Then: Nepal
Now: Thailand
Before we begin to compare these two subjects, let me just take a second and recognize something, I have been terrible at keeping you all updated recently. This blog, will mostly be a catch up of what we did in Nepal and what we are going to be doing in Thailand.
Nepal was a beautiful month for me. Beautiful for my soul, beautiful for my team and just a beautiful time to watch the Lord work. We did hiking evangelism most of the month, which basically consists of hiking a mountain or going on a particularly long, yet beautiful, walk and passing out tracks along the way. We would stop, share and pray whenever we felt led, saturating the countryside of Nepal with the grace message of Jesus. I saw some beautiful moments last month, one of my favorites was seeing a Hindu woman’s wrist healed from pain to the point that when we stopped praying for her, she with wide eyes turned around and placed our hands on her shoulder, so she could receive healing there also.
We walked for hours in beautiful Nepal, handed out information about who Jesus was, prayed over countless to receive healing and shared the love of Jesus to Buddhists and Hindus. It was phenomenal. I loved watching my team grow through evangelism. Discovering their voices and allowing faith to grow within them as they prayed for people and openly declared His love and forgiveness. Nepal will be a place that I will not easily forget, because the Lord did so much through and in me.
But now, we have moved on. I am writing from the Chiang Mai district in northern Thailand. I am sitting in a little two person bamboo bungalow, resting in my new home for the month. My squad had a three day debrief in Bangkok where we stayed at the YWAM base, rested for a few days and ate some of the tastiest, yet cheapest, food I have ever eaten. It was a good time to be with the squad, to get poured into and catch up with friends. By the end, I found myself more than ready to be out of the city with my team, heading to what we were told was going to be a month working with Burmese youth. Well, by now I should have realized that the World Race is never what you expect or plan for, and the same goes for our ministry this month. We were informed just mere hours before leaving Bangkok, that our ministry contact with the Burmese was not longer able to take us. I had to make a quick decision between two other ministries and so now, we are staying with another team in the region of Chiang Mai, living at a children’s home.
The children’s home we are now staying and working at is called Silah Home Ministires, and it’s a beautiful place! Silah houses, disciples and provides education for 40+ youth with ages ranging from 3-18. The kids are all here for different reasons. Some are orphans, some live too far into the mountains to go to school and some come from too poor of families to pay for school, so they come stay here to receive an education. During our month will be loving on the kids, building relationships with them, helping them with homework, working to improve their english and doing service projects to strenghten and serve this community. Today was our first day of ministry and we worked all morning, hoeing out grass so that the kids can be safer from snakes. The blisters on my hands tell me that it will be a very fun, yet physically demanding month.
When I asked the Lord the other day for a word or direction for this month, He said, “Love radically”. That is exactly what we plan on doing, loving on these precious kids and one another radically. Please continue to pray for us this month, that we would be healthy as a team, physically, mentally and most important, spiritually. Pray that we would be united and stand firm on the promises that the Lord has given us. For me personally, pray that I find a good way to balance my time between pouring out, into my team and the kids, and finding time to be poured into by the father. The last few days have been a bit overwhelming in that sense, with lots to do on my list and not enough time or energy to get it all done. Finally, that we would learn what radical love looks like, and how Jesus wants to pour that radical love over these kids through us.
