Month 6: Thailand
Well now I’ll be talking about my time in Thailand! I’ve become accustomed to my new home in Asia for a short while and at this point my attitude was absolute joy and excitement about being in a new country along with some stress and nerves about my new leadership role without anymore help. It was time to fully step into leadership and Thailand was were I got to finally put to work what I was prepared for.
Before I go any further I have to shout out to the amazing team of women I was with for the whole month!!
(From left to right: Teachers Christen Brown, Chelsea Gehring, Carissa Masters, and Rebecca Denney.)
(Teacher Carissa!)
(Myself with Teacher Jillian Moya!)
(Teacher Colleen Smith!)
These ladies very graciously took me into their team to spend the month living in community with them and coming alongside them as we partnered with an organaization called, AMANE!
What Is AMANE?
AMANE is an after school English center for Thai children in Bangkok, Thailand. Our opportunity to serve them consisted of teaching various workshops for about two and a half weeks and spending time building relationships with the kids!
Each person’s workshops would be from Tuesday through Friday doing about three classes in the morning and three more in the evening. We’d break up from two teachers per class to four teachers per class depending on what was being taught and the size of the class room. So by the end of each day this team of women would teach up to twelve classes with the beautiful Thai kids we had the pleasure of working with! We taught them anything from math, first aid, and music, to art, crafts, and team building exercises; Navigating a different level of language barrier every time. These kids are incredibly smart. They new the best English we’d encountered on our now 6 months of traveling the world. It was so neat working with them.
I don’t know HOW these girls did it though. Seriously!! These kids were bouncing off the walls with energy and learning to receive their respect and full attention was incredibly hard. But this team of girls made it happen with smiles on their faces and loved these kids unconditionally!
Outside of the workshops our goal was to try to encourage these kids to come to Sunday school which we would lead each Sunday morning. Every opportunity was a chance for them to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ! I would bring my guitar and we’d sing some fun worship songs together before one of the ladies would teach a lesson from scripture. Afterwords we’d spend our last minutes together doing a craft or game together.
Sharing The Gospel
Something that was constantly on our hearts and minds at school was the culture these kids have grown up in. In Thailand they are surrounded and completely immersed in the Buddhist and Hindu religions. There were monks all around during our 20 minute walk from where we stayed to school and back each day. The kids grew up surrounded by those religions everywhere they went. The beautiful advantage to the ministry we had there was that there is religious freedom within Thailand, so more often than not, people were very open to talking about Jesus, and often times we’d experience a very tangible hunger towards seeking truth.
One moment I recall to mind from time to time is a Friday evening we got to spend with the high school aged students. After a class with them we just spent time talking, laughing, and playing music with them! These young men and women we so much fun! As the evening went on some of the young boys were asking us about our faith in Jesus and why we would leave our home for a year traveling the world to spread the gospel.
Well the team jumped on that and we instantly started explaining why we have such purpose and hope in doing what we do. God gave us the awesome opportunity of sharing the COMPLETE Gospel with them that night and we had a 100% captive audience in that room. Every teenager in the room was silent. They had just got done explaining to us what they believed and what they’ve grown up knowing. But the difference between their explanation and proclomation was that they explained to us WHAT they believed and it ended there. We were able to joyfully explain to them WHAT we believed AND WHY we believed it. We have a reason. We have hope. We have victory in our relationship with God. We have true freedom.
I could see on each one of their faces and in each one of their eyes they so wanted what we have. They all sat on the floor with us, arms folded in their laps as they intensely leaned in to hear us out. When we got done we told them that their desire for truth is REAL. The desire they so naturally have within them to understand and learn about other religions in the world is a testament to our Heavenly Father writing on each one of their hearts the need for Jesus. They just didn’t know it yet. They’ve desired the truth of the Lord since they were formed in their mother’s womb. After all this time they were learning that they craved Christ!
Later on we’d learned that two brothers from that group who we spent some time with went home and expressed their desire to find a Christian church for them and their whole family to go to! Out hosts had been pouring into them since they were small children and they were getting to see the fruit of their persistence and love break through and turn into action and hopefully repentance. God is so GOOD!!
All That To Say…
Our month in Thailand was exhausting. Running with kids all day long completely wiped us out, but seeing their joy and desire to learn English kept us coming back. Well… that and God’s unending grace to sustain us. haha We 100% leaned on that the whole time!
Please lift up in prayer the people of Thailand. There is so much beauty and light there, but it is still so incredibly full of darkness and sin anywhere you go. The hunger to be found there for truth is so real and yet so many people don’t always find it. Most people don’t get to send their kids to a christian after school English learning program. And most don’t get to talk to a christian about Jesus Christ.
I want to challenge you in two things:
1). Intercede for Thailand. Pray fervently on your knees for them to come to know our Heavenly Father! Let them see the freedom to be found in Christ and the redemption of their lives through God Who loves them unconditionally.
2). I challenge you to understand and talk about WHY you believe what you believe. It’s easy for us as Christians to explain the Gospel to others and not express why we’re so dedicated to a life of obedience, worship, and sacrifice for God. Take the time to examine WHY you love, trust, and have faith in your Heavenly Father and then stand firm in that. Take the scriptures God gives us to understand more fully every day why we cling to Christ. Then I challenge you to let that overflow into conversation with others. Christian or not. Doesn’t matter. Just talk about it. If we can’t start there, then what makes us think we’ll be able to live out the great commission that God gives us as His disciples and children??
Please know the God you serve and be excited about the freedom and salvation you have received!!! That alone is worth making a huge priority in our conversation with this fallen world. Let what no one can take away from you be what draws others into understanding more fully the very thing they want to question and even challenge in your life.
God bless you all!!
(One of our students and I)
(What is that??)
(Oh right…. Just a typical drive in Bangkok, Thailand…)
(One of my students drew me on the white board.)
(Some of my boys partyin’ it up on a bus on an all-school outing.)
(Me and the crew!!)
