SEPTEMBER 2014

H O W T O P R AY

• Pray for the new babies in my family; pray that I know how to be a good member of the family, even far away overseas.

• Pray for our team in a big season of transition.

• Pray for our November exhibition of my students’ photographs.

• Pray that our students will be able to see the beauty, strenth, and good that fills this world; pray that they will see God’s beauty.

• Optional: pray that my neice, Peyton, will be born on my birth-day, September 24 :).

Cover photo by Fern.

Hi Family and Friends,

It has been just over one year that I have been here in Bangkok, Thailand. These past few months, I have had the privilege of teaching a 10-week course on photography with five students from our Youth Leadership De-velopment program. I am excited to share this experience with you! Read more about it in the pages to come!

This past month and the month to come will be bringing big changes for my family in Hawai’i. My brother and sister-in-law added the sweet Abigail Laule’a Apuna to their family; next month, my sister, too, is anticipating the birth of her own Peyton Apuna. I am hopeful we will share birthdays!

That being said, you can keep me and my family in prayer as we enter into new seasons of life, and as I am far away and seriously missing them. I will have the chance to travel back to Hawai’i this next summer, so the babies will be plum and active by that point!

Lastly, my team here in Thailand is undergoing many changes. We have added a new Thai staff member named Tum, said goodbye to another of our Thai staff members named Jin, said goodbye for now to Michelle leaving for a year-long sabbatical, added a new infant teammate Olivia (daughter to our teammates Daniel and Melanie), said goodbye to our two-year intern Kristen (who is applying to rejoin us long-term), and anticipate a new team-mate named Liz, coming in October. In addition to all this, we are actively listening to God about the future direction of our ministry.

Understandably, we would appreciate your prayers in this great season of transition. Pray that God would be our stable foundation amid unavoidable change. Pray that God would guide us as we take new steps forward in being his Kingdom here in Bangkok!

With all my love,

hy do foreigners take such weird photos?” P’Gope asked me out of the blue. She’s the mother of Gwang, one of my middle-school photography stu-

dents. “Because when we looked at some of your photos,” she continued, “I couldn’t help but ask, ‘What’s the use?’ I mean, why take photos of random, everyday things? For us Thais, we’ll take a photo if we know its benefit—if there’s a point.”

There’s obviously some clash of world views going on here.

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Photos by Fern

EXPLORING MY WORLDThe theme of my photo class this year was Exploring My World—obviously using photog-raphy to do so. As we learned about the technical aspects of exposure and composition, I challenged my students with activities that had them reconsider the world around them.

For example, our photo prompts included: What is something you see everyday that you think is beautiful? What is something you see everyday that makes you sad? What does “the Thai lifestyle” mean to you? One day, we even took stick-on googly eyes down the street, sticking them here and there, shooting everyday objects, but seeing them in new ways. The day we practiced macrophotography was thrilling, seeing my students getting into it, on all fours, their faces all up in whatever they happened upon.

The purpose of these activities, besides learning photography itself, was to get our stu-dents noticing the world around them, thinking about how they feel about it, and showing us their point of view through how they choose to take their photos.

THE STRENGTH OF A COMMUNITYThe culmination of all this exploration was our final project, themed The Strength of A Community. We travelled to each of the three urban communities represented by my five students and were treated to a tour by the student(s) who lived there. They told us what they saw as their community’s strengths—what is beautiful about their community. They proceeded to take a photo essay, telling the story of what makes them proud about where they come from. On the contrary to what society may say, our very own communities—no matter how marginalized, how resourced, or how small they may be—have strengths, assets, beauty, and value worth seeing.

This coming November, our students will have the opportunity to display their photo-graphic essays in my friend’s fancy coffee shop located in the heart of downtown Bangkok. We will have a grand opening, and their work will even be up for sale! I pray that our students will indeed be proud of their work, that their voices will be heard, and that their families and neighbors will see more clearly that they, too, have strengths as a community.

Photos by Gwang

BUT IS OUR WORLD INDEED BEAUTIFUL?It wasn’t until this past week that I began to realize the depth of this—dare I say—prophetic ministry. I by no means am a learned student of the Buddhist faith, but my Thai tutor helped me understand the deep-er significance behind my class. My students, all of whom are Buddhist themselves, come from the cultural background that this world is but suffering. Love and beauty are tied to desire, which is itself the root of suffering. Therefore, the true Buddhist path is to deny desire that one might be freed from this cyclical world of hopelessness.

And yet I look around me and see beauty filling everything. I see deep, deep love across all levels of society. I see the face of our Creator in the smiles of my students and in the communities from which they come. Yes there is suffering; yes there is pain. But there is so much that is good in this world, placed there by our Creator, and it is to these threads of hope we cling, as we suffer alongside each other in the hope that God is perfecting and redeeming all things.

alling my students to look to the beauty we see in our mundane lives, to speak to the strengths we see in our communities and relationships—these are things that may actually challenge the

Thai-Buddhist world view at a deep, even subconscious level.

I pray that this would be a small step that God may use to reveal his glory and wonder through his Creation. That even P’Gope would see beyond the practical applications of art to the Creator who placed won-der in all things. Our God is a God of love and beauty; may his glory shine through the darkness and suffering of this world that we could do naught but love him back.

“It is the task of prophetic ministry to bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know they are there...to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”

—Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

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In addition to your prayers and encouragement, if you are interested in financially supporting me as a missionary in Bangkok, please let me know.

Also, art is not cheap, and good art should not be cheap. If you would like to give a special amount to help make this photography class and our upcoming exhibition possible, please contact me!

You can visit www.servantpartners.org to make an online donation to my account and to learn more about the ministry of Servant Partners globally.

KYLE'S CONTACT INFO:Phone: +66-090-979-8187

Email: kyle.apuna@gmail.comBlog: rootandflourish.wordpress.com

Mailing Address:Thai Peace Foundation

3750/9 Ladprao Soi 146/1Khlongchan, Bangkapi, Bangkok

Thailand 10240