It’s been a long but great couple weeks since I’ve last updated anyone on anything, so for my dedicated blog followers, supporters, friends, family, and whoever else comes across my blog, here is what I’ve been up to!I moved into a house, which will be a community house for the other people coming to serve the Wards and the ministry they have going on, as well as a place for teams to stay when they first arrive. I’m excited to be in living very close to the heart of Chiang Mai, and for the first time in months it felt good to put what little I brought with me into furniture! After living out of suit cases for far too long, I welcome this bit of stability in life!A short 2 days after “settling in” we left again. I left with Ray and his friend Trent to start a 2+ week outreach into some remote villages in Northern Thailand, places I fell in love with when I was here 2 years ago. We first found ourselves on a boat along the Thailand border to a village only accessible by boat 10 months out of the year, VILLAGE NAME. It’s not a real touristy village, in fact, you kind of have to know what to ask for to get there. We got there got our tents setup, and got started with building some new relationships, some with the kids of the village, some with teachers at the school. The next morning we were given complete freedom to do a Christmas outreach at the school for around 70 kids, here’s a few pictures from our time there!
After a full morning there, we ventured back up river and received a team of college students from Bangkok that will travel with us for much of the rest of our outreach time, it is awesome working alongside some Thai students that are wanting to serve their own country! We started our time off with a little bit of fun going on a cave hike…
Soon thereafter we found ourselves on one of the most insane drives up a mountain to likely the most remote village on top of a mountain I’ve ever been to. We were warmly greeted by the village pastor of this village of around 15. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like I was in heaven, it s some of the most incredible views I’ve seen anywhere in the world. It was simply amazing sharing some time worshiping God, singing Christmas carols, and standing in awe of the amazing stars that you can only experience on the top of a remote mountain hours from any major city.
This is only a quick overview of what I’ve been up to, including some pctures, along with some of the great happenings, I admit that there have been some hard things to deal with, some far more serious happenings of which I’ll go into detail more as I have some time to write, look for more blogs coming very soon with more detailed stories of Godly encounters we’ve had along the way…some amazing stories of God showing up in very unexpected ways…It’s the holidays, please consider giving to my support account to help further the Kingdom! support.markstratmann.com
