Fun under the Thai Sun
After the serious tone of my last couple blogs I wanted to tell you about some of the other things we’ve been doing here.
Part of understanding God and the balanced life He calls us to is taking some rest every so often. To accomplish that, we made the sacrifice to not do ministry and go the beach instead. We ended up going on Christmas Eve. It was the strangest feeling to be splashing in the waves and getting a major sun burn on a holiday I’m usually going out for a walk in the snow.
I bought some red fruit called rambutan that had green, hair-like spines all over it. It was really tasty!
And a couple of evenings we went to an open market where you can buy everything from any clothing item, to suitcases, to books, to any kind of food! It was really fun checking out the foods both familiar and unfamiliar with my teammate Emily. I was constantly asking what the fruits and meats were called and what was in each colorful pastry. You would not believe how many more kinds of food there are in the world than we could even imagine in the States! And it’s so inexpensive! I hadn’t realized how very rich I am until I bought a full meal for under $1. We really are so blessed.
On New Years Eve we went to another beach and stayed until sun set. When it was dark, my genius squad mate Melissa bought some floating lanterns and we released them over the water as we welcomed in the new year. Then we returned home and all our neighbors set off a barrage of fireworks right in the streets! It was beautiful to see from where the house is situated in a sort of valley and fireworks coming from the next street over, as well as fireworks going off on all the hills surrounding us. And some more of the floating lanterns! I really think those should catch on in the States because their just beautiful and probably no more dangerous than fireworks.
There are now several YWAM teams also here also working with SHE. So we have about 70 people living in the two SHE houses! But the bedrooms are full of bunk beds so I don’t think this place is even filled to capacity yet.
It’s been fun getting to know everyone here! Every day I look forward to the challenge of remembering everyone’s name. I’m getting pretty good at it too!
And in the area in front of our house there is a bulldog named Winston. He’s actually pretty lovable in his ugliness!
The other day Mark, who runs SHE with his wife, had a few of us girls do some landscaping around the buildings here. Sarah C., Adrea and I were like real jungle explorers as we hacked at the overgrown banana trees. They weren’t edible bananas and they had grown out of control and were taking over the view from all the ground-floor windows. So we were fiercely attacking all the new growth with machetes. I’m sure we were a frightening sight as we swung those things into the trees and squirting tree juice everywhere. (Banana trees seem to be about 80% water.) The leaves were just huge! Each full grown leave was about 8 feet long and 2 feet wide! That was an experience I won’t soon forget!
(Allie with a banana leaf)
