Throughout my life I have always known and believed in God,
but I never knew when it was God that was speaking to me and when it was me
just wanting to believe that it was God. This month I learned that not only do
I hear God’s voice, but I can hear it in a very tangible way.
This month we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand working with a
ministry called The Lighthouse. Our contact Emmi is an amazing woman who hears
from the Lord in amazing ways. The specific ministry that our team was working
in was working at a café across from the college campus. The vision for this
café was to provide a safe place for the women working in the red light
district to come and learn English and build relationships. Because the café
was located near the college campus, it was too far away from the red light
district to minister to the women, ladyboys, and the men who work in the bars.
Our four teams were assigned to work in the bars, in the
coffeeshop, and in the village. But due to the low tourist season and the fact
that the college was not in session, at the beginning of the month, Emmi asked
our teams to pray if any of our teams felt led to help the team in the village
who was working to clear the land that she recently acquired. Each team went
home and I really felt like God told me that we would best be fit for staying. In fact, all of the teams felt like they
were supposed to stay in Chiang Mai with their originally assigned ministry. This
did not make sense to me – because we would be busier if we went to the village
– but I learned that we need to trust in how God speaks to us in the moment,
even if it doesn’t make total sense at the time.
At the end of the first week, my team was going to
re-evaluate to see if we should stay or go out and help clear the land. It made
more sense for us to leave, because one team of five girls was working to clear
a ton of acres of brush to prepare for the building. While I was questioning if
I had just heard that from God, Emmy ended up miraculously getting a building
in the red light district where we were going to move the café. Now I
understood. God always knows best. Our ministry picked up and we ended up
packing up the entire old café and moving it all to the new location. We also
cleaned both the four floors of the old café and the seven floors of the new
café. Then we moved everything including beds, the entire kitchen,
closets…..everything – to the new location, in small pick-up trucks. You name
it, we took it! This took many long hours, but by the time we left, we had
gotten everything moved.
Looking back, this month seems like a whirlwind – it started
out very relaxing but turned quickly into long days and hard labor. Praise God
though….had we not listened to God and went out to the village at the beginning
of the month, Emmi would be left without help to move her entire café. Now, I’m
even more sure of how God speaks.
I will never forget thinking that I felt like I was crazy – it
seemed so stupid that God would want us to stay when we did not have any work
to do. But I learned that we have to trust in how He speaks – even if we don’t
understand it in the moment, He always knows best.
So this month was filled with cleaning, packing, moving,
praying, packing, working at the café, praying, packing, moving, riding on the
back of trucks with a bunch of things piled in the back, packing, and more
moving. Before we left we prayed for Emmi and her ministry and I would ask you
to pray for their ministry as well! God is doing big things through the
Lighthouse ministry and Emmy is such an amazing women of God with a heart of
gold!
