WE MADE IT TO THAILAND!
Y’all, how is it already October?! How is it already month 3 of my race?! How am I in Thailand?!
It’s fall in Georgia, and y’all are wearing flannels and boots drinking PSL’s and apple cider and going to pumpkin patches, but I’m over here in Thailand where it’s monsooning at least once a day and drinking Thai tea with some pad Thai -I’m loving life and serving the same God that is working in the U.S. Safe to say I miss fall and Georgia and everyone but I know the Lord is doing so much over there!
This month we are working with the ministry called Freedom Harvesters and we are staying in a bamboo house! Yes, a bamboo house. We only have electricity from 7pm-10pm which is really all we need to charge our phones once every few days and to use the light to guide us to and from the bathroom, which is a squatty potty (surprise!). The people that live in this bamboo village are from Burma, Myanmar. There are about 20 children that live in this village and we will be teaching them English starting this week! Many of these children live in single parent homes. They are not allowed to leave the vlilage because it would be illegal for them since they are not technically Thai citizens. We have already had some time to hang out with them and learn some of their names. They are so full of joy and I know it comes straight from the Lord.
We went into Mae Hon Song and visited a beautiful waterfall that a few of my teammates swam in. We then had a really big meal at a Chinese restaurant. This restaurant was actually within a couple of miles of the Burma border. So we went to the border which has soldiers manning it and our ministry host (who is Thai) asked if they would let us go into Burma. The answer was YES! (Usually they don’t let people cross the border, but I think it helped that our host is Thai). We were so excited that they let us in, and we went to a small museum that talked about what is happening in the country and why people are in refugee camps. We walked out of the museum and saw one of the people that lived in the camp and our host asked her if we could come visit her house. The lady kindly led us to her house and it was a little smaller than the bamboo house we are staying in. We prayed for her and her family even though she was Buddhist. During this same day we ate some bamboo worms and crickets that our hosts mom prepared for us. The worms tasted like Cheetos and the crickets tasted like pork rinds. Disclaimer: these crickets are not the same size as the ones we have in the U.S. they were actually pretty large.
One thing that they do every Saturday in our village is go into the jungle to get firewood and bamboo shoots. Once we heard the word jungle our team was so ready for adventure. We followed some of the kids and turns out that in order to get into the depths of the jungle you have to climb up a really steep mountain. That was really tough because it was really muddy from the rain that happened the night before, and my feet kept slipping. Thankfully, I didn’t slide down the mountain. We watched some of the kids saw some parts of fallen trees and then we decided to head back down the mountain. This was a much more difficult task than climbing up. Thankfully a couple of the kids came with us and lead us down. I had a little girl named Sara leading me down and she held my hand the whole entire way, which was to me was a tangible way of Jesus guiding me through life. I slipped and slid so many times and even knocked the little girl in front of me down (several times). I really don’t understand how they do this every Saturday and don’t fall or slide all of the time. (Mind you they are all wearing flip flops). It got to the point that the rest of my team fell and slipped so many times that they just started intentionally sliding down the mountain. It was quite the adventure, but it was definitely not something that I want to do again because it was so difficult.
A common theme throughout these three months has been to not have any expectations and don’t ask questions, because no one really knows anything unless it is straight from the host’s mouth (sometimes that’s not even very accurate). It’s safe to say we know nothing, but the Lord is in control.
