I am sorry for the absence of a blog in the past month. A lot has happened to me in the past month. A huge update for everyone back home is that due to Visa complications and tightened security, my squad will be spending our final month in Cambodia instead of Thailand. This is because our Visa’s only lasted two months, and not everyone would be able to get back into the country.
First, our team went to another tournament at a local school, and our Squad Leader, Christa, refereed Volleyball for the entire week. I had no obligation this week, which was a nice break from the previous two weeks. During that time I watched a lot of Volleyball, and drank a lot of very delicious coconut and honeydew flavored ice drinks that were home-made.
The week after the tournament was really low key and our team really focused on hanging out and building relationships with the family and the locals around us. A couple of times throughout the week our group went out to the families rice farm to help build the walls for our hosts parents shower room. Our second to last night involved our team buying our hosts the most adorable puppy on the planet. We named him Sonny originally, but then he gained the middle name Denzel Washington. No matter what his name is, he is adorable and our hosts love him.
On the 20th, our team took an 8 hour bus ride to Pattaya for our squad’s debrief. Pattaya is a coastal city on the Gulf of Thailand. Our squad debrief is a week that all of the squad takes a break to relax from ministry and debrief with our Squad Leaders and Squad Mentors on how our team is doing and how we can get better. We stayed in a Hostel in Jomtien, which is just south of Pattaya. The rooms were bunkbeds and had little cubbies for everything. We also got hot showers for the first time in a month and a half.
Our team’s first and second days were spent exploring the beachfront shops of Jomtien and going on the beach 200 meters away from the Hostel. Our third day was our team’s debrief with our Squad Leaders and Squad Mentors at 1:30 in the afternoon. My morning was spent at a very cool outdoor coffee shop covered in plants and fun to explore. After 30 minutes me and my squamate Sam decided to walk around Pattaya a little bit and explore. We walked down random streets for an hour until we realized we were completely lost. Once we were about to give up, a Song Tao pulled up next to us and asked us where we wanted to go. A Song Tao is a pickup truck that has a covered ceiling and benches that drives people around like a Taxi. Sam and I wanted to get tattooed, so we asked him to take us to a tattoo parlor on the beach. After ten minutes we passed a tattoo parlor that was very clean and was the only one with nice seats and looked like somewhere I would go in America. I showed him the design and I ended up with the final product.
The tattoo symbolizes each country I feel God calling me to. I want to get the name of each country in white ink inside of each of the arrows. Also, when I am in worship and lift up my hands, the arrows point up, towards God, giving everything to him. Sadly, me and Sam got lost after I got my tattoo, and I was late to my team debrief. When I walked in, my team was very sad, and most of us had given up because of the problems within our team. But our Squad Mentors talked to us for a while, and with God’s grace we were able to pick up the pieces and start anew a fresh and alive team.
The next few days in Jomtien were very fun and involved a lot of exploring. I did a lot of cool and awesome things with a bunch of my squad mates. I explored the malls in Pattaya; some of them were Six stories tall and had many stores, while one had a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not exhibit complete with scary Halloween attractions. I also took my squad mate Jake back to the same tattoo parlor so he could get a verse from the bible written on his arm in Thai. Our final day most of the squad went out to a very beautiful island called Ko Lan. The beaches were exquisite; the sand was white and the water was clearer than I have ever seen the ocean. It was the perfect way to end a nice relaxing week.
As usual, I was the first person to get sick on our team. Immediately after our bus from Pattaya pulled into Chaiyaphum I began to throw up and continued for the rest of the night and into the morning. That was the only time I threw up, but I was extremely dehydrated and couldn’t do anything for a couple of days. It is Sunday night here in Nong Bua Buan, and today was a very fun and sad day. Today was our last church service in Thailand, and our team got to worship in front of some local Thai people for the last time. But, today I was able to play street soccer for the first time (and it was also at night, which made it even cooler for me underneath the spotlights). Street soccer to me is a pickup game on a concrete court with Futsal goals. It was a very interesting experience, and I scored a cool goal by juggling the ball, kicking the ball around a defender then getting the ball back and shooting. Our last week before we leave for Cambodia on Friday consists of construction on the parents house and maybe getting to ride some elephants!!!
