So I have been in Thachatchai, Thailand now for about a week and a half. I have been spending my time doing a variety of things from weeding, mowing lawns, teaching english, and hangingout with prostitutes in the red light district of Patong.
Our first day of working here started early on a Saturday morning around, 7:30a. All of us girls rolled out of bed completely exhausted and stumbled our way out the door where we met with Dana who passed us big bright colorful straw hats, working gloves and rakes. We all pilled into the back of their pick up and drove about two blocks over where we unloaded with all of our stuff. Dana went around with his gargantuous weed cutter and we were left to rake up the remains into piles which were to be burned later, some of also used our rakes to pull trash out of the smelly sewage.
I’m sure we were quit a sight for all of the Thai’s to look at, 5 pale white foreigners in brightly colored hats cleaning up the trash that they had dumped into the streets. For the first hour I must admist that I felt slightly riduculous and I kept thinking all the locals probably thought we were absolutely insane, but half way through our morning a smiling Thai man walked across the streets with a bag that he passed to one of my teammates, inside were 6 ice cold sodas that he had purchased for us. I knew then that our works were actually appreciated by some of the people here in the community and my minded started to ease that what we were doing was actually a really great thing and that maybe it was something that really could greatly impact the community of people around us.
During the week following I would spend some of my days helping to teach english at a couple of the local schools and other days weeding, raking, and picking up trash. It never failed that when I was out working in the scorching sun that I was given an ice cold beverage, on one of the days we were each even blessed to receive 4 drinks from 4 different strangers.
One afternoon while 3 of the girls were gone teaching Erin and I decided to go out and prayer walk around the Buddhist temple it was then that we stumbled upon one of the several “Spirit Houses” that are in the town, but instead of just walking by I took a second to look and see that the little houses were full of strawberry fantas, a gift that Buddhist give to please the spirits every day. This was in fact one of the same shiny red drinks that I had received from a stranger as I was working under the sun.
In Matthew 25:35-40 it says “For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave something to drink; I was a stranger and you invited Me in…’Truly I say to you to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.”
So here these people are serving Jesus and blessing Him through the gifts that they have given to me and they do not even know it. For when they bless me with a cold beverage as I work under the hot sun they are also doing these things unto Jesus. If only the people of Thachatchai could fully understand the gifts that the Father has given them.
I pray that through our works here in the community that God will move the peoples hearts. In fact this is something I saw happen today, long story short, we had to go to the police station where after some time our translator was talking to one of the officers and they were talking about the kids club they have every Saturday at the church and he expressed that he would love to start brining his daughter after we were able share some with him.
Ontop of all this I am still much in need of raising money in order to finish The World Race. Thank you to all of you that have all ready contributed.
I hope that all of you that are reading this will take the time to prayerfully consider giving towards this journey I am on. I am still in need of $3,600 in order to reach my goal of $14,300.
