It all started at 3:30 in the morning when I woke up and dragged myself to the kitchen to grab some breakfast before we headed out to our next country. I quickly scarfed down the rest of my peanut butter and ran back down stairs to finish getting ready. I entered into a room full of rush and chaos as we all tried to finish up last minute packing. We wobbled down the stairs with all of our packs at 4:30 and walked to the bus. It was a douuble decker with a bathroom, thank goodness! This first bus ride was around twelve hours long with two stops, one to eat lunch at 10:30 in the morning, and the second to get onto the next bus. Just about everybody slept the whole time on this first bus ride, and I had the best travel buddy ever, one of my teammates, Abby! When we stopped for lunch we were given meal vouchers, and we were allowed to choose one meal from the bus stop lunch area. I wasn’t sure what some of it was, so I went safe and grabbed the crispy chicken with marinated rice. It was quite delicious! Our next bus was also a double decker with a bathroom; I almost forgot to mention that there was one more person than there were seats so one person had to sit on the floor. This bus ride was over ten hours as well, and we made two stops on this one as well. One of the stops was at 10:30 at night when they woke us up for supper! We all filed out of the bus with bug eyes and drowsily walked into this “fancy” looking eating area. People came and put plates of unknown food in front of us as we continued to try and wake ourselves up. I proceeded to grap my chopsticks and eat whatever was in front of me which happened to have raw onions in it! First of all I don’t care for raw onions, second of all raw onions at 10:30 at night when your’e about to go back to sleep and then wake up unable to brush your teeth! Thankfully there was a connected store where I was able to buy some mints for 25 baht! I also bought a banana as I felt obligated to eat something since we only planned on stopping twice to eat. We all gathered back on the bus and continued to drive to our next bus stop. Many hours later we reached our next bus stop, and unloaded all our bags and waited about another two hours to get on our next and final bus. As we waited we found out that we would be getting on vans so that we could get on the next bus, so we went in groups of about six to eight and loaded into the vans with all of our packs! Finally, reaching our final bus we discovered that it was a single deck with no bathroom, and no idea of how long this bus ride would be. Intersesting fact, despite the bus being a single deck there was enough room for everybody to sit on a chair, plus we had many of our packs piled in the isles. We had three stops on this one due to entering another country and our bags and passports having to be checked. We finally made it to Malaysia around 2:30 in the afternoon! One of my favorite parts about the travel days was when Abby and I listened to her music and jammed out as others slept!
Thanks Abby for being the best travel buddy ever, for letting me fall asleep on your shoulder, and for sharing your music with me. You made it one of the best travel days yet!
Prayer Requests:
– for energy as our ministry hours have been early in the morning and late at night with rest time in the middle
– for willingness to do whatever is asked of us, and that we will be ready for what the Lord has in store for us here
– for a refreshing of the fire of God within our hearts so that it may spread to others
Also, so sorry that I haven’t posted in a while. WIFI has been harder to come by here!
Thanks so much for reading!!!
