The Grace Garden

For someone who’s lectured at universities such as Harvard and Stanford, who’s won global initiative awards, presidential medals and accolades, and whose work is changing the way war-ravaged countries power their remote hospitals and schools, Salinee is quite deceiving.

She is all smiles and no pride.

Salinee is now using her super-human-like gifting and the calling on her life to build an oasis type center in the heart of the Thai mountains to provide secondary education, as well as sustainable living and gospel and leadership training.  In a place of abundant natural beauty and wide spread poverty, the Grace Garden will act as a catalyst to inspire, train and equip the refugees, villagers and families on the border of Thailand and Myanmar.

Salinee explains some of the purposes of the learning center, “It’s serving the community…It’s not just training people on how to learn life skills, but also how to manage the resources we have. How to collect the water, use the sun, and work on the land so we can grow our own food.”

The land for the Grace Garden didn’t simply fall into Salinee’s servant hands. After her father’s passing, Salinee inherited a piece of land in the tropical Phuket region of Thailand. She sold the property without any hesitation or qualms about the effects this action could have on her future and fought to purchase the land that became Grace Garden.

As we look at Salinee’s life, a shining example of selfless love for those in need, we must see her need for those who will partner with her to finish this race.

The need is great.

Without her help, those waiting to attend the Grace Garden will be left without education or knowledge of sustainable farming which can break the cycle of poverty and starvation leaving them vulnerable to work in dangerous and low paying factories scattered throughout the country.

It is the beginning place of a generational and cultural shift as those once stricken by poverty learn the skills that will mark a new generation empowered with knowledge and grace to permeate the nation of Thailand with new, positive, and life giving ways.