We arrived in Thailand after an easy drive from Siem Reap to Bangkok. It was a long travel day, but it was fun. My squad had just spent one night all together in Siem Reap (Tourist spotlight of Cambodia) and I was loving catching up with my squad mates. The drive had passed quickly as I snugged up close with my good friend Emma and we watched movies on my laptop. Before we knew it, we were in Bangkok and all unloading our packs from the vans we’d been in. We were scheduled to stay in Bangkok together as a squad for three nights for a brief weekend together to unwind and prepare for the last two months of ministry.
My week and a half in Cambodia had been an emotional one for me, and I’d returned to the race to a new team, so I was a little emotionally spent. Those three nights in the hostel with my squad were rejuvenating. We laughed and cried and sang and prayed together and I was overwhelmed with the realization that I had deeply missed these people. I was so thankful to be back with my people and to be back where I belonged. I spent a lot of time journaling and praying and even got to lead the squad in some worship on our last night together. When our short weekend ended, I hugged everyone goodbye as we split into our teams to spread across the country of Thailand and begin our ministries.
My team ended up a block away from the hostel we’d been at! Our ministry hosts picked us up and drove us one minute down the road where we dropped our packs off in our cute little one-bedroom apartment and walked to the Santisuk School where we’d be teaching for the next month.
I can’t do this month justice on paper, but I will try my best. Santisuk has been an answer to my prayers and a wonderful place to do ministry. The school was founded by Christians from Minnesota a few years ago, and Todd and Karen live and run Santisuk still. They’re the sweetest people and have treated us so well! Awe, a young Thai woman who’s English is perfect, is the director and she is pretty much the heartbeat of the school. She has become such a good friend and humble leader to me and my team, and we’ve enjoyed getting to know her and work for her.
We each teach two classes, none of us teach together, and we each have our own curriculum and our own classroom and students. I teach a children’s class from 1-3 each afternoon, I have eight students and I adore them. I also teach the highest level of English at 6:30 each night, where we perfect pronunciation and work on grammar. The coolest part about Santisuk is it’s a Christian school that incorporates the Gospel into the lessons, so the English we are teaching them relates back to Jesus.
All our meals are bought off the street individually. It’s about a dollar and ten cents for chicken and rice from a street vendor. All we have in our lovely little apartment is a fridge, so I have yogurt and granola in the mornings, chicken and rice for lunch, and chicken and rice for dinner. We try to include some green in our diet as well, but it’s just so cheap to buy chicken and rice and our food budget here is pretty low. I haven’t minded it, it’s cheap and yummy and it’s only for a month.
The best part about this month hasn’t been the wonderful ministry, the wonderful ministry hosts or the ever-present air conditioning… it’s been my team. These five girls have become my home. Ashley Thomas, who I was on a team with for the first four months of the race, is on this new team with me. She and I both are involved with Young Life in our home towns, and we get along real well. She’s from Texas and is the type of person that always has an answer to my questions. She’s smart, and she’s one of my best friends. My team leader is Kayleigh Richards, and she’s such a gem. (From Arkansas) She comes across as quiet at first, but let me tell you, she’s anything but quiet. She’s so funny, makes incredible animal impressions, and makes me laugh far too much. She’s so receptive to God and I swear it’s like He hangs out on her shoulder and whispers in her ear. She’s a prayer warrior, has such wise discernment, and leads humbly. I love her. Then there’s Jordan Oursbourn. She’s from Lubbock Texas and we first bonded over talking about weddings. She and I share the bed in our apartment and are often up late laughing so hard we’re doubled over in our bed with tears streaming down our faces. She and I can be a lot alike, and the laughter never ends. Kat Olsen is from southern California, she walked away from a career to come on the race, and let me tell you – she oozes scripture and wisdom. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s straight truth. Kristen McLaughlin is also from Texas, and she’s become such a sweet friend to me. We walk to work together each day, and often we find ourselves deep in conversation, almost always with coffee in our hands. Together the six of us are The Great White Sharks. (Don’t ask why, we don’t know.)
I tell you about these girls because they’ve become my best friends. They’ve become my safe place and like I said, they’re my home. I’ve been blessed immensely. God has rewarded me for coming back, there’s no better way to put it. Living in one room with five other girls and sharing one bathroom shouldn’t be this easy, but it is. We stay up late laughing until we cry, making shadow puppets and talking about our future matching tattoos. We joke and yell and best of all, we gather each day as a team and encourage each other, call each other higher, and we push each other towards Jesus. I’ve never been in any sort of team that works this well together, and I’ve never experienced what real community was designed to look like until the race. When it’s done right, it’s this glorious thing, living in unity together, working together, resting together, laughing together – it’s how God designed us to work.
We’ve been able to go on a few adventures on the weekends we’ve had off this month and that’s been awesome too. We got to hang out with our Thai friends that we’ve gotten to really enjoy and they’ve taken us to the floating market, they go out to meals with us, they hang out with us and go shopping with us. We’ve really enjoyed these people and made so many friends, friends like Su, Eng, Nui, Awe, and Prem, who we’ve spent a lot of time with.
This month we’ve been able to build wonderful relationships, with each other and with the locals that live here and work at Santisuk. This time in Thailand has been such a blessing, it’s been restoring, it’s been life-giving, and if I could stay here and work at Santisuk forever, I just might.
Here is my team with the staff of Santisuk and some good friends we’ve made.
A picture with our friends at Asiatique, one of the touristy places we visited together.
My team in our “Classic Boy-Band Album Cover” pose. Kristen, Kat, Kayleigh, Jordan, Ashley and me.
This is me hugging my children’s class goodbye on our last day of classes. I love these kids.
Ashley and I got our feet nibbled on by little cleaning fish! (this time I did NOT drop my phone in the tank, like I did in Cambodia… fortunately, my phone has made an almost-full recovery.)
(((I have pictures and videos of me with the Elephants but I can’t upload them right now, I will try when I have better wifi connection! Check out this blog in a day or two for more pictures!)))
