Have you ever been so blessed with something that you have no words to express it to those around you? Have you ever been so happy and you can’t understand why? What about alive? Have you ever felt so alive that you can’t process every single second that goes by?
Guys, that happened to me this month in Thailand. First off, THAILAND!! Guys, I made it to THAILAND!! If you remember from my first blogs, I told you how this is the country that the Lord used to reel me in back to him. He used Thailand to call me out onto the field, he PROMISED me he would bring me here. God promised to bring me to Thailand, and man does he keep his promises!
I know I said I had no words, so I am going to attempt to tell you a bit about what has been happening this month.
At first we were going to be at the AIM base in Chiang Mai, however, the pollution kept skyrocketing and before we could get on our second flight from Ethiopia our squad mentor let us know that we could not stay in Chiang Mai. A lot of us mourned, a lot of us were excited. So! We stayed in Bangkok instead! And just like that, the month became our first month of all- squad ATL.
ATL stands for Ask the Lord, we wake up every day and pray. We sit down and practice listening to what God has planned for our day. As a team, we meet and then share what we heard. We have the chance to be obedient to God. This is an opportunity to listen to what God is saying and then just getting out there in BANGKOK and just doing it! How cool is that?!
Okay, for example, one morning we prayed and my friend Katie heard that she needed to go to the “restaurant” outside the place where we did our laundry. I wasn’t too fond of that particular location for pad thai but Katie heard the Lord tell her that she needed to bring me along. So, we went and brought our friend MeMe with us. MeMe chose where to sit as Katie and I ordered food. Then, the moment I chose my spot to sit down I saw this man sitting across from me, behind MeMe. The three of us were talking about what we were feeling and what we have been learning about ATL and fundraising. The entire time, this man and I kept making eye contact. Don’t worry, we made eye contact not in a creepy way but in the kind of way that makes you just want to invite that one lonely person to sit and eat with you.
This happened a few times as MeMe and I began talking about how worrying can be one of the worst things you can possibly do to yourself and we need to simply trust that God is in control of what happens in life. In that moment as I paused, this man smiled as if he was in the conversation with us and like if he had really enjoyed what I had said. We finally made a long enough eye contact, I mustered up the courage, said “alright here goes nothing” and blurted out, “I’m sorry, what is your name sir?” He smiled and said, “My name is Tom, nice to meet you.” We shook hands and he couldn’t hold his words any longer, he said, “truly, worrying is one of the worst things you can do.” Tom told us he had been in Indonesia and went to this mountain with his guide and felt something, something spiritual. He said, “Go to Mt. Batur when you go to Indonesia, I felt…some…thing there, something spiritual. A Hillsong Church is there, you’ll like it.” He asked if we were missionaries, and with little hesitation we answered. (We can’t say to everyone that we are here on a mission trip, we are “tourists” for those who don’t know us. At least until we know it is okay to say that we are missionaries.) We talked to Tom about ATL and you can just see it in his face that there had been a seed planted in him before and God was just using us to water that seed once. He then got a call from someone, apologized because he had to take the call, introduced us to the friend on the screen as his “three lovely new friends” and then we said our good-byes. It was something so small, so little but yet so necessary. The Lord asked Katie to take me along with her and we were obedient to that. We sat down and every second with Tom was filled with the Holy Spirit without him even realizing it. Although to some it may seem like we did nothing, to God we did one more thing Tom needed to get closer to Him. Someone else planted a seed in him and we just watered it!
Isn’t that so cool!? To be on the other side of the world and run into someone who is also searching for something spiritual to make them whole again? This month was filled with other “Tom’s” in Bangkok. It never dawned on me why all people my age travel. It never dawned on me why backpackers leave everything behind and try to find happiness on the other side of the world. It didn’t dawn on me until this month. We are all searching for peace, we are all searching for love, and we are all searching for happiness. We search for it aimlessly in all the beautiful hidden parts of the world, we search for it everywhere until we are old and die a content life. Some find Him, some never do. I have learned that only God can give us permanent happiness, peace, love. We were meant to stay in Bangkok because we had some scheduled divine appointments.
Guys, all the people we met felt that my team was different. They felt it every single day we were in their lives. Little did they know that what they were feeling was all the Jesus in one room. The people of Bangkok loved us so well, and we loved on those who were only there for a minute. We were able to share a room with a girl who came and just sat down with us in the park simply because she was drawn to us. She lived in our hostel for 3 days and I was able to tell her how to sit down and listen to God. A twenty year old girl from Slovenia traveling alone in Bangkok collided with us and ended up hearing a bit about what it is to do the very same thing that she is doing but to spread the gospel. It blew my mind every time God gave me time to just sit down and talk with her and answer all the questions she had.
Unfortunately not everything is sunshine and butterflies in Thailand guys. This month was also hard. It was hard because my entire squad felt the expectations of people back home who wanted us to do routine ministry. Multiple times I saw comments on my teammates’ posts like “but what are you doing, show me what you are doing”. ATL is hard to describe in one picture, ATL looked like us being obedient in talking to those who God wanted us to reach out to. Not only that, we had to do it with discernment and make sure that those who we ministered to didn’t feel like some sort of human project. This month was hard because we had to redefine ministry for you following us back home. My squad had to trust God one thousand percent that you all would understand that we were not in Bangkok on a vacation. (Although, it felt like it some days, we loved it so much.) It was hard, but oh man it was wonderful. ATL month has been nothing like we expected it to be and boy am I glad it wasn’t. Yes, this month was hard but we did not let that stop us from talking to every single person we encountered. It has been a beautiful mind blowing experience. How blessed am I that God chose me to be here this moment.
Thank you all who have been constantly supporting me. Thank you to those who have been praying for me and my team. Keep on sharing my journey!
