I am in Ubon Ratchathani (Ubon for
short). It’s a nice city in eastern Thailand. Once again, God has
blessed us! I along with 14 other girls are staying at an amazing
house of one of the church members. We have three rooms upstairs with
two bathrooms. The husband, wife and older son all live here, but
they pretty much let us take over to cook in their kitchen, do
laundry, use Internet and whatever we need. They are so generous!
They know very little English so it makes communicating difficult,
but we do our best!
Our mode o
f transportation is a truck
with benches in the back. It’s actually quite nice. The breeze when
traveling keeps us cool. We can put the tarp down on the sides if it
starts raining, as it did the other day.
We’ve been busy since arriving here
last week. The first couple of days, we helped at the church’s new
youth building. We got our hands dirty sealing the bricks and
painting. Several of the youth came to help as well, so we had a good
time working together. The language is definitely a barrier. We have
a few translators who are doing excellent, but there are too many of
us for them to always be available. It’s been fun trying to learn
some Thai and communicate the best we can.
We’ve done a lot with the youth kids.
We had a program last Saturday morning where we played games,
worshiped, did a drama and shared testimonies. We also participated
in an area-wide youth gathering where kids came from some other
churches to meet together. They’ve taught us some fun games and songs
and we’ve done the same for them. It’s really been fun.
This week we are traveling to various
villages to prayer walk, pass out Bibles and do programs to encourage
the local Christians and/or evangelize. Most of these villages have
very few Christians, so they often feel alone. It’s a huge thing for
us to come and pray with them. It’s been such a blessing to have that
opportunity. The youth have traveled with us to the villages as well.
Yesterday, we visited some church
members and had a worship service on the balcony of a guesthouse. It
was amazing! We were right next to the Mekong River with a beautiful
view. God brought some thunderstorms and rain too. Each person there
shared what in God’s creation reminds them of his character. It was
really cool to talk about the sky being like God’s love: we can’t
measure it. The river being like God’s mercy and grace: ever flowing.
The thunder and clouds displaying God’s power. It was definitely a
sweet time of worship with our Creator.
Later, we visited two guesthouses one
of the Christians is opening in the village. The places were still
being redone, but we prayed God’s blessing over the buildings and
that they would be used as places to share God’s love and salvation
with those staying there. The lady who owns them has been a Christian
for a few years. She said the first thing she did when buying these
places was to tear down the spirit houses and other Buddhist symbols.
Praise God!
So, that’s a brief update of the past
week. It’s been so good and there’s so much more to share, but I’ll
just save that for some later blogs!
