Month 5 of 11: Bangkok, Thailand
Ministry: Servant Partners
Overview:
Coming to Bangkok, Thailand after spending the first four months of my race in Central America brought forth feelings of culture shock and adjustment. Not only were we in a new continent and experiencing a completely different culture for the first time, team changes at the end of debrief landed me in a new team with 5 other amazing girls.
The ministry we were serving with this month was Servant Partners in connection with the Thai Peace Foundation. We were living in a slum community with our primary concentration on teaching English. Living in the community provided opportunity to experience a new living condition and experience community life with these people. Servant Partners has staff and interns in many slum communities throughout Bangkok. We were fortunate to be placed in a community with a great missionary family from Germany, and two other interns in their early twenties. They were awesome with helping us get accustomed with the culture, food, and community.
Our team of 6 was split up between two teams: Team Library and Team Not Library. Team Library was comprised of Jourdan, Charmagne, and Christina and their role was teaching English Monday through Friday from 5-7 pm at the “library” in the community. They would spend their days in the office a short bus ride from the community and their evenings teaching with the help of the two interns in the community Kristen and Carrie. Team Not Library was comprised of Taylor, Sarah, and myself and our responsibilities and opportunities were more scattered. We taught English twice a week in the pre school in our community, assisted in house chores for our German host family in addition to babysitting their two kids ages 3 and 5, and taught English in another community about 10 minutes away. Everything we got to do was amazing, but being separated as a team made it difficult to spend time and grow together in our first month.
Many Thais are interested in learning English, especially since English is the main language of Asean. Asean is the economic community of the countries in Southeast Asia to help with trade and travel. To land the better job opportunities especially in a country that banks on tourism as an industry, English is key. It was really great to be able to provide that for these kids because through teaching them English and winning the small battles for them it pushes them for bigger and better opportunities and lessens the chances of finding income through areas in the future including prostitution.
Being separated from my old team and discovering a new continent provided a month of growth and discovery for myself. As the months go by I am continuing to grow in my spiritual discovery and growth as well as my personal discovery and growth. Because we were in a city and spent a lot of time in a nearby mall (for the ac of course) I got pretty down about my appearance and being without the comforts from home to fit in through appearance and not looking like a dirty back packer hippie. I missed dressing cute, styling my hair, and I was really obsessing this month about gaining weight while on the race. Towards the end I was able to talk myself out of it and realize again that this year is about GIVING UP those comforts. It’s not about me. It’s about the work I’m doing and the lives I’m changing. I remind myself of this daily. It’s easy to get caught up in my own thoughts but through God’s love and prayer I can pull myself back to reality.
I thank God every day for this opportunity of a lifetime and the fact that I AM IN ASIA! Never in my life did I expect to find myself in Asia. I feel so loved by the small things I see God in every single day.
Sights
Lots of traffic
Dirty canals
Overcrowded homes
Smiling faces in the community
Elephants!!!
Unique scenery from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to Chiang Mai
Soldiers
Terminal 21…a 7 story mall with a different country on each floor
Sounds
Car/bus/moped horns
Languages I don’t understand
Mice/rats running across our floor at night
Elephants
Smells
Diesel fumes
Dirty Clong/Canal
Smells of Asian food
Durian—the worst smelling food in the markets…it smells like dirty feet
Jasmine
Incense
Krispy Kreme
Elephant
Snake brand cooling powder
Real Life in Thailand is…
Teaching English
Loving on children and people in the community
Exploring street food for $1-2
Surviving 50+% humidity and temperatures that reach high 90s/hundreds
Taking at least two showers a day…hygiene is really important and valued
Exploring transportation in many forms: bus, tuk tuk, air rail, metro, taxi, moped, boat
SUGAR…I’ve never been in a place with so many donuts and sweet treats readily available
Night markets
Thai Massages for less than $10
Living in a house that gets so hot in the day we call it the “sauna house” and avoid it until it’s near dark
Living with rats
Prostitution and sex tourism….the things girls do to support their families
Avoiding red shirt and yellow protests
Experiencing a martial law and overthrow of the government by the military
Bathing with elephants
Making friends with people you meet near street vendors
A HUGE Thank You to those who donated to my World Race fund this month:
Jessica Morningstar
Julianne Downs
LuAnn Jarnigan
Seth Obed
Megan Justice
Adrienne Tarrence
Adrianne Peschard
Ashoka Rajendra
Ashley Schortz
Lisa Wisman
Sarah Walker
Kristen Westerbeck
Grandma and Grandpa Russell
Eva Fuze
Robert Duke
Walter Wallace
Linton First Church of God
I have $2,200 left to raise to be FULLY FUNDED by July 1st! God is so great!! Please consider prayerfully supporting my journey. You made donate through the link on the left that says “support me”
Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her.
Luke 1:45
Me with one of our intelligently smart and talented students Pawjai
More students/kids from the community
Of course I had to get a picture whilst living through history
Nap time in the pre school
