A South African Team Doubles the House

During the two-month school holiday a fifteen-person team from South Africa arrived to rebuild Philip's home — volunteers from five different denominations, among them Lizette van Wyk (distant family of Philip's) and "roof-king" Arno van der Merwe. In roughly seven days they doubled the house: lengthening the front deck, adding side walls, and replacing the palm-leaf roof. It was not without cost — one member misjudged a step and broke an arm, was supported by the team and the Kwoks, and was eventually operated on in Phuket before flying home with the group.

The Moken were struck by how quickly and how unitedly the team worked, coming each evening to look at the day's progress and simply say it was beautiful. When the house was finished a group of women visited and laughed at the irony: the westerner now lived in a Moken wooden house, while they lived in the concrete houses that had been built for them. The enlarged home became a gathering place — room for the children to do homework on rainy days, for shared Saturday meals, for adults to drop in and visit, and space for house-church and discipleship.

With the new school year the government finally supplied enough teachers — including an Australian woman who came to teach English for a year — so Philip no longer had to run the classroom every day. Freed from full-time teaching, he began learning Moken more formally and going out on the boats with the adults to walk a discipleship road alongside them.