Race Ministry: What the heck did I do??

 

Costa Rica – Christian Light Foundation, Stayed in one of
the San Jose barrios of Los Guido at El Comdeor (the feeding center)
where kids from the community could come 6 days a week to get a meal. We
participated in Saturday morning discipleship in other communities (the
awesome teenagers of the church would lead those, leaving the house at
6am and sacrificing their Saturday mornings to take a 2 hours bus to
some communities to do the program). We also helped with work projects
at the Comedor such as painting.

 

Cambodia – YWAM, We lived and worked in the village of Kampong Speu
(less than two hours from Phnom Penh, the capital). Our ministry was to
teach English in the community, host bible study, play soccer with the
kiddos, and build relationships with the people. This was our “rawest”
month in terms of living conditions as we did not have any running
water, had bucket showers with rain water, squatty potty toilets, did
laundry by hand at the water pump, had a farm right behind our house
with huge pigs (literally, they were on steroids!), and we lived just
like the locals. Though it wasn’t a plush month, I loved living in the
village and doing life there. I helped Navy with her corner store gas
station (selling gasoline for motorbikes out of water bottles), learned
to ride a motorbike myself (and almost drove it right into a rice field
before falling over 🙂 ), and introduced some of the high schools girls
in the community to guitar! It was def one of my favorite months!
(Working on a video for this month so will post it once it’s done)

 

Malaysia – We worked with a ministry teaching English about 3
hours from Kuala Lumpur. English classes were on Friday and Saturday so
we had most of the week to do other things. I did have one-on-one
lessons with one of the students during the week. Apparently with my
unconventional teaching methods, he requested me as his one-on-one
teacher. Who knew flinging a marker at the table right in from of him to
illustrate the word “unexpected” would leave such an impression?!

 

Philippines – Legacy Home – We lived and helped out at an
orphanage in Legazpi, 12ish hours from Manila. The morning after we
arrived we had 10 sets of eyes staring at us at 6am when the girls in
our room were suppose to be getting ready for school. Though I initially
thought the girls were kinda weird after that (lol), I grew to
absolutely love and adore them. We helped home school the kids (all 18
of them were home schooled), played games with them (constantly got my
behind kicked at pool), preached in the church service on Sunday, and
held a ladies night for the girls where they got to dress up and have
girl talk. Definitely another one of my favorite months.

 

South Africa – We were in Middelburg, Mpumalunga (2 hours from
Jo’burg and Pretoria) working with Cross Generation, an Afrikaans
Church. Ministry was quite random this month and we were always doing
something different. One of the things we did was shadow and help the
waiters/waitresses at Spur one night (I believe a portion of the
proceeds from the night went to charity), and at the end of the night we
were talking to some of the waitresses, and ended up being able to pray
for them and speak life into them based on what we felt like God was
saying. One of the cooks ended up coming from the back, sharing her life
with us and asking for prayer. She was a middle-aged woman who had been
diagnosed with HIV and also had Tuberculosis and was just feeling
extremely discouraged. It was really neat seeing the shift in her
demeanor as we prayed over and shared the love of God with her.

Swaziland – El Shaddai in the mountains of Mbabane at a
children’s orphanage. Our whole squad was together and each of us were
assigned a buddy or two (they had 50 kids). It was final exams time so
most of the “buddy time” was spent helping the kids study for the
upcoming exams. We also had chapel with the kids everyday. I, along with
two other girls, also helped with finances. As a nonprofit organization
in Swaziland, they file a tax return every two years so we were tasked
with going through bank statements and receipts, categorizing them, and
entering them into excel.

 

The first 6 months (except Costa Rica) are recapped in the blogs listed below:

 

Guatemala – Month 1

 

Honduras – Bienvenidos a Honduras

 

Nicaragua – Nicaragua Happenings

 

Central America Recap: Video

 

Thailand – Same Dress, Different Night, The Hope We Have, Thailand Video

 

Myanmar – A Glimpse into Myanmar: blog and video