First off I am soooo sorry I haven’t gotten a blog up sooner!! You all have been so great at supporting me & following my adventure and I feel so bad that I haven’t updated everyone in a long while.
Second of all- I’M IN THAILAND. When did this happen?! Saying goodbye to everyone we made relationships with in Guatemala was so incredibly hard & I still miss them greatly. Thankfully Facebook exists & I’m able to keep in touch and hear about how they are doing. We had 1 week of debrief in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. It was a week of getting to catch up with other squad mates, celebrating thanksgiving (with some great street food which later made me sick), processing through Guatemala, preparing for Thailand, watching sunsets over the lake & just relaxing! It was such a sweet time. On December 2nd we loaded up the bus and headed to the airport! Our first plane ride was to Los Angeles where we had a long layover. I was so incredibly thankful to get to see my uncle Jim & cousin Nicole who live near the airport. Getting to see family was very nice!! That night we had a 15 hour plane ride to the Philippines for another layover! I felt super sick the whole plane ride & came out of the plane with huge cankles (swollen ankles) but I survived. After a couple hour layover in the Philippines we headed to Thailand!! We stayed in Bangkok for a couple days just learning about Thai culture and overcoming jet lag. I was one of the lucky people that didn’t have any jet lag!
My team is living alone in Thailand! No other squad mates with us. At first that scared me- living with the same 5 other girls for 3 months? But I also know that gives us the opportunity to grow in so many more ways & I can’t wait to see our growth as a team after this time! We are living in the city of Samut Songkhram. We are living on the church property, which happens to be the only church in this province. Living right next to the church has brought a completely different atmosphere! We now are kept busy with bible studies, Friday night prayer, pre-church prayer, & fellowship. This church is so united and truly are centered around Jesus. With only around 1% of Thailand being Christian, they are very passionate about telling everyone who God is & the hope that He offers. This church is what I wish churches in America looked like. They truly live out the saying “the church isn’t just a building but the people inside the building” and it is so inspiring to see.
During the week we are kept busy with teaching English at many different Buddhist schools. At first, again, I wasn’t really thrilled with the idea of teaching English again. We had already done that for 3 months in Guatemala & I was ready for something new. But I soon got over that & am excited for the new kids we get to meet here! Not only do we teach the kids English, but we also have the opportunity to teach them about God. For many kids it is their first time hearing who God is. We teach different stations with a partner and then the kids rotate around to the different stations. Mikaila and I have been the music station for the past couple of weeks. I am tone deaf & can not sing for the life of me but it’s been great fun to just be crazy with the kids and not stress about how terrible my singing is!
A few days ago at a Buddhist school one of the monks came up and was just watching us sing songs about God with the kids. I was wondering if he knew what we were teaching about. Later, one of our Thai friends that was at the school told us that the monk was fascinated that we were foreigners and asked him what we were doing at the school. He told the monk that we were talking about Jesus and told the monk a little more about what we had taught that day. The monk then decided that he wanted to know more about Jesus!! I don’t know anymore about that monk but pray that he continues to want to know more and more about Jesus and that the right people are put in his path to answer his questions about Jesus. So cool to see that just by showing up to the Buddhist school, a monk might accept Jesus into his heart!!
A lot of our school days we will have the stations in the morning and then the afternoon all the classes will come together and we put together an assembly type thing for the whole group! We sing songs & play games with everyone together and it’s a lot of fun. My team has also had the opportunity to pass out Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes at some schools and see them open up their boxes! It’s a great reminder of what Christmas is about. The kids get so excited opening up the boxes and that fills me with so much joy!! It’s great to be on the other end of the boxes where we get to see them delivered.
Everyday here brings something new and something exciting!! We never really know how each day is going to look so we are kept on our toes. I am being pushed so far out of my comfort zone in many different ways here which is great & I can already see growth happening. Christmas will be definitely be different but I’m so happy I get to spend it with my Thai family & my Lavished Warrior family. I hope you all have a great Christmas and New Years!!!! I’d love to hear how you all are doing … (:
