Life in Thailand…
This blog will just be a few short stories about living here in Thailand and also about what we are doing as missionaries here!
What are we doing for ministry this month?
This month has been AMAZING! We are with an organization called Eagles Rest. They are a retreat center for missionaries who need to take a break and rest. They will help you in any way they can in order to give you the restoration you need. Eagles Rest is run by one couple who work very hard to serve the Lord in helping to serve his people who pour out their lives to others. When we first heard about this month we thought we would be pouring into other missionaries living here…little did we know God had other plans…
By month 10 I am not going to lie we are worn out, emotionally and physically we are just getting very tired. This lifestyle of high energy, moving all the time, doing crazy things to our bodies with the different foods we give it, and just what comes with living non stop surrounded by people, we are tired J So this month in a way the missionaries who need to be restored are us.
God spoke abundance and restoration over this month for me a while ago before I knew I was coming here and boy has that happened. When we first arrived to a family of 6, father from the Philippines along with 4 children ages between 10-16 three girls and one boy, and the mother is from Australia, they said “you are now part of our family”. We have split up the nights of cooking among our team so each night we cook for 14. After dinner we will pray, sing worship songs, hang out, play games, watch movies, anything just like a normal family would.
We have an opportunity this month to pour into these 4 kids a ton. They are all home schooled and they are not from Thailand and do not speak Thai so they do not have tons of friends here. We have little “sessions” with the kids where we do all sorts of things! I have taught 2 sessions to the girls, one about Beauty and Body Image found in Christ and the other on Relationships. I did a baking session with the girls as well as a cooking session. We have done sewing class and made skirts, sports camp, culture days teaching the kids about countries around the world with power points of the history, skits, and making the food of the country, kickboxing, volleyball, craft time where we have made recipe books and made Easter decorations, we tutor/teach the kids while they are in school now ½ the day (they just went back this week), and then just fun things of having older sisters…shopping, video games, learning how to surf waves, golfing, playing tag on the beach, watching movies, teaching them how to do fun hair styles, and answering questions that young girls ask older girls and giving Jess 8 more sisters so a total of 11 this month J So a lot of our daily ministry involves the family and pouring into them and of course they end up pouring into us too and I am learning SO much from the kids. These parents raise these 4 amazing kids, do their schooling, and try to run a full time ministry all on their own…we help out doing anything they ask us to do each day.
The other things that we have been able to be a part of are helping our contacts move to a new house where they will house other missionaries. We have also gotten to do some handy work by varnishing 3 big pieces of furniture. Rommel is going to teach us how to make doors for dressers, which will be awesome! We have done flood relief work and made bags to give out to people and then went into the communities door to door handing everything out. Most people’s things are all outside in the sun trying to get dry. The people said they can’t remember the last time it flooded like this. We have been a part of prayer walking around different towns and through the temples. And someone is always standing in as the home school teacher/tutor each day.
This month we have also had the opportunity to be prayer warriors for our fellow women (20 of them on our squad) friends in Phuket which is 1 ½ hours from us. Our squadmates are working with women in prostitution. Phuket is a big tourist spot and there you will find beautiful sandy beaches and many white people…especially men. Every night our girls go out at 9 PM and stay until 12 AM ordering cokes from bars all over Phuket forming relationships with these girls. I was only there for one night and didn’t even enter a bar but just saw the men walking hand in hand with the girls leading them to their cars. My heart broke seeing this and its something too hard to put into words really. It has been hard to see these things each night and so we have been praying a ton for them and decided to surprise them one day and went with gifts, letters, and signs to put all over their house. Prayed over them and talked with them about what they had seen. They explained the way they get past the laws her in Thailand and don’t say its actually prostitution is that these girls technically are waitresses at the bars and then men pay 500 Baht (about 15 USD) to the bar which excuses them from work because they “want” to leave work. Really the girls do not get paid to waitress so of course to make the money they need to eat and sleep somewhere that night they need to go with these men, then they charge what they want and the man pays the bar “fee” along with the girl’s “fee”. What our girls are trying to do is make friends with the girls, love on them, and get them hooked up with the ministry they are working for which will teach them skills and give them a job. The spiritual heaviness and darkness over Phuket is something that feels tangible it is so heavy at night.
One night we went down with Rommel and we were going to go into the bars also and pray over the bars and see what doors God opened…the minute I stepped out of that car tears hit my eyes…”Lord please give these girls a night “off” let the “customers” go away and leave the girls alone for the night. This was bike week and it was HUGE in Phuket so everything was outside this night and girls in almost nothing were everywhere dancing around motorcycles for men to watch. As we saw this our team just prayed…and the minute the music started getting louder and things a little more rowdy God opened up the sky and it POURED DOWN RAIN like I have not seen since being here. It rained so hard and long that everyone just started running and the crowd cleared out. All the tourists didn’t want to get soaked so they left…Soaked we all smiled and thanked God for the rain. The rain that spared these girls a night to just be free in a way…although true freedom is still something they are searching for.
So this month is a mix of SO many things from manual labor to leading sessions about tough stuff for the girls to doing bible study twice a week with the girls on love. It has been absolutely amazing living with this family and getting the opportunity to pour into their kids the way we have been able to. They are at the age where they have a lot of questions and love to sit around and talk J
This is one of my favorite months for sure. This is girl month so there are 8 of us ladies…just two teams of girls combined, so I am still with my own girls too J I have been really blessed by the Lord this month and so much in my heart has been restored and the abundance of knowing and loving God is all I really need to know at the end of the day. Going around the world seeing a lot of hard things doesn’t leave you with tons of answers by any means, but it opens your eyes to where help is needed, how to pray for nations, and you learn to rely on God when you don’t understand. You learn to trust.
