About three weeks ago (it has now been like 2 months since leaving Guatemala… started this blog a while ago… better late than never am I right), my squad and I left Guatemala and (after 5 flights and 4 days of travel) made it to Thailand. Asia, specifically China and Thailand, will always be my first home. My oldest friends, my first and favorite memories, the only culture I really knew for so long… all held in Asia. I don’t really know how to describe what I felt when I got here…really and truly physically at home. I feel at home in America and many other places, too, but because of the people I’m with. Here, I feel like I walked back into my house after leaving for 9 years. I don’t cry about many things but I was literally in tears when I walked off the plane in Taiwan and heard flight announcements in Chinese. It just felt so good to be home.
This joy was quickly clouded. I felt at home with my surroundings but I have never felt so out of place as I did the first 3 days in Chiang Mai. Part of it was that my family and friends from China weren’t there and it just seemed like they should be. Like it should be some big reunion of every one I loved in Asia. But a much bigger part of my feelings misplaced and isolated was that I was choosing to find comfort or discomfort in what was around me and not in the only consistency in my life right now; the Lord. After talking to one of my sweet friends (Mya if ur reading, love u), she encouraged me that as I am the only MK/TCK, people around me can listen but they really cannot understand on a heart level of where my feelings on this are coming from. Because of this, this season in Asia is going to be a growth in that area that I really get to depend solely on the Lord for because He’s the only one who knows what I’m feeling. He created my childhood and dreamt up my life and now is such an amazing chance to have to rely on what He says about it and where He’s bringing it.
On a different note, here’s what ministry in Thailand looked like. My team and I lived in a small village called Ban Doi. Relatively remote, about 4 hours away from the rest of our sward and 45 minutes to the nearest grocery store. Monday-Friday we spent at Ban Doi School, a pK-6 school about a 15 minute walk from house. We greeted the kids at 7:30 as they ran up to hug us and say good morning with huge smiles and overwhelming energy. I taught 4th grade for two separate two-hour blocks each day. Sometimes this was teaching English to the best of my ability but the kids spoke literally no English and neither did the teachers so you can imagine how that went. Lots of drawing, lots of strange names (like Chicken, Egg, and Bank), lots of duck-duck-goose, lots of soccer and badminton, plenty of 10-year-old Thai sass, and some English occurred in my class.
School ended at 3:30 and, if we were lucky, the teachers would drive us to 7-11. Let me tell ya, 7-11 in America is average at best. A place I’d go for gas and gas only and would MAYBE step foot in on July 11th when there’s free slurpees. I hate 7-11. BUT 7-11 in Asia not only is like a baby grocery store, they have fantastic iced coffee and when you’re in the middle of no where, literally anything outside of your house is an event. So I love 7-11. Anyway, if we didn’t go to 7-11, we would walk home and stop at a house that sells little snacks and buy ice cream and maybe some chips. For Christmas we all bought each other presents from that little house. I’ve never been so excited to receive fake M&Ms in my entire life.
The kids, despite not being able to communicate due to language, were generally a lot of fun and excited to have us every day. I got to teach them some really fun things like the importance of dreaming and learning what they wanted for their futures (mostly through vocab lessons), all about space vocabulary, and going on nature walks. The teachers, though also unable to communicate, were EXTREMELY kind and hospitable and took us places on the weekends. The people of this village always loved to serve us and I felt so loved and blessed by them, whether they realized their impact or not. Little pieces of the Lord in a spiritually dark area.
Our house was a little bungalow with nothing inside it but a trashcan, the kind that you see in middle school cafeterias, that doubled as a clothes washer and a shower, and microwave sitting on the floor. We all slept on our sleeping pads on the floor and most of us inside our tents to avoid mosquitoes and ants (fyi while I was generally untouched by ants while I slept, I was unable to protect my belongings from the ants. Went to open my water bottle to find literally hundreds of baby ants hatching inside. Horrendous, truly.) Sometimes the geckos living on our ceiling would poop on us. Sometimes cats would scream in the night and jump out of a tree at you when you tried to go brush your teeth. A few times we would come home to our broken into by a dog and all our groceries half opened in our yard. Once, Emma even fell through the roof while trying to get a banana leaf from our backyard and we lit of lanterns for New Year’s with some Thai teenagers who really love America (?). And all the time our drag-queen neighbor would ask us “how your day?!” …love you Tuo.
That month in Thailand was honestly really challenging both individually and as a team. I would be lying if i said there weren’t a few times I doubted my calling and really truly wanted to come home. Physically, mentally, spiritually, and community wise. We had to fight really hard for our hearts and mins and also for our friendships. We came out of the month much closer, with a lot more interesting memories, and with a new fire in us to push through the race and love those around us. I am genuinely so proud of the lightness of heart my team was able to have through out the whole month and how much fun we had together despite challenging ministry and circumstances.
here’s some pictures from the month in no particular order::
walking into school in the mornings.
My 4th grade classroom.
the squad.
teaching about family in our outdoor classroom.
hosted our own little Christmas Eve service.
our humble Christmas tree cut from a banana leaf, Thai newspaper crumpled and taped on for ornaments, and literally anything available as wrapping paper.
spaghetti for Christmas wow!!
school on Christmas? rude.
Inside the infamous bungalow. 
besties braiding my hair (“braiding” is a very loose term)!
learning about spaceeee my favorite.
oops srry thailand.
paper airplane throwing contests for Friday block.
new friends or whatever.
Abs and I making more friends. These two guys are from a city right next to where I used to live in China <3
:’) my kidssss
spent some of the ends of my days helping Kelsey in the Pre-K room. This guy is my favorite. Wish I could tell you his name but it was hard to pronounce and he wasn’t even really sure what his name was.
working hard on our drawings.
New Year’s with our neighbors.
Love some Selah gals <3
I hope I never get used to this.
– L
