Greetings, from Africa.
It has been a bit too long since I last provided any sort of update for you all, I recognize that, and here’s my best effort to make up for that. I want to do my best to describe what the past 6 months have looked like for me, and what the last three will look like.
So in September we touched down in Guatemala, and while I was there you may recall that I lived in a house of 20 people from my squad. I was on a team of all dudes and we did dude things like laying brick and digging dirt. For many of us, it was our first experience of what living in community looked like. Now I don’t mean living in community as in eating meals together or doing ministry together, I mean community as in waking up to someone else’s alarm in the room (shoutout to the Watchmen who woke up to my alarm before I did every morning), community that becomes your family on Thanksgiving when your real family is miles away, community that has abundant love for you when you have none for yourself.
It was in those first three months that I realized that the real work that the Lord was doing was in my heart. We met some amazing people along the way, got our hands dirty often, and through it all I am confident that the Lord planted seeds along the way. However, I am finding that the Lord moves a lot more if you allow Him to minister to you first.
Moving on, as my squad was getting ready to head over to Malaysia, my team was informed that we would be spending to first chunk of our time in Thailand. That was all we knew, we didn’t know where exactly we would be, we certainly didn’t know what we would be doing. For the first month and a half, my team was living in a village with a family, doing as they did. It wasn’t a 9-5 thing, we didn’t just show up to serve in their “ministry”, we simply went alongside them and lived life with them. Sometimes we went to our host’s soccer game, other times we helped out in their fields tending to their tapioca trees. It was a really cool experience, they took us under their wing and we learned a lot just by seeing how they lived.
From there, we headed south to a small town called Khok Kloi where we met up with another team. We were only there for two weeks, teaching English in a few schools, playing soccer on the beach with some of the local kids. The students made it worth going back everyday as they brought so much joy with them.
Bear with me here, I am almost done getting y’all up to speed. After Thailand, we met up with the whole squad in Malaysia for debrief and it was there that I was told that I would be joining a different team in Penang. While in Penang, we partnered with a few different people to help out in their ministries where we could. One of them was at a homeless shelter where people could go to get fed, clean themselves up, and take a nap. On top of that, I think I tasted the best food in the world while I was there. Indian cuisine is easily my favorite now, I wish I could eat it everyday (as a matter of fact, I did eat it everyday while I was there).
So this all leads up to where I am now. I’m in South Africa for the week. After a short stay here, my team and I will be headed to a tiny village in Botswana where we will invest in the community, spend time with kids, work in the church, and do whatever we can to help. The way it’s looking, we won’t have electricity or much contact back home, but I’ll try and update everyone as I can (and I mean it this time).
I’m super thankful for all of you, God bless you guys, I’ll be home soon.
In Christ,
Thomas
