This story begins on a rooftop in Nepal.
Our team was 2 days away from leaving Nepal to go to Thailand and we still did not have a ministry host to work with for the upcoming month. As we sat in a circle on the rooftop and prayed for the ministry we would be working with in Thailand, we prayed for our host, the community we would be going to, the people we would meet, and……we laughingly prayed, “Jesus, if it’s in your will…we would love to be able to go to the beach at some point and see the ocean! Amen.”
Fast-forward nearly 3 weeks later. We arrived in Thailand and were working with the most amazingPastor in the middle-of-nowhere. Pastor John (aka “PJ”) had prayed for the Lord to send him missionaries for over 2 years, and we were the answer to his years of earnest prayer. We were so humbled to serve with PJ.
We received our ministry schedule and it was jam packed. Every single day we would be working either at schools teaching English, doing house visits with believers and non-believers, or evangelism in the mountain villages. Our team felt so honored to be able to be the first missionaries—the first Americans—to ever walk the ground in the city we’re in.
However, we knew our long-shot of a beach trip was far out of reach. We didn’t think twice about going to the beach because of how honored we felt to be serving with PJ.
Then Jesus decided to surprise us.
PJ sat down our team last week and told us we would have 4 days off in a row because he was going to a pastor’s conference. This meant only one thing to our team: BEACH TRIP…and we had less than 24 hours to plan it (Asian head bobble: “No problem”).We took our only opportunity to see the ocean by booking 13+ hours of bus/van travel, dinner consisting of 7-11 cookies and chips, and to top it off we took a speedboat at 12 a.m. from the mainland to the island of Koh Samet where we would be able to relax for a few days.
THANK YOU, JESUS!
Even in the midst of our busy schedule, God so lovingly decided to grace our team with an unexpected blessing of a beach trip. Little did we know going to the beach, God would use our team to minister to the local travelers from across the globe in the hostel we were staying at.
What we saw as an unexpected blessing, God saw as a divine appointment to not only rejuvenate our souls, but to expand His church on the island of Koh Samet.
We left the beach with sandy hair, burnt shoulders, and a full heart because God not only heard our prayers to have an opportunity to go to the beach, but He abundantly provided every single thing we needed in His perfect timing.
