ah Thailand. The land of smiles.
I didn’t spend a lot of time updating you about my time in Thailand at all, so let me tell you about what the Lord taught/showed me.
So as many of you know from my previous update post, my team and I lived alone in a little town called Mae Ai. It’s about a 4 hour drive from chaing mai and secluded in the mountains with about a 45 minute drive away from the grocery store. So my team and i lived together for about 3 and a half weeks in a 3 bedroom, empty house. I loved it to say the least. Maggie and i slept in the room that was outside of the house on the floor, it was a good time. Everyday we either ate apples or yogurt for breakfast, we had lunch provided by the school, and had pad thai every night for dinner made by phu. We taught at Bankai school, which has about 300 students. Our schedule was pretty chill so we had a good amount of freedom to just chill and hangout. Lots of time spent with the Lord and our teammates you could say.
I like alone time. I really like it. But in Mae Ai that kinda changed. I had a lot of free time. We only taught twice a day for two hours and after that we had the whole day off. The. whole. day. I had to choose to press into relationship with the Lord and choose to press into my team to grow into deeper intimacy with them instead of secluding myself away and being introverted. It was hard, but it was good. I am so so close with my team. I can’t even go a day without seeing them because i miss them so much. I feel at home with them and its nice. As i pressed into my team, i also continued to press into the Lord and what he wants for me.
I spent all of this month studying and reading Malachi. Since there are 4 chapters and we were there for almost 4 weeks, it worked out perfectly. Every week i would study one chapter and go as in depth as i could. As i dug deeper into this book of the bible, i kept seeing how much patience the Lord has with us and how much of a literal savage Malachi is. Malachi was someone who had a story to tell. It was dope.
Something the Lord really put on my heart this month was hearing his voice. I feel like he has always been a constant part of my life ever since I was little. But as I’ve grown older, it has been harder for me to die to my earthly flesh and hear him and know that he is with me. It’s hard for me to stay focused throughout the day. I get distracted, I zone out, day dream, all those types of things. I get caught in my own world and its not always a good thing. I become dependent on my imagination keeping me distracted and prevent myself from feeling and thinking things I don’t want to know about or staying focused at ministry. But what I realized is that it’s hard to just depend on yourself to stay distracted. You can’t make it through the day, let alone the rest of your life depending on yourself to stay fulfilled and happy. and that’s just what the Lord was showing me.
Before we left for Thailand i prayed to “walk through the fire” to burn off my earthly flesh and come out of living in Mae Ai refined and new. That is not an easy task and is something you should be careful about when you pray for it, because let me tell you, sis is walking through the fire. I had the most amazing time with my team, there was so much growth. But, for me personally it was/has been hard. Waking up everyday and choosing to surrender to the Lord and depend on him for strength if I had a long night or wisdom when i needed the right words to say, the list goes on honestly.
I thought ‘yea walking through the fire, it will go by quickly’ but no no, that is not in the Lords plan. Instead he has me going through nice and slow. The whole month of Thailand was just beginning to step into the fire, and I think the Lord is teaching me patience and grace through that. I want to be done so badly but I need to depend on him to give me strength. I’ve learned so far that if I want to make it through the rest of the race and make it out of the fiery depths (lol), I need to calm my mind and hear his voice. When i can hear it and see it now, even though it is so so faint, it calms me and reassures me. So i know that when I can fully hear the Lords voice, i’ll be livin in some straight shalom.
That was what the Lord has taught me and will continue to teach me this next month in Myanmar. I am trying to go in with a positive attitude, no one really knows what to expect yet for this month. AND I’m doing a phone fast wahoo! I shut off my phone when we entered Myanmar and gave it to my teammate Lucy and she will be holding onto it until we get back to Thailand. So that’s that. Thanks for reading, I cant wait to let you guys know about what we will be doing in Myanmar!
Love, Mady
