*Please note: For the protection of our contacts and their ministry in Laos, I am omitting any names of people, places, or ministries we were involved with this month. Know that the people we were serving alongside love the Lord with all their hearts, and they are witnesses for Christ in a very dark place. Please pray for their farm and family, that they would continue to be filled with endurance, strength, joy, and unity to do the Lord’s work in Laos.
Laos. I don’t know where to start.
If you had told me last year that I would be spending December 2014 on a pig farm in Laos, I would never have believed you. That sounds crazy. And yet, it was probably one of the best months of my life thus far. Waking up early, shopping at the market, driving our motorbikes into town, doing manual labor…I wanted to soak in every minute of it.
I often find myself at a loss of words to explain the Race. There are so many sides to it. There’s living in Asia. There’s doing ministry. There’s living with 4-7 (or 43) other people, in really tight quarters (aka community). There’s personal and spiritual growth. There’s vulnerability and humility and honesty, and there’s also suppressed memories and constructive feedback and things we don’t want to deal with. Every time you think you understand the Race, another curveball is thrown, and you’re back to thinking “what the heck have I gotten myself into?”
With that said, I want to *attempt* to explain our month in Laos…
Our month in Laos was weird.
I’m gonna say that right away. It’s a closed country, and they wear socks that have one toe slot for their flip flops, and they eat shrimp and mayonnaise on their pizza. Don’t tell me that’s normal.
Our month in Laos was a battle.
Our province in southern Laos is a place known for their black magic and cursing. Superstitions are widely believed. Spiritual warfare is a real thing. Man oh man, did we experience it.
At the beginning of the month, our team had some issues we needed to work out. Big ones, that would take more than just one “I’m sorry.” The issues were causing division, and we knew in order to love Laos, we had to be unified in loving each other. Immediately after vulnerability and honesty and prayer and humility started happening between us, so did the spiritual attack. I dislocated my knee and ruptured my medial patellar ligament (ask me about it), Landon and Kyle got in a motorbike accident, and Grace got a kidney stone… in less than a week. Add to that mental haziness and lies from the enemy, as well as other random illnesses for all of us, and we had quite the month.
Our month in Laos was fruitful.
This month, we learned what it means to love and serve in completely different ways than we were used to. We learned what it means to do ministry in a closed country, and we saw tangible ways of pouring into our contacts, who pour into their ministry 365 days a year.
We cleaned pig pens. We built mud walls inside giant fish ponds. We swept and mopped and dusted our contacts’ house. We did preschool activities with our contacts’ 3-year old son, and taught English (“It is five!”) to the kids in the neighborhood near the farm. We got to plan Christmas parties, and bake cookies, and create some promotional materials to help our contacts develop a larger support base for the farm (and I got to film and edit a video for them!).
Our contacts, meanwhile, planted soybeans. They took a nap. They took the month to do other things they wouldn’t have had time to do if we weren’t there, and they did them well. Our work was tangible, it was helpful, and it was worth it.
Our month in Laos was fun.
Grace, Julia, Landon, Kyle, and Leah (and a little bit of Justin, our squad leader). No other teams around us. No one else who spoke English (besides our contacts). No wifi.
And yet, it was so much fun. We played cards (and decided we should never play Phase 10 together again). We watched movies. We went to a waterfall. And, because my people really love me…we made a video!! A music video, to be exact. And because I love you, I shall grace the internet with the presence of said video. Because everyone needs a little Taylor Swift on the farm.
xoxo
