This was my 2nd time visiting Thailand, the first being in 2013. I had an opportunity to spend some time with a family from my home church in the States who had moved to Thailand several years prior. This new venture into Thailand was very different from my first, though. New city, new ministry, new faces, new experiences. It was kind of exciting.
Month 10 brought several changes with it. This was Manistry month, which is a month specifically set aside during every route for the guys to leave us girls behind and go do their own thing… with ministry still involved, of course. Those of us girls who are part of coed teams, like myself, are left without our dudes while they go bond over who-knows-what. What ended up happening is the coed girls (there are nine of us) were joined together as one team. I stepped down from my leadership position for the month, and someone else took over as the leader of this newly formed and shortly lived 9-girl team. This was literally the first time in the race that I have had NO responsibilities! I was the treasurer for my first team.
Recap:
- I lost my dudes
- I’m no longer a team leader this month
- I gained 6 new teammates
Thailand’s ministry for us looked extremely different from any of the previous months of the race for me. We, along with another team of 7 girls, participated in more of a “business as missions” sort of environment.
What does that mean?
I’m glad you asked…
The business as missions principle focuses around using the set-up of businesses around the world as a means of being able to spread the love of Jesus. Open a business, the government likes you because you’re helping the economy, you get to meet and build relationships with tons of people, you have opportunities to tell them about your faith.
In our case, this new business was still in the beginning stages of development, so we were more-so helping a pioneer team of developers. The mission led us to the city of Chiang Mai. The pioneer team we worked with was sent there to find, buy and set up a new hostel for Adventures In Missions to run in this area. We helped with things like marketing research, statistical analysis, partnership development, and I was even able to use my real estate agent skills to give them some ideas for what to look for when purchasing a complex.
We also had a group of girls who formed a ministry team that was solely dedicated to prayer. Praying over the city. Praying over the pioneer team. Praying over the rest of us who were helping the pioneer team. Plus, they led a daily prayer time with all of us every morning.
Some of us also went out every night to do prayer walks in the red light district, which I participated in a couple of times.
It was a great set-up that allowed all of us the freedom to use our own skills and gifts to pour into a ministry’s beginnings.
In the meantime there were some really cool, fun things I was able to experience as well. The first weekend we were there, a few of my friends and I took an adventure day out to a nearby river where we floated on a raft made of bamboo logs. Later that day as we were exploring the nearby woods/jungle area we came across an elephant bull just chilling across a small stream! His foot was on a chain, so he couldn’t get to us, but I stood there for a long time trying to decide if I wanted to just cross the little stream and go say hi. I was this close to making my move when some dude appeared out of the woods and shooed us away.
“No, No! Cannot touch this one. Not nice! He kill!” bro-man said, as he was literally giving the elephant shrubs and branches to eat.
Yeah… I’m still not convinced the elephant was dangerous, but I guess it’s better to not find out the hard way.
We celebrated the birthdays of my friends, Karla and Faith. Along with her husband, Faith is one of our squad leaders. Her husband was, of course, away in Manistry-World, but he surprised her by leaving the dudes and coming to see her on her birthday, and we got to be part of that surprise. 🙂
While I would consider Thailand to be the hardest month I have experienced on the race for reasons I haven’t worked through enough to feel comfortable with sharing, I still really loved this month. I honestly didn’t feel a connection to Thailand the first time I visited it in 2013, but I would dare to say that a connection may have been made this time around. I don’t know what the Lord has in store for the future, but I can definitely see myself coming back to Chiang Mai somewhere down the road. We’ll just have to wait and see where the Spirit leads!
