My Life in Thailand - A Missionary Kid's Perspective

Written by Karl Dahlfred on 21 August 2017.

During the course of our home assignment in the States, I gave the same Thailand presentation at so many churches that our oldest son Joshua (11 years old) started to raise his hand and tell everybody parts of my talk that I hadn’t gotten to yet, or volunteer other details that he thought people should know. He did this so many times, I suggested that he do his own presentation some time. He must have thought I was only joking because his jaw nearly hit the floor when I told him I had arranged for him to share with the all the kids at a partner church we were planning to visit in Northern California. After getting over his initial shock, we helped him prepare his presentation. Some slides were borrowed from my presentation, but other slides were completely his own idea. When the big day came, his presentation went so well that when asked how it went, Joshua replied, “I think I could do that again sometime.” Therefore, I arranged for him to do it again at another church.

In the video below you’ll see Joshua's full presentation to the kids at Grace Presbyterian Church in Yorba Linda, California, followed by still images of the powerpoint slides he used. I included those at the end because they are kind of hard to see in the video.

We keep telling the kids that God has called our whole family to the mission field, and that they are an important part of what we are doing. Therefore, we were really pleased to see Joshua's interest in getting involved as our family has been on the deputation trail visiting churches. I believe this has also been a good opportunity for one of our kids to give voice to his experiences in Thailand because it is not only Sun and I who are experiencing life overseas, but our kids too.