Renting Motorbikes in Chiang Mai (Mark, Jo, Me and Hugh)We arrived in Thailand after a long three months in Africa and we met our contact Emmi, a Thai woman who manages three different ministries in Thailand.
Love Acts- A ministry going into the bars in the red light district to minister to the ladies and lady boys stuck in prostitution. Showing love and building relationships with the people who need it the most.
X-Life- A ministry going into rural villages to live with village families. Working and living alongside Buddhist villagers where the root of prostitution often starts when families, desperate for money, sell their daughters into the trade.
Wongen (one-generation) Cafe- A coffee shop in the heart of Chiang Mai, Thailand that ministers to University students through teaching English classes and doing life with them.
Me and my new team got placed in X-Life and we headed out to the lovely village of Mae Ai
Team Relentless Pursuit (Mark, me, Alys, Wesley, Julie, and Jo Linda).
The Room Where Me, Julie, and the Ants Lived.
Throughout the month we spent in Thailand, we painted (a lot), cut garlic cloves, worked in the rice fields, hung out with the village kids, ate a lot of random Thai food, went to a dance off at the Buddhist temple, and of course, we went cricket hunting.
Buddhist Dance Off!!!
Me and Paw-Our Village Contact 
Me and Mam-Our Translator 
Coloring With the Village Kids
Painting, Painting, Painting!!! 
Sweet and Lively ChildOver my trip, I have decided that I CAN kill bugs, but I just don’t like them. I always prefer for someone else to kill my bugs, especially the bugs in Thailand. After living with ants in my bed, hissing horned beetles, lizards the size of kittens, and the biggest crickets I’ve ever seen, I think I entered into bug hatred overload. So I didn’t really think that my favorite day of ministry would be the day we went cricket hunting.
The Infamous Hissing Horned Beetle We piled into the trucks, preparing to go into the rice fields, and we drove a while away and got out, but the field was empty. My house family kept pointing down at little ant beds on the ground and in my mind I thought, “Are we exterminating ants?” I was wrong. My house mom gave me a five gallon bucket and dragged me out to the fields.
She started digging at an ant bed and no ants were coming out. I was thoroughly confused. She kept digging and pulled the most humongous cricket I’ve ever seen out of the hole. She saw the look of surprise (and maybe horror) on my face and started laughing. She tossed the cricket into my bucket and we were off to dig another hole.
Me and My Cricket Hunting Thai FamilyThe journey may have been a little less fun when we were served those giant crickets, gutted and fried, at 7:30 the next morning for breakfast. But, overall, the journey was amazing and unforgettable.
BREAKFASTAll my bug love- sisk
