Sponsor day updates! For those who don’t know, while fundraising support for this trip, people had the opportunity to sponsor days while I’m on the race for $50 each. With that I write about how each one went. Sorry for the length, hope you enjoy it or at least get a glimpse of these days through the video. Without further delay we are starting off with throwing it back all the way to April 9th!
April 9th:
This day started off with our daily activities at the orphanage with the girls there. Every day we played games, taught English, sang songs, crafts and a bible story. Thanks to my years at camp I was able to run the games portion.
After lunch we helped with cleaning the pavilion, which turned into a miniature water fight. I ran away from the bucket and managed to slip on the tile and slice my foot open. While resting my foot I played a couple games and we had our team Spanish lesson in preparation for our time in Central America. The day ended with a beautiful sunset and our nightly service with the girls. Thank you Laurie Collins for sponsoring this day at my favorite place on the race so far.
April 17th:
This was the second day of the yearly camp the orphanage runs. Any child older than 8 can come to camp for free for 5 days. It was a true privilege to work at this years camp and I definitely hope to go back one day. The campers learned different survival tips, crafts and played sports. I was in charge of sports everyday and on this day we played the classic camp favorite, kickball. After lunch, while some teammates taught first aid, myself and a few others set up for that nights camp activity which was an obstacle course with a slip and slide at the end (which you can see in the video). The night then ended once again with the nightly service where some of the campers herd the good news of the gospel for the first time. Thank you to my old ultimate teammate Quinten Blank for sponsoring this day!
April 26th:
The 26th was our first full day of PVT which is when parents get to come visit us in the field and do ministry with us. At this point we were no longer working with the camp and instead where in a city called Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai their is a red light district where human trafficking and prostitution is very prevalent. So we spent this first day telling our parents about our prayer walk experiences in preparation of doing a couple prayer walks in the red light district. The first prayer walk was in the evening while they were getting ready for the night. The second walk came at night and it was emotionally heavy. My favorite time of the day came though when we went into the main hub of the sex industry. We got to the middle of it and I felt led for us to do a Jericho walk around the boxing ring in the middle of the floor (A Jericho walk is when just as the Israelites marched around Jericho 7 times, so would we march around the ring 7 times. While walking we pray that as God destroyed those walls around Jericho that He would destroy the negative spiritual strongholds in that place of darkness). I loved this because though I could feel the darkness in that place I could feel Gods presence in us and through us we were bringing light to the darkness. Afterwards we ended on the night on a more uplifting note of getting fish pedicures which is quite the experience. I don’t know if this was intentional but thank you Grandmom for sponsoring this first full day I got with my parents.
April 27th:
The 27th started off with more teachings and trainings from us racers to our parents. Later we got to help with renovations of a coffee shop called Bella Goose. Their business originated in Wisconsin and now they have coffee shops in the Philippians and Thailand. Their goal is to become a safe place for women stuck in the sex industry and to outreach to the local college community to disciple them as well. In our renovations with them we helped sand down the old chairs and tables to be repainted.
Later that day after our time off we had a debrief time where we talked as racers and parents separately to talk about things were going. Then that night we all went to a cultural dinner which was really cool to experience (personally more so for the food than the dancing). Thank you Aunt Deb for being such a great continual source of support and sponsoring this day. I hope you had a great birthday!
April 30th:
The 30th was the last day we had with our parents and it wasn’t very long. We said goodbye in the morning and had the rest of the day to rest up and get ready for our 3 days of travel starting the next day. After saying goodbye we had a time of debrief as racers with the facilitators who did an awesome job of making PVT a success. The rest of the day consisted of resting, Mexican food for lunch, more resting, going to the pool, even more resting, and eating pizza. The night ended with meeting up with my parents to say one last goodbye before not seeing each other for another 4 months. Thank you Pam and George Zaiser for sponsoring this day of rest and goodbyes which is really more like a see you soon.
Lastly a couple additional thank you’s.
I want to thank Anita and Ozzie who recently donated to my trip!
Also, thank you to those who donated as a result of my God pocket blog, Jenna Heise
Ken Wells, Chelsey Wirth, Ethel Ann Murphy, Amy Williams, and Deb Wirth! Though I haven’t had too many opportunities to give due to being isolated in the mountains at the orphanage last month, it has been so nice to be able to help those who need it when I am around. So far I’ve been able to help over a dozen people with your support. Those stories will be coming in a later blog so please stay tuned!
Finally, thank you everyone for your continual support over these first 7 months, it means the world to me.
