The past three weeks have been filled with a lot of different things. We finished up our last week at Agape and during this time we overlapped with a group of Australian teens who were coming to Thailand for 10 days to serve at Agape and to explore the culture a little bit. There was about 20 of them and they had come as a school trip. Maybe life in Australia is not always so deadly and dangerous. Either way it was nice to connect with some of them and learn a few Aussie terms such as, “grabbing a grog from the esky.” The last week was definitely a much more enjoyable experience being able to play football with them and also going to a pool on a day we finished ministry early.
A week after we finished up at Agape all of us were at debrief. This consisted of being around the entire gap R team and also the two people that support us from the states, Matt and Kendra. We had sessions in the morning and evening at debrief but other than that it was mostly free time to help process just all that we had accomplished in the three weeks prior.
Now it is just the guys and we are in a really small village in Chang Dao that is quite secluded compared to the constant traffic there was back in Chang Mai. It is a nice adjustment to be away from a lot of people and to just get to know each other better. Our ministry once again is manual labor, so much for diversity lol. We are working on clearing land of bamboo and digging holes for fence posts to zone out land that will eventually have a house built on it. A little interesting fact is that we were actually the first group of people to break ground on the land and participated in literally the first day that was worked on the property. The meals here have been surprisingly plentiful as our host always cooks more than enough food and we are yet to eat the same meal twice. The kids here also make the time a little easier to spend and after our morning shift we have been going to a local hot spring to relax before diving into the afternoon shift. The hardest part has definitely been waking up at 5:30 every morning to do devotions followed by chores at 6. I’m assuming we all will be a little bit more toned and defined when we return to Chang Mai. Otherwise we might just all have rice bellies instead but hey it is always better to be optimistic.
