Goodbye…
We leave Chiang Mai tomorrow morning after living for 2 months in the beautiful city. My teammates and I were processing through this and we came to the realization that there are aspects of our life that will never be the same and we don’t want to forget.
We don’t want to forget that live music was playing every single night and most of the time it was Country Roads.
We don’t want to forget that every single time we walked into the night market down the street from our hostel, we heard an advertisement for Professional Thai Boxing. Moreover, all of us could impersonate the accent in which it was said and none of us could figure out where this boxing was.
We don’t want to forget the coconut smoothies that maybe gave people parasites… but I’m not gonna believe that.
We don’t want to forget star coffee, or the choco mint drinks, or 7/11 Ham and Cheese Sandwiches that literally slapped so hard.
We don’t want to forget Song and his side of the road donuts for JUST 20 BAHT. We lost our minds every time we saw her.
We don’t want to forget our ministry, that the littles either cried or passed out any time we walked in to teach, with the exception of the one kid who liked us. Or that the only way to win them over was the Hokey Pokey.
The other kids liked us more, however. They loved high fives and fist bumps and a few of them even shook our hands. We would ask them what their name was and when we tried to say that they laughed and said something in rapid Thai that I’m choosing to believe was something about our fantastic teaching skills.
We definitely don’t want to forget about the man who drove us to and from ministry and just liked to hang out with us. He didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Thai, but he loved to show us his Facebook feed.
We don’t want to forget about the way our team learned to fight for one another. That we realized we had the ability to be a Powerhouse team of powerhouses, but we had to choose into each other.
I don’t want to forget about how Sarah and I shared a bed for a month and it was chaotic in the very best way.
I don’t want to forget about Bella Goose or the amount of hours I spent just sitting there or the random people that stumbled in that we got to be friends with.
I don’t want to forget about Bananagrams.
I don’t want to forget about Danielle, who taught me so much about the simplicity of God.
I don’t want to forget about how many cars I almost got hit by and how I chose to run across the street to put myself in those situations.
I definitely don’t want to forget about my friend Hope, who taught me about perseverance and God’s unconditional love for us. Who would tell us to keep it down when we were being to loud and would tease us when she was feeling silly.
I don’t want to forget about my first night here, when it set in that this was the beginning of the rest of my life. The chaos of leaving the airport and getting our first glimpse of the city. For the first time in my life I had left the country.
I don’t want to forget about the way our squad grew here. The way that we learned how to live with 50 other people and pour into each other.
I don’t want to forget about what God did here. The ways He showed up and moved mountains within our team, our squad and this city.
This place is undeniably home. It holds a piece of all of our souls and will forever. Truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll ever make it back. This blog laid out all the ways that Thailand holds my heart and wow, I didn’t know how much two months could change my life.
