This is officially my first blog on the Race!!!!! I couldn’t be happier, except for the fact that I haven’t been blogging weekly.
FLIGHT: We first landed in Chiang Mai (chang my) on Wednesday the 11th of September. The total amount of time that took us to get from Atlanta to Chiang Mai was 72 very long hours. It felt like one long, neverending day where you were tired all the time and kept guessing what time it was actually because of the all of the times it changed. But we landed safe and sound with no hiccups except for one friend who had to stay behind in San Francisco because she was sick but eventually landed safe and healthy.
START OF MINISTRY: We’ve been doing ministry for almost two weeks, which mainly consists of working alongside women who have come from abusive relationships and are pregnant or who have children already. The place that we’re working is called Wildflower and run by a Catholic organization that allows people from around the world to come and help them fix up their place, garden, and love on the women and their children. At first we didn’t immediately start working with Wildflower, but with their neighbors who teach agriculture to people. We helped Wildflowers neighbors by sprucing up their vegetable garden which helps provide for Wildflowers meals. We helped them only for two days then started helping Wildflower. At first we started weeding for a day then ever since we have been working with shovels, wheelbarrows, and mushrooms/dirt. I say mushrooms because they have this house that looks like a smoke house on the outside but has rows and rows of bagged dirt laying horizontally, and we had to take out all of them and separate the good and bad. The bad was put in wheelbarrows and thrown into a water filled ditch right behind the mushroom house.
“After weeding, it has been all shoveling and moving dirt and gravel for the last 4 days. Now, can I be real for a moment? I developed blisters, my feet were never clean, I always had dirt underneath my nails. It was intensely hot, sweaty and honestly, I felt like what I was doing was worthless. I have to keep checking up with myself on WHY I was doing this. THIS. IS. FOR. GOD. This isn’t for me, this is God using me to minister to these women, working alongside them as I help them fix up their home, this is me me glorifying God with work. THIS. IS. WORSHIP. And I will say that this is by no means easy; to deal with open blisters, sore feet, sweaty skin all day every day for 5 days a week, but I get to understand that this is where I am supposed to be right this very moment. He has a reason of why I got every single blister, why I had to feel squishy mud between my toes when I was weeding. This is the World Race, this is what I came here to do; not knowing what will happen and not complaining because this is what God wants me to do. Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
FUNDRAISING: I have yet to reach my final amount that I need to reach!! I have around 6 thousand to go and will be using my blogs as one way to reach out to people to fundraise. Hopefully people will want to learn more about what happens here in Thailand and throughout the rest of the 9 months I’m away from home. Another way I am fundraising is by selling my photography that I take here. I will be using a separate account on Instagram for my photography. I will be titling them, setting a price on my account and you can DM to order one. I’m super excited to see the outcome of my next fundraiser!!
