Monkey Business - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

This month we have been working in Muang, Phang- Nga, Thailand (see my teammate, Emily’s blog for cultural information) with an organization called Eagles Rest Foundation . They are a retreat center for impoverished Asian missionaries that need a break from ministry and typically aren’t able to afford it. This month we have been helping out with whatever they need us to do. We have been helping in the office, doing yard work, varnishing cabinets, and helping them move. We also helped out at Krabi Baptist Church doing flood relief work, prayer walks, and washing cement fences. Our contacts have become family to us. They are a family of 6 and we spend a lot of time with them. We have been able to do workshops with the kids – from teaching volleyball, sewing, painting, and singing to having bible studies, and self image and relationship talks. Although we are still involved in ministry, this has been a relaxing month and our contacts have made it a point to make sure that we are doing okay. They have given us a personal spiritual retreat day where we were taken to a park for a day to spend with God. We came to work with Eagles Rest but it has been like we came here for a retreat which just shows how good a job this ministry is for those who come here to rest.

God knew what we needed after having a tough month last month. This has been a great place to learn to rest in God and his promises. Resting in Him, I have allowed Him to restore me in many ways. He has given me a peace that passes all understanding and a joy like never before. This does not mean that I have forgotten last month or any of the months before. I am realizing that each child I have worked with, I have come to love like they were my own children. We received news this week that one of my kids from Jo’berg died a few days ago. It was news you don’t expect to hear about a child but God has given me peace and I know that she is in a much better place now. I have peace knowing that God is in control. As much as these are my children they are even more so HIS children. He loves them and will be with them forever whether I’m able to be there, he puts someone else in their lives, or he calls them home to be with him… He is there.

As I mentioned above, our contacts made sure that we had a personal spiritual retreat day. This day was an amazing day for me but also the beginning of some tough realizations about myself. The day started at 9am by being dropped off in a park with a packed lunch and being told that she’d be back to pick me up at 3:30pm. Now I’ve never had a day where I just spent it with God and I’ve never had what some people may call a “date with Jesus”. I had a general idea of what I thought other people do during that time so I had my Bible and journal in hand. I got out of the car and started praying for God to direct my footsteps and lead me to where he wanted me to go. It was a big park and I wanted to find a good place to park myself for the day and start my “date”.

I started by walking through some caves trying to find a good spot. I made it through the other side only to discover…. MONKEYS!!! Lots of monkeys. I love monkeys so I was excited to watch them play and took some pictures. I stayed for awhile and then

decided I needed to move on to find my spot. I wander back through the caves and to the other side of the park where I sat down on a bench. I thought maybe I’d found my spot but I was being eaten by mosquitoes so I knew I needed to move on. I looked at my watch and an hour had passed. I had been talking with God on and off during my wandering and as I sat on the bench I began to pray some more…. I realized that the most important thing in life is to LOVE God and to become more intimate with him.

There are no prescribed ways to do that and that morning I had fallen more in love with God because of the monkeys. I realized that my day didn’t have to be sitting in one spot all day and talking/listening to God. Yes, I had questions but I didn’t NEED for him to answer them. I just needed to love him and my “date” does not need to look like other peoples. My day turned into “adventure day with Jesus” where he revealed himself to me through the adventure of exploring more caves and hiking, through his beauty that surrounded me, and of course through more monkeys. 🙂 There was time that I did sit and journal and pray and he did give me some verses which didn’t make sense at the time but in the days to follow he continued to speak through the verses.

I’m ashamed to admit that one of the verses that kept coming up was very convicting to me and for several days after it convicted me in a new way. He kept speaking to me from Ephesians 4:25 – “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

God has been revealing to me that whether intentional or not I lead people to believe things about me that aren’t true. Many times this is done through my silence. I don’t speak up about something and that leads people to believe something that isn’t true. I am then put in a box that I feel I have to stay in. These things tend to be small and insignificant but they add up and it becomes a big deal because people don’t know the truth about me.

I will give you an example to help illustrate what I’m trying to say (this is only one of several things God revealed to me). On the WR, we are traveling to a lot of countries and I knew that culturally I was going to have to eat what people put in front of me. At home, I am a picky eater and don’t eat a lot of things that most Americans enjoy so I knew this might be tough. I prepared myself though and thankfully the food hasn’t been terrible and a lot of it has been good and my team hasn’t had to eat strange foods… so I have eaten the food and never said a word… didn’t complain, etc. Not a bad thing in the grand scheme of things but this month as we have been cooking meals I realized that my team (which I have been with 24/7 for about 7 months) has no idea what foods I like and don’t like.

I tend to keep struggles and things to myself for whatever reasons… this leads people to believe that I’m not struggling with anything and I don’t allow them the opportunity to support me. Again this is for several things which add up…. For some of the things I am put into a box and then feel like I’m expected to continue in that way. We are ending month 10 soon and going home is getting closer. At home, people know that I’m a picky eater and I have to consider if I’m going to go back to eating how I eat at home because that is what people expect… or am I going to speak up and now eat things that I actually like but always said that I didn’t? I don’t know… but I do know that I don’t want to continue living a life that people don’t know that truth about me. It was hard to swallow what God was showing me. It was hard to admit that I have falsehoods in my life that shouldn’t be and to listen to God and speak the truth to my teammates. It was very humbling to say the least.

I tell you all of this to demonstrate how God has been restoring me. He has been restoring me to be me. I’m learning to be confident in who he has made me to be. Through that I am discovering and/or rediscovering what brings me joy… not what someone else thinks and not what I go along with because I do what others want to do… but what truly brings ME joy. Fear is what has held me back before – fear of different things- but God is setting me free and in that freedom is JOY! This month has been a month where we have had time to process things and a time that we have done fun things… big and small (not that ministry isn’t fun because I do enjoy our ministries… and not that we haven’t done stuff other months on our days off…. but I guess this time I’m going to share them with you…).

PICTURES from the month: