Thailand! - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

So Thailand is absolutely amazing. I (Brady) see why it is such a tourist destination. Their is so much to do and see (and eat). It seems like the perfect place for a honeymoon (hint hint Eirik and Megan).

My squad arrived here on Saturday after taking a 20 hour bus ride from Cambodia. Since then we have been doing Debrief with our squad leaders and squad coaches. Today is the last day of Debrief and we start ministry tomorrow so I’ll know a lot more about what we will really be doing in Thailand soon.

Debrief has been wonderful. Our full squad of 40 has been together and the last 2 nights we have had extended worship sessions to praise our creator. These have been filled with singing, prayer, and pouring our hearts out to one another. 2 nights ago was especially powerful as many people on our squad brought painful parts of their lives into the light to share with the entire squad and to give to Jesus. It was both amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. It was heartbreaking to hear stories of physical or sexual abuse, or to hear about painful struggles with sin. At the same time, it was amazing to see the love that was being given to everyone in the room. I think it’s easy for us as humans to put up a covering over ourselves and not show people the real us in fear that they wont like what they see. In doing this, more people will approve of us, but the approval means far less. What is the love and approval if it isn’t even going to the real us? I think it’s far more valuable when we can be vulnerable and share our pain and struggles with one another and find out that people still love us even with our junk. They are loving the real us simply because they love us and their is great power in that.

Switching gears a little bit, I have also had the chance to do some incredibly fun things during Debrief. Just as a disclaimer, anything that we do in terms of recreation on The World Race comes out of our own pockets. On Sunday, Marin and I went to a cafe called Catmosphere which is essentially a place where you sit on the floor and drink tea and eat desserts with cats. I’ll post a few pics below. We met a couple from Canada; they were teachers in Bangladesh and were currently on vacation in Thailand. They were about our age and seemed to be the hippie/world adventurer type. It was a lot of fun to talk to them and hear about all their stories from traveling.

On Tuesday, me and some of the guys on our squad rented dirt bikes and moto’s. I have not dirt biked before but I wanted to challenge myself to do it. It took me a few minutes to figure out the shifting aspect but I caught on pretty quick. The bike I rented was absolutely awesome. It was a 2013 Honda CRF 250 and I got it for less than $20 for the entire day. The day started off rough as one of the guys crashed his moto and got pretty bad road burn. Luckily nothing was broken (except the bike) and he crashed right next to an ambulance so they bandaged him up right there. He went to the hospital just to make sure their wasn’t any further damage. The rest of us decided that we would keep going for the day and we rode up into the mountains just east of Chaing Mai, which is the city we are in. We then came back down out of the mountains and went south towards a city called Hang Dong. Once we reached Hang Dong we went to a place called “The Quarry”. It is an old gravel quarry that is now filled with water. We were a little skeptical at first because nobody was there when we arrived and it looked like a creepy place to swim. I had read that the water is extremely deep (which it was) but that people dumped a lot of old cars and excavating equipment in the water as well. We eventually decided to get in the water and it was a ton of fun. We did some smaller cliff jumps (about 25 feet) and just swam around. After this we headed back to the hostel.

I’ll post a few pictures of our excursion below.

It has been a great first few days in Thailand but I’m now ready to dive into ministry here and will hopefully have updates on that next week.

Thanks for reading everyone!