Thailand flew by. Unlike India and Nepal, which seemed to go by fairly slowly, I look back at the month of September and wonder where it went.
My team and I spent the month in the north east region of Thailand in the province known as Isaan, in a small city called Ubon-Ratchathani. It was my team, Found and Free, working with YWAM alongside another World Race team, Raging Waters. It was the first time I had ever worked throughout a month with another team, and it really was a great experience.
We spent a majority of the month painting. For 4 days, we lived out in a remote village a couple hours from the city of Ubon painting an entire church building. The day before we left for the village, the pastor of the church in Ubon explained the story of the church plant in the village. He shared with us that there was a large donation made to the church allowing them to finish the construction of the building, but very little was left to pay for workers to paint the building. He had no idea how it was going to get done. Until our two World Race teams arrived and offered to paint it for them!
It was no easy task, but between the 13 of us, we managed to paint the building within about 3 days. I had such a great time out in that village, getting to know the other team better, and spending time in worship together at night after long days spent painting.
After returning from the village, we spent the following week painting and cleaning up the soon to be coffee shop that we were living in. The YWAM contact that we were working with, Katie, shared with us the vision they had to open a coffee shop nearby the Ubon university. The name of the coffee shop is Oasis, and it is to be a comfortable, relaxed meeting place for students and also a place for YWAM to share the Gospel.
So between the week spent in the village, trips to the Tesco lotus for delicious Thai meals, hours spent painting and prayer walks around the city, as well as great team time and guys nights, it is no wonder the month flew by so quickly. I was hoping Thailand would be a great month, and it really was.
Mural that the incredibly talented Meghan Osowski painted!
