be together as much as possible as a family.
• For continuing audits and financial reports and successful accountability and thankfulness to all donors and partner organizations.
• For funds to cover all of the patient care requests we have from families who are not able to cover their own medical costs.
We invite you to continue on this journey with us through your prayers, correspondence and financial support. We are thankful for YOU and would love to hear from you.
God bless you!
Amy (for Nadia and Johnny too!)
The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 235
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