Hey everybody!
I am currently sitting in the living room of the house I’m staying at in Southeast Asia. My team has been living with one of the girls teams – team radiate, for this month. Together, we make team Radhouse – Radiate + lighthouse = radhouse. For ministry we have been teaching English to both orphans and college students here. It has been a lot of conversation with people who don’t really know any English at all, which I can’t say has been very easy, but it has been fruitful.
For the first week or so of ministry, I had a very negative attitude towards our circumstances. The guys were all sleeping on the tile floor of a small house, we had to have four to five hours of conversation in English every day with people who don’t know the language, and we were missing the rest of our squad. Along with all of this, it had been difficult for the guys to get back into the rhythm of spending consistent time in the Word and in prayer, so naturally, our conversations became less focused on the Lord and more focused on unimportant things. I could also tell that this was causing me to get frustrated easier, and it was not helping my attitude towards what God has called me to do here.
As time went on and we started to feel comfortable with this place, things began to get a lot better. For one, myself and the rest of my team got out of the travel week funk and back into spending more consistent time with the Lord, which had effects on everything else. We started to actually become friends with a lot of the people here, instead of just being looked at as the random people who preach and teach them English every day.
My favorite memory so far, and the memory that marked a turning point in my attitude and time here, was around the middle of the second week. The guys were getting ready to go to bed when we saw a fire out by the male dorm rooms. We decided to go see what they were doing, and we ended up hanging out with them by the fire for the next 3 or so hours. Although it was hard having conversations because of the language barrier, we were able to play guitar and sing songs, along with have competitions of who would react the least to eating a hot pepper. It was a really fun time and it made me appreciate this place so much more.
Sadly we don’t have a ton of time in this place because we’re only here for one month, but I am grateful for how God continues to show me that he’ll do amazing things despite how I initially feel about where he has put me or what he has me doing. I have no idea what our time in Thailand is going to look like in a couple weeks, but I’m expectant of God to continue moving in big ways!
Thanks for reading!
