If I had to describe this month of ministry in three words (or four if we’re being technical): sweat, swimming and sticky rice would easily be my three. Not just because I am a nerd and alliteration is cool, but more importantly, because everything that I have done in this last week has involved sweating profusely, swimming to stay cool and keep my sanity (what little I had to begin with), and consuming copious amounts of sticky rice with every. single. meal.
This month my new team, Dreamboat, has been assigned to a ministry in Vientiane, the capital city of a country called Laos. I attached a picture below because my most frequently asked question this month has been about where in this world this country could possibly be. As you can see it is in Southeast Asia and I am living practically on the Thai border which is convenient because the rest of my squad is in Thailand for ministry.
My team is living and working at an ecolodge resort that is situated on a river to the north of the city limits. We have spent the majority of our time here doing manual labor in the hot sun.We transported rocks and sand from one side of the resort to the other so that a swimming pool can soon be built. We have painted boats, barrels, railings, tables, and chairs. We used sledgehammers to break apart concrete blocks and then filled holes in the road with the shattered pieces. We have done other odd jobs around the resort that involve lots of sweeping and more heavy lifting than I have ever done before in my life.
In addition to our hands on, down and dirty daily tasks we also choreographed and performed an hour long musical production for the students and teachers of a local primary school. We had prepared a fifteen minute long performance one afternoon to be presented “sometime next week”, and then were told the next afternoon to have an hour long skit ready by tomorrow morning. As you can see flexibility is ALWAYS a must-have on this journey.
The production included lots of singing; ballet, tap and group dancing; and even some basic cheer-leading stunts. We chose the theme of LOVE so we used everything we could think of from classic love songs like Can’t Help Falling in Love with You to All You Need is Love by the Beatles an even Bob Marley’s, One Love. Since this is a closed country we could not share with the students directly about the Father’s love, so we did our best to show them the meaning of love through our actions. We had a translator help us explain how important it is to love one another and one of my teammates also shared about how her father loves her no matter what she does.
**Please join us in our prayer that the Lord will work in wonderful ways to use the deeper meaning behind our love songs and skits to touch the hearts of all who were there to see**
We have also been helping out with a high school English club that meets at the resort’s floating restaurant on Saturday afternoons. Our job is to make friends and facilitate conversations with the students so that they can gain some real life experience using their new language skills.
**Please join us in lifting up this group of students as some of their like-minded leaders are taking bold steps and using the Good Book as supplemental English reading practice**
In other news, I am one week away from being able to serve alongside of my parents for a few days in Chiang Mai, Thailand and only TWO MONTHS away from flying into the states.
Please pray for me as I begin to mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepare for this transitional stage of re-entry that is rapidly approaching.
Expect more blogs to come over the next two months as I begin to truly process all of the experiences that I have been so blessed to walk through during this incredible, life-altering chapter of my life.
