My team and I have been partnering this month in Thailand with an organization called Outpour Movement (www.outpourmovement.com). While Ray is our main contact and founder, we’ve been working more along side other people who also partner with him in his ministries. OM is an AMAZING God-fearing and God-rocking organization and they have their hands in a few different places in this area of Thailand.
Since we’ve been here, my team and I have spent our days working with children from 2 different Burmese refuge homes, gardening, and building relationships in the community. Our days look something like this:
Morning: Eat breakfast at a Muslim restaurant called “Lucky Tea”. I devour the same plate of sweet chickpeas and flat bread, while my teammates have some egg dish that tastes like French toast. Our partners here (95% of whom are World Race Alumni- holler!) try to frequent this place along with a few others in order to build relationships with the workers and show them Jesus’ love.
Afternoon: We head to either New Jerusalem Home or The Refuge to hang out with the kids. They range in age anywhere from 4-25. Each home houses no more than 15 children, all whom have fled from Burma for one reason or another. We’ve divided our time between the homes doing things such as teaching English, teaching and singing worship songs together, sharing testimonies, planting a garden, and playing games (lots of games. “Kunja” being our favorite). When not at the homes, we’ve also spent a few days helping some of our new friends plant gardens at their home. It’s been a pretty labor intensive few days. But all vegetation from these gardens go to benefit Famous Rays.
Evening: Finish up with our ministry for the day and then eat at one of two of our favorite spots: Famous Rays or Casa Mia. Famous Rays is a western burger restaurant (don’t worry, they have amazing veggie burgers just for me!) started by Ray to help give jobs to the locals and immerse them in a safe, loving, and God-fearing environment. We’ll either tackle a milkshake, burger, and fries, or just hang out at the place talking with the workers (all WR Alum 🙂 )
Casa Mia is our other favorite place. It’s an amazingly cheap and diverse restaurant with anywhere from Thai to Mexican to Italian to vegetarian food! We can never go wrong there. We all sit around a large table sipping our fruits shakes and enjoying each others company as we continue to build relationships with each other and talk about the day, God, and life.
We’ll spend the remainder of the week here and then head into Burma for the day soon to pray over and seek the Lord for ministry opportunities for that day.
Mae Sot (our citiy) is a city filled with diversity. There are equal amounts of Thai and Burmese people with many foreigners as well (European, Australian, and of course, American!). It is also the largest human and drug trafficking boarder in all of Thailand. Our team prayer walked along the boarder and it was filled the undesirable merchandise sold everywhere. And as soon as the sun goes down, dark things happen.
Ray told us that since he’s been here and prayed over the people and this land, the Lord has broken down some HUGE walls in the Burmese government along with those in Thailand.
Sin will always be present in the world, but so is God. He is not absent and I’ve seen that already through the wounded children who’ve found a firm place to stand and learn about God in these homes.
Thailand is beautiful, humid, and adventurous! I’ve loved every moment of it 🙂
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