Friday was my last day of ministry at the Wildflower Home. The three weeks we spent there were so so sweet, so I wanted to share them with you all!
Each day, we left our hostel and piled into the songthaew (Thailand’s version of a taxi, but red and cool and in truck form). We would arrive at Wildflower Home to the sound of children’s laughter, and often stop to wave at the sweet faces in the daycare. From there, we’d be given a variety of tasks. In all honesty, they felt very unproductive at times. We did our fair share of shoveling dirt and dumping it into a ditch. We covered the driveway with gravel, then recovered what we had already covered, but with a new color of gravel. We also swept…a lot. We swept the buildings, we swept the ceilings, we swept the water in their pond, we even swept the ground outside, believe it or not. We pulled about 6,934,219 weeds. We smashed bags of mushroom, and buried some beneath the dirt (which was quite hard for us to do – we learned that most parts of Asia don’t have very environmentally friendly practices when it comes to plastic). Some days we had the privilege of playing with the kids in the daycare – these days were PRECIOUS. I can’t even try to describe how adorable they are. Basically my eyes couldn’t take the adorableness, so they melted. Then my heart couldn’t take the love I felt for them, so it exploded. Death by cuteness.
Each day we worked alongside the mothers who were staying at the home. Through the seemingly meaningless manual labor, the Lord helped me form some really special friendships. I could speak very little Thai and the women could speak very little English, but we shared so many sweet moments of laughter. In our first week, I tried to bond with them through passing smiles and attempts to learn their names. As we spent more time with them, they started to open up.
One of the women started to reveal her charismatic and goofy personality pretty early on – she would start dancing out of nowhere, messing with us, and laughing when we messed up. She would choose sides when my friend and I raced our wheelbarrows to “the pit”, pretending to like one of us better than the other (and she usually chose me, so take THAT Alyson! Mwahaha) She exudes a playful and extremely positive attitude that we all fell in love with – oh I’m going to miss Gao dearly.
I slowly became really great friends with another strong, beautiful, and silly woman. I remember the day we became friends – she had been giving me cleaning tasks around the house all morning, and we’d look at each other and laugh when something funny happened. She kept coming over to me and offering me little snacks (which was honestly really touching, since food is the center of culture and relationships here, and because she was going out of her way to give them to me and only me). I could tell she liked me, and we’d been getting comfortable with each other, so I decided to sneak around the back of the kitchen and scare her. I totally got her – she screamed and turned around in terror, but upon seeing it was me, she burst into laughter. Since then, she’d wave me over to sit next to her whenever we had a chance, give me hugs, call me swy (beautiful). She was so kind and loving towards me. Oh I am going to miss Pa dearly.
There were three other women who seemed very shy and reserved at first. Through lots of attempts at conversation in Thai (many of which failed) they slowly became comfortable around me. They started greeting me with enthusiastic waves, when in the beginning I could barely get so much as a smile. They would ask me to help them fix their shoes or dump the dirt out of their wheelbarrows (because what else are friends for?). Mai, Pha, and Nacha – I am going to miss you dearly.
The women inspired me deeply – they worked SO hard, with SO much joy. Most of them were single mothers staying at the Wildflower Home to build new lives out of their often hurtful pasts. I had learned that some of the mothers were Christian, but most were Buddhist; thus, I had been praying that the Lord would move and give us opportunities to show them Christ. So in the middle of this past week, as we neared the end of our time at Wildflower Home, I had a conversation with our ministry host that led to an amazing opportunity: she was going to let us share the gospel with all of the moms!!!
Our teams discussed how we felt the Lord wanted us to share Him, and we spent a lot of time in prayer together. They graciously let me do the honors of speaking, which I was SO excited about. So on our second to last day, as we gathered with the women to play BINGO, we got to share with them the love of Christ. My friend Taylor told them who we are and why we were there. Afterwards, I explained the story of Jesus to them, and told them why it makes life so so good. The Holy Spirit totally gave me the words, which was such an answered prayer. Our ministry host translated it all into Thai so the women could understand, and they seemed quite intrigued by all the things we shared. Then we expressed how much we loved working with them, and they loved on us in return. It was such a God-given opportunity, and He so clearly was present in every moment of it.
Then on the last day, our ministry host let us pray over the new house they had just finished building for the mothers. We walked through all of the halls and all of the rooms, praying God’s love, freedom, and redemption in every inch of that place. We then met in one of the empty rooms to worship. Time escaped us and we ended up singing praises for 45 minutes – it was such a beautiful experience. We went on with the tasks of the day, and when the time came for us to leave, they asked us to sing one more song. So our last few moments there were filled with praises, hugs, and goodbyes – a beautiful end to our time at Wildflower Home.
I’m sad to say my first goodbye on the race so early, but excited to see what else God has in store for us in Thailand. Off to the next big thing in God’s Kingdom! Thank you for reading 🙂
Loving you far,
Claire
