The rest of our stay was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We spent one week in Southern Thailand and the rest in northern. It took us 24 hours to get from end to the next.
We have been staying in the heart of the tourist area in Chiang Mai. Surprise another city for this country girl! We are staying at an AIM base this month because it’s PVT month, the part of the race where parents are able to come for a week of ministry with their children.
We are staying in a hostel on the tippy top floor aka the attic where you could fry an egg at 3pm on the concrete ceiling if you can figure out the gravity issue there. We are blessed with amazing sturdy bunk beds and fans galore and a.c. from 8pm to 8am. And amazingly cool refreshing showers after a smoldering day of ministry.
Ministry has been Prayer/ ATL (Ask the Lord) God lead, projects, and babysitting.
Prayer and ATL was a small portion of my ministry. On these days I would spend time in prayer for the hostel, AIM staff here, and my squad.
I was mainly on projects. Power tools, yeah!! We sanded wooden chairs to remove finish and resemble them and stain them for the new café in the AIM hostel. So we got to use a hand sander and a drill. Now that’s up my ally. They were so pleased with our attention to detail they asked if we’d be interested to paint inside the café with them on our off day. We were like sure!
This café is a project that is in a few different locations around the world, one location being the US. They named the café Bella Goose. They help establish the café then train ladies to work and train them to actually take over running the café. So it’s a really cool project. They chose Bella Goose. Because Bella means beautiful and Goose because of the way geese share leadership. I’m very glad I got to help them in this small way.
Baby sitting was a lot of fun! I babysat with Haley and Anna. We babysat 3 month old twin boys. And we babysat a 10 month old boy. They were so fun to watch. They are children of AIM staff stationed here. It felt nice to be able to bless them with free time and the ability to pay attention to their Thai lessons.
Projects and babysitting gave me a since of normalcy this month that was kind of nice.
Some more cultural things we learned when we got to Chiang Mia.
No whistling at night, apparently they will think you are calling evil spirits. All my past teammates looked at me when they told us this because I have a history of whistling at night. Usually Dean Martin songs, not calling evil spirits! So I have had to crack down on my night whistling.
And also don’t touch the monks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even shaking hands is very disrespectful and they will have to go through a long process of cleansing. Women do not touch monks ever!
Those are just a couple more cultural lessons for you =).
There has been a lot of spiritual warfare for us here this month so that has been a struggle in more areas than one. Please pray for the stronghold of the enemy to be broken here and freedom for those in bondage.
Thank you for your prayers and support.
P.S. I got to spend a day with elephants!!! =D!!
Blessings,
Naomi =)
