My Time in India

I was privilaged to spend a week in India recently. It was an amazing week of connecting with a local church: blessing them and being blessed by them. I went with my teammate Michelle and her mom who has been supporting a pastor and his ministry in a small village in the south of India. We got to bring financial blessings to them as well as encouragment and prayer. Here are some pictures of the different things we got to be involved in...
Orphans...


This is Pastor Matthew and Michelle's mom, sister Lea. Pastor Matthew and his wife Hannah feed and care for 40 orphans and semi-orphans. We were able to bring new clothes with us and bless them with money to help pay for the food and schooling that they need.
We also had some time to just play with the kids, dance with them and singing with them. By the end of the week they were all calling me older sister, telling me that they loved me.





Lepers...

The church also cares for a small leper colony, giving them rice and financial support. We got to have a worship service with the lepers and help with rice distribution.



Local Pastors...
Pastor Matthew also heads up a gathering of local pastors that meets consistently to encourage each other, share struggles, and pray for each other. They asked all of us to share something with them during this meeting. It was overwhelming to be speaking to a group of 25 amazing men of God but the Lord gave me the words. After the meeting they all gathered around us and prayed for us.




Widows...
The church also cares for a small group of widows. We got to help them distribute rice and finances. A couple of them also asked us for prayer. These widows were some of the most beautiful women that i've ever met. They were all smiles and glowing with the joy of the Lord.

Sewing Center...

All three of us got to be part of supporting the sewing center the church runs to help widows and poor women have an income. Our first day there they took us shopping for cloth and the ladies at the sewing center made us beautiful Indian clothes.




As you can see, it was a very full week but it was also a week of blessings. I am still processing a lot of the experiences I had but I loved being part of God's heart of compassion for the world. I will put up more stories and pictures as the week goes on.

For you Momma...

I was talking with my mom last week and she pointed out that I didn't put up any pictures of myself from the retreat. So here are a couple pictures for you momma. :)



Michelle and I with Ae in our lovely volunteer shirts









Our hard working administrator...P'Daeng




And Michelle and I :)

A Retreat...

At the beginning of March Michelle, Jasmine and I joined The Garden of Hope (the ministry we work with) on their annual retreat. It was so much fun to just hang out and relax with our friends but we also had some awesome times of worshiping the Lord and planned for the next year of ministry. The week was a good opportunity to practice my Thai too :). Here are some photos and videos... This is Michelle with a couple of the Thai staff she works with in the Children's Drop in Center.

We drove south of the city to a little resort near the mountains. There was a lovely view of mountains, rice fields and elephants.

What's a retreat without a hamock? Or a lovely pond with tropical flowers?

But the scenery doesn't compare with the lovely ladies we shared the week with. Worship times with were some of my favorite parts with them...here is a video of us worshiping in Thai...

Thai people love singing...not only in worship but karaoke is very popular here too... Both nights of the retreat I fell asleep to the the sounds of my Thai friends singing their favorite songs in Thai and English :).

A true Thai party isn't complete without lots of food. The last evening we had a traditional Thai barbeque. Basically it is a ceramic pot with hot coals in it and a metal pan on top for boiling and grilling various meats and vegetables.

We sat around cooking, eating, talking, and of course singing more karaoke.

I was so blessed and refreshed by the entire retreat. I was great to hang out with my co-workers outside of work and get to know them and their culture better. Keep us in your prayers as we continue serving the Lord reaching out to the lost and broken women and children here in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

My accident...a very different Christmas

I planned on my first Christmas away from home being very different but I had know idea that it would be this different. In the season leading up to the holiday I anticipated missing home. And I expected that it wouldn't really feel like Christmas because it isn't a holiday widely celebrated in Buddhist countries. But what I didn't plan on was spending the holiday on the couch, in pain but learning so much from God.

Two days before Christmas my teammate Michelle and I were in a minor accident on our moter bike coming home from ministry. This sounds awful but God's hand of protection was completely on us. Neither of us were injured severely and the bike only had a loose mirror. Michelle had a broken toe that ended up needing surgery and she pulled a ligament in her knee. But God healed the ligament as someone prayed for it a couple days after the accident. My foot was scrapped pretty badly, enough that I had to see a Doctor and have my life shut down for a week and a half.
I know it sounds like a terrible thing and it definitely was the worst experience of my time in Thailand so far. But it changed my life.
My first reaction to the accident was

WHY???

Why did you let this happen God? Why didn't you protect us? Why did you let us get hurt? Why before Christmas? Why, why, why?? I felt like God had abandoned me. Like He had taken away His hand of protection. Maybe I was doing something wrong and He was trying to get my attention. Maybe this, maybe that... I wasn't angry with the Lord, I just didn't understand. I wasn't sure I could continue trusting Him.
But I started talking about how I felt with my teammates, being honest with the Lord about my feelings and reading His word. I read the last 3-4 chapters of the book of Job where the Lord answers Job and reminds him that He is God and is worthy of our worship no matter what our circumstances are in life. God also showed me how much His hand actually was on us. The timing was as good as can be expected for something like this. As I already mentioned, both of us and our bike were protected from serious injury. God used it as a time for me to rest, which is something I haven't done much of lately. Over and over He has shown me that He has not and will never leave or forsake me. Life is hard sometimes but He wasn't lying in Romans 8:28 when He said that He works all things together for the good of those who love Him.
This whole thing has been a journey that I will continue to share with you about. I just wanted to start by praising God for His faithfulness! God is GOOD ALWAYS!!

Decorating for Christmas in Thailand

Since my entire team will be here in Thailand for Christmas we decorated our house for the season.

This is the front door...way to go Michelle and Mindee!

Making Snowflakes

Stringing Popcorn

Decorating our little tree!



The finished product!

Merry Christmas from Thailand!!

Transition!

Oh dear...my blog has been neglected again I'm afraid. Life in the last month has been rather busy. We made two week long trips, one of which was out of the country, we had a class in cross cultural communication and a week of touring eight different ministries that the Lord is working in here in Chiang Mai. This week we are transitioning into the second phase of our internship - ministry! We are all very excited to join with the Lord in what He is doing in this city and believe me, He is doing things in this city! In almost every ministry we visited my heart burned with excitement. There are several ministries that are based here but are reaching literally to the ends of the earth with the gospel through media. A couple ministries have things like coffee shops to reach out to the massive college community here. And of course there are those that the Lord has called to rescue and minister to those enslaved or are at risk for human trafficking. These ministries only scratch the surface of what the Lord is doing in Thailand. Pray for our entire team this week as we seek the Lord about where He would have us join His work.

Adventures in everyday life

When you live in another country often the simple tasks of everyday life become adventures and take much longer then they would in America. Shopping for a simple garden rake for example. On Thursday Jasmine and I needed to go buy a rake for our yard, so after having coffee together we decided to go searching for a rake. We weren't quite sure where to start looking (they don't exactly have Home Depot or Lowes here) but decided that the shop where we bought the weed whacker would be a good start. So we went to this store on the north end of town that sells weed whackers...and guitars...and jewelry...which is right next to the store that sells washing machines and refrigerators...and bike helmets. Not seeing any rakes in plan sight, we attempted to explain to the man in the store what we were looking for. But between our broken Thai and his broken English we weren't getting far, in spite of our incredible skills at drawing pictures of rakes. With some help from a lady that spoke a lot of English he was able to understand what we were looking for and told us where a couple places to look would be. But rather then just give us directions and send us on our way - he proceeded to jump on his bike and lead us to two different stores, neither of which had a rake. By this point we were ready to give up but he drew us a map for one more place to try. Following his map, we ended up discovering a giant garden center and a rake! Hallelujah! So that is my story of rake hunting in Thailand. I love how eager these people are to help and the randomness of a third world country.