This month is definitely going to be and has already turned out to be the most different month from any other I’ve so far had on the Race. It will also be very different from any other month on the Race as well.
A big part of this is that all the guys are together for the entire month as one team while the girls are split up into different, “new,” teams for the month. Our girls are working with the prostitutes and the sex trafficking industry here in Thailand and are trying to bring light to the women of that trade and trying to get them to see who they really are and what their real worth is. Something else is that I am leading all of the guys this month, so that presents many other challenges in itself.
We guys, on the other hand, are working with Outpour Movement. It is a ministry started 6 years ago by Ray Ward and his wife Candace. Our ministry this month is so very different from others we’ve had.
We are currently in Mae Sot, Thailand and we are doing some light construction and playing with kids at a ministry called Life Impact. They are a ministry that seeks to take kids off the streets and away from the sex trade and give them a stable home environment. Most of the kids they currently have at their place are Burmese. Mae Sot is a border town between Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). A lot of refugees from Burma live in this area and some of them just can’t support their kids. One of the kids was sold to the ministry for $24. The mom was looking to sell her to anyone and Life Impact found out about it and bought the kid. Another mother was going to throw her child off a bridge, but someone stopped her and told her where she could take him.
These are the kinds of stories that we hear very often here in these foreign countries. We have no idea in our “safe” America what the rest of the world is really like. Anyways, Life Impact has several houses on their property which house around 10 kids each and each house has a house parent. They also have more one on one settings with fewer kids and in a smaller house. They also run a daycare for those kids and some of the local kids that have more stable home environment.
We are leaving Mae Sot somewhere around the 29th or 30th of this month and going back to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the big city in the area and where Outpour Movement is based out of. We are going for some R&R and then to Mae Sariang.
In Mae Sariang, we will be doing more ministry at a children’s home that is directly connected to Outpour Movement. We will also be taking a boat ride up the river and camping and doing some cave hiking and such to really bond as men and hang out together.
Love you guys and can’t believe I will be home in almost two months!
Check out this blog from one of the other guys on the squad about the conflict in Burma: http://stevenreed.theworldrace.org/?filename=have-you-heard-of-burma
