//I was in a confounding mental situation from the week prior in Bangkok with a whirlwind of an experience involving public transportation, red shirt protests, exploration in and around the city and unfortunate inability to find a single art museum on my list of about 20 that I could have gone too and tried for.
I also had a squad member heavily on my mind, her name is Denise. The day before we left she slipped in the bathroom and seriously injured her foot in my presence. In a moment of panic I wanted so badly to help but not knowing a thing to do, the only I could think to do was pray, so pray I did. It became more and more evident that this injury was not going to go away quickly. She later had surgery on her foot and is in need of extended physical therapy and will in effect, need to recover off the race. As traumatic as it was and still is for Denise and her husband Scott, it was fairly traumatic to witness the whole thing and feel so helpless to aid a friend who was hurting so badly.
//Thailand is known for it’s sex tourism and trafficking and it’s talked about quite a bit in the world race community. Even before I left for the race, I had no clue what to tell people in response to what I would be doing since we only finding out maybe a week before we work with any given contact. But Thailand – that was different. Here was a place where it was clear that a certain ministry was needed so I often used trafficking as a go to for explaining various things I might be doing on the race. As much as this ministry was promoted and talked about, it’s not what everybody ended up doing. It’s not what my team ended up doing. There I was, in a van, headed to a small village in Chaiyaphum, remote and nothing like the ministry I was expecting and kind of hoping for.
I was in a strange spiritual funk when we left, trying to understand what God was doing and make sense of everything I’d seen in the days prior.
We arrived after nightfall. We couldn’t see a whole lot, but then again, there wasn’t a whole lot to see. YWAM Chaiyaphum is still developing and currently consists of one building for an english classroom and office (with no door or coverings for windows), a hut that serves as the kitchen, another for eating and a small building for the toilets. “What are we going to do here?” I asked myself as our driver pulled out, “stuck here for a month, in the middle of nowhere farmland.”
We set up our beds under the mosquito nets provided for us in the classroom building and quickly (or not so quickly) fell fast asleep in the stifling hot air of Thailand.
LIVING LIFE HERE
The village life is slow.
The grocery store is over an hour’s drive away.
It’s so hot in the middle of the day, all you want to do is escape from life and become useless.
How will we pass the time?
Why are we here?
BUT WHAT DOES GOD SAY
be patient with Me
trust Me
talk to Me
I employed a lesson learned in Malaysia, just walk your surrounding, pray into it and you’ll start to grow a connection.
