JUNE 2015
H O W T O P R AY • Pray for God’s guidance as I wrap up ministry in Potong, discipleship with Bing, Boung, and Ahn, finish teaching this course of photography, and say goodbye to my Thai family. • Pray for my photography students to see the beauty in their world, in themselves, and in thei communities where they live. Pray that this would ultimately lead them to see God’s beauty and majesty. • Pray for P’ Kung as she recovers from surgery. Pray for Jesus to revealy his love and power in her life and in the life of my Thai family. • Pray that I will have some good time reflecting on these past two years and what my future will hold. Cover Art: “Brave” Photography: Sine, Model: Kwang
Hi Family and Friends, Guess what? I’m about one month out from traveling back to The States for a few months! Two years has flown by fast, and I am eager to be home. For the first month, I’ll be around California for a conference with the rest of Servant Partners, a wedding, and some good hang out time with friends. Starting in September, I’ll be in Hawai’i with my family—one that has gotten significantly bigger since I was last with them. I’ll be coming home to three new people: my brother’s daughter, Abigail, my sister’s daughter, Peyton, and my sister’s fiancé, Robbie! It is a bittersweet process as I close up my first two years here in Thailand. I will be saying goodbye to my current community of Potong and my Thai family there, wrapping up my discipleship group with Boung, Bing, and Ahn, finishing teaching my current photography class, and parting from my team for a while. But I have had a grateful time remembering the awesome things that have happened these past few years. God has given me a brother in Sprite, blessed my Thai language learning immensely, opened surprising opportunities to use art in ministry, given me the most awesome Thai family, and orchestrated a discipleship group of young Thai believers committed to ministering to Potong into the future. All the glory belongs to God! I am looking forward to seeing you as I travel back to the US. I’m hoping to plan some get togethers, but if you are interested in catching up, I would be so stoked to hang out! Just hit me up. Until then, enjoy this month’s update filled with my students’ artwork and the reason behind my photographic ministry. In eager anticipation,
Our identities run can run many ways. There are the ways we want to present ourselves to the world— call them masks. Then there are the things others see in us—call them projections. Both have the potential to obscure and misconstrue our actual self, and both can interplay with our sense of self-worth. Take me for example: at some point in my life when I was young, I was always pegged as a shy guy. In public, I was soft-spoken and hardly what you’d call assertive. As a result, my self-confidence was low, and I figured I needed to be more outgoing. So I joined debate and found pride in being able to outwit others. When I was “shy,” I thought less of myself. When I was “smart,” I was puffed up with pride. Both gave me a false idea about my actual worth. Both masked and obscured my true value.
This year in my photo class, we’re exploring this very theme of “Masks and Outward Appearances.” You see, high school is a really important time to figure out who you are, how others see you, and how you see yourself. So we’ve taken to using the camera to explore our identities. Since the theme was on masks, we’ve spent a lot of time working with portraits. There’s the technical side of portraiture, like focus, depth of field, composition, and then there’s the content side of things, like emotion, how we want to appear, and even how we feel in front of a camera. It is the perfect opportunity to challenge my students to be brave, to share about how they view themselves, and to speak to their value as God’s handiwork.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. PS 139:14
Beyond discussing our individual identities, we’ve begun to talk about the identities of the urban communities we call home. The outside world might look at our communities and see chaos, poverty, and crime wrapped up in an eyesore, but as members of that very community, we’ve seen that there is also diligence, ingenuity, generosity, and beauty. Therefore, for our final projects, our photographers where unleashed into their very own streets and alleys with a mission to capture the often unseen side of their community’s identity.
Our photo class started off with noticing the small things—everyday things we’d otherwise overlook. Photography trains our eyes to look for the beauty in the world around us. Later, we moved onto portraits and learning to see the beauty in ourselves. Finally, we’re currently ending with our communities, finding the beauty in places that society says has none. My prayer is that each of my students will learn that this world, themselves included, and the communities they call home are full of an innate beauty put there by the Beautiful One Himself. Pray with me.
When I first moved into Potong, P’ Kung (pronounced Pee Goong) was one of those people patient enough to sit and figure out what the heck I was trying to say. And then she was also brave enough to correct me and teach me to pronounce words properly. We’d sit for hours at a time talking about the most uninteresting topics, because that was as far as my vocabulary went at the time. Three months ago, she got sick and had her gall bladder removed. But that didn’t fix it. She got worse. It got to the point of not being able to eat and losing an absurd amount of weight. Within the last two weeks, the doctors finally announced that it was colon cancer. For the past few months, I have been visiting her, bringing her food, and praying with her for healing. In the last two weeks, I’ve gone with others, and we shared more boldly about Jesus. She is not yet ready to make any decisions, but she is moved by the love of God through us. Just yesterday, she went into surgery to have the cancer removed. I am still hopeful that God will move powerfully in her life in healing and in revealing his love for her. Pray with me for P’ Kung and God’s work in her life and in the lives of my Thai family.
KYLE'S CONTACT INFO: Phone: +66-090-979-8187 Email: kyle.apuna@gmail.com Blog: rootandflourish.wordpress.com Mailing Address: Thai Peace Foundation 3750/9 Ladprao Soi 146/1 Khlongchan, Bangkapi, Bangkok Thailand 10240