Guys!! I have to tell you about what God has been teaching me over the last month!! My squad and I have been doing ministry all over Chiang Mai through November. During this time my team was given the task to pretty much walk the streets day and night to pray over people (with or without them knowing). We were also looking for future ministry partners in the area while we were out. In doing this, God specifically taught me that ministry can be anything from prayer walks, praying over homeless people, or even just spending quality time with the locals at the laundry mat. This is totally something anyone can be doing in the US on a regular basis!
Here is one of my favorite stories about what happened to us this month & how I incorporated the things I’ve been learning!!
** Part 1 **
My teammate, Stacy, and I went out on a prayer walk one day. We decided that we would casually walk into stores and look around an area until we felt called to one specific person or place. Both of us looked up at the same time and said, “That place!” So we walked into an ancient artifact store to see if there was someone we could pray over. While in there we made small talk with an employee. She was a local and probably in her fortys. A few minutes later a white man came into view. The woman immediately reacted by telling us to stop talking to her. I can’t even begin to describe the tension in the room when he walked in and started speaking Thai. Stacy and I became very uncomfortable and decided to leave. The man even followed us out and watched us walk down the street. As soon as he stopped paying attention to us we stopped and prayed some big prayers over the man, woman, and the store.
A few days later I went back past the store to pray and see if I could talk to the man with my team leader, Savannah. We past it once and nobody was inside. A couple minutes later we saw him go back into the store. Afterwards, we decided to walk past the big front windows. Both of us saw this man at his desk facing the front windows. He was looking down at his computer screen, it was completely dark in the room besides the light coming from the screen. He looked like a man staring in an episode of Criminal Minds. Just walking past the building gave me goose bumps and filled me with so much anger. I can’t tell you what is happening inside that building but I know it is nothing good.
That night at debrief we told the story of this man and asked our squad mates to be praying for them and the situation that they were in. The next night my friends Lauren and Jacob went on a prayer walk through the same area. During their walk Jacob said that he saw the man in the shop. Again, he was looking down at his computer screen with nobody else around.
As soon as Jacob said that he had seen this man I knew we had to go back together and try to get information from him. So we did exactly that a few nights later. When we got to the store we thought it was already closed except the lights were on and the man was sitting at his desk playing a guitar. There was a woman at the side of the building who told us to just knock on the door and he would let us in. We knocked on the door and he slowly put his things away then came to let us in.
Jacob and I had previously made up a story that we were looking for some kind of Moroccan rug for our house and were wondering if he had any. When the man opened the door we asked about the rug, attempted to make small talk, and ask about his life. He mocked us a little bit and then told us he was from Chiang Mai. I’m not really sure if we believed him or not but he wouldn’t tell us any more past that. He then told us we could look around but that he had a dinner date and would be leaving soon. So we just said our goodbyes and left the store.
Jacob and I started walking back to find one of our squad mates, Shawn. Shawn ended up going down the street with some new friends so Jacob and I started our walk back to the hostel. On the way back we came across a rug store and decided to go look for a Moroccan rug!
—Be on the lookout for my next blog to hear what happens next!!–
