Hi, friends!
Contrary to popular belief, I am alive :P. After 48 hours, four planes, and a gazillion naps, I arrived in the Thailand airport all in one piece (barely;) and am adjusting slowly, but surely! The first few days were spent settling in and becoming familiar with Chaing Mai, but our ministry “officially” started yesterday! Life in Thailand has been hard to adjust to because of how different things are around here, but it’s starting to become home:).
My Mom and sister Katherine came to Parent launch in Georgia a couple days before we left and it was good to spend some quality time with them before leaving. Saying goodbye was difficult but I knew that it was for the best. The reality of it didn’t really sink in until we got to Thailand, though, and it’s still hard to believe that I’m thousands of miles away from home. It was so weird because we had long layovers in each airport and the time would change nearly every time, and so my internal clock was just completely messed up. Thailand is 11 hours ahead of NC and I think I’m finally getting used to the adjustment after five days. I was also a little sick for three days due to traveling and am back to normal, despite a thick head cold that will not go away….
Okay so before I left for the World Race, people were bombarding me right and left with questions to which I never had the answers! I felt awful *sorry peeps*. But now that I’m here, I have the answers you all have been waiting for! I’m gonna do my best to provide answers for the questions I can remember right off hand. Here goes…
1) Q: Where will you be staying?
A: This was a trick question to which I never provided a decent answer. For all I knew, we’d have to “suffer for Jesus” camping in the mosquito invested wilderness without electricity, bathrooms, running water, or any other normal household luxury, be left to scrub our clothes and take showers in the murky river water, and even go hunting for our food (ok I never actually thought to that extreme, but still:-).
But…..our living conditions are quite the contrary!
Not only are we not tenting in the wilderness, but we get beds in an airconditioned hostel! It still gets super hot during the day because the AC only runs at night, but we are all extremely thankful for this huge and unexpected blessing. We have running water, washing machines, and even rooftop showers (pretty dang cool)! All this to say, Gran, Uma, and whoever else had concerns: DO NOT FRET. I WILL SURVIVE!!!!
2) Q: Will you have to trek long distances?
A: We haven’t had to so far! (knock on wood:). There’s no telling what we might do on this trip, but I don’t think that trekking is in the agenda…:P We’ve set everything up here at the hostel and I’m pretty sure we’re here for the solid two months, praise the Lord!
3) Q: Will you be able to stay in touch?
A: I’m blogging now, so yeh, I think so?:) No seriously though, we DO have WiFi here at the hostel, as glitchy as it may be. However, none of us have our phones during the day for an entire month. This means that I’m free to FT, chat, text, and all that good stuff at night (8-10ish PM), which is morning for most of you guys. Just hit me up and I’d love to fill you in!
4) Q: What kind of ministry will you be doing?
A: Going into this, I honestly didn’t know what to expect, so I literally never had a good answer to this question either! Like I said earlier, we didn’t “officially” start ministry until Monday because we took some time to settle in, rest up, and do squad announcements. But now that we’ve started, we’ve started! We’ve been go, go, go, and the majority of us are gross and sweaty waiting in line for the showers as I write.
It’s been a hard couple of days (more on ministry later), but we’ll get used to it soon enough! Monday, my team and I did this activity called “ATL” (Ask The Lord) where our ministry is literally asking the Lord what to do/where to go/what to say and then obeying. It sounded great at first, but we started getting discouraged as the day progressed. We got lost in the middle of Chaing Mai 45 min away from our hostel and were rejected by three little girls who didn’t want cookies…..fun times (moral of the story: don’t give cookies to strangers!).
Tuesday, we did manual labor for a family home which provided more instant gratification for serving (versus not having specific direction), but teamwork can be rough. It was for me at least. I’m thankful for a team of girls, though, who fight for each other and work through conflict instead of ignoring it. The Lord sure is teaching me to have patience and grace!
Ministry will look different every day for each team which is exciting. I am currently being challenged, however, because I don’t feel super passionate about serving which kinda defeats one of the biggest reasons I’m here…..please say a quick prayer that God will renew my mind and give me excitement and a higher perspective! I want to be ecstatic about serving the Lord and not grow weary! I’m just really missing home which makes this three times harder. Ug.
5) Q: What kind of food will you eat and how will you pay for it?
A: Well I can’t speak for the other countries, but for Thailand, we’ve been eating street food for most meals! Thai food has been a part of me ever since I was a little girl so I literally could not wait to try the food here. I am saddened to say that I haven’t been terribly impressed. The best thing I’ve had so far was Tom Yum soup at a street restaurant we ate lunch at after ministry today. It was quite delicious, but the rest of the food has been a slight let down. Now the ice cream on the other hand…..yum yum yum. I don’t even like ice cream but I fell in love with the coconut street ice cream! The passion fruit is also my new favorite fruit. Like seriously, I don’t understand how something that grows on a tree can be that good. If you’ve never had one, you ought to expand your horizons.
Each team has a treasurer (the one and only Ashlynn Kinnett for our team) who divvies out weekly money for meals. We are allowed to spend more on food but if it exceeds the budget, but it’s on us to cover the difference. The currency is called “Baht” and is roughly 31 B to $1. To give you an idea, a typical street meal costs 50 Baht, or a little over a dollar. It honestly didn’t take terribly long to get used to using the currency which is great ;P.
6) Q: Which countries are you going to and in what order?
A: Thailand for 2 months
Malaysia for 1 month
Costa Rica for 3 months
Ecuador for 3 months
Thank you for reading my blog!
Gotta go to devos now……I’ll see y’all next time!
-Samantha Sky
