Sorry this is so late… my computer broke and I had no internet access last month.
Where were you? Chiang Mai, Thailand
How did you get there? 16-hour train ride from Harbin, China to Beijing. Flight from Beijing to Bangkok, Thailand with a layover in Seoul, South Korea. Overnight bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
What did you do there? We worked with a ministry called Lighthouse in Action which works to help the issue of human trafficking that is so prevalent in the area. We worked in Zion café, did ministry in the nearby slums to children at risk, and went to the bars at night to love the women working there.
Accommodations? We lived in some apartment/dorms above the Zion café, with bunkbeds for the girls on my team and a western-style bathroom we shared with another team down the hall.
Currency? Baht. $1 US = 30 Baht
Anything you miss from America? Food. Turns out I wasn’t the biggest fan of real Thai food.
What was the best moment? Visiting the slums and loving on the children there. One girl in particular stole my heart.
What was the hardest moment? Heading to the bars at night and seeing so many women trapped in the sex industry. They look happy, but you know that they’re hurting so much inside.
Top 3 foods? I didn’t like a whole lot of the food here, but I LOVED Roti (fried dough with bananas, chocolate, and sweetened condensed milk), and the fruit here – AMAZING smoothies for 20 Baht.
Bottom 3 foods? Most of the food. Not that it was bad food, but there was always either a texture thing or a spice thing that just seemed a little off to me.
Language(s) spoken/learned? Thai. I learned how to “wai” people by bowing and saying “sawasdee ka” (kap if you’re a boy), and thank-you is “kab khun ka”… pretty much everything they say ends in “ka” or “kap” just to make it polite.
Biggest time you saw God show up? Just in seeing the love that we were able to pour out to those around us, and the love that they were able to return.
Anything else? Pii Emmi has an AMAZING testimony. Seriously, there’s some videos on the Lighthouse in Action website – just google it. And if you want to know more about the sad truth of the sex industry, there’s a really good documentary out there that I would recommend called “Nefarious”.
