GRADUATION!

OH MY GOODNESS THE DAY HAS COME! I'M GRADUATING TODAY!!!!!
Some days during DTS, I felt like it was going to go on forever, and that we would never graduate, now I'm wondering where those days have gone. All of the sudden it is all over! It's definitely starting to hit me that i have to say goodbye to most of these people forever, and its getting to be a little bit sad.
So over the last five months, there has definitely been some serious highs and some serious lows.
I've definitely learned alot, I've learned about patience, humility, what it looks like to be a good leader as well as what it looks like to be a leader who has to change a few things. I've fasted and prayed, I read my Bible more and I got over my fear of singing in front of people (not saying I'm good, I just don't care as much if people can hear me anymore)
DTS was definitely a good experience and I would recommend a DTS to just about anyone.
So this coming week is going to be a nice gradual way of saying goodbye to people. Some people will be leaving today, some people will be leaving tomorrow, and I will be going on a "camping trip" with some of the people I am closest with until Monday. Then Sarah, Melissa and I will go on our trip for the rest of the time that we are here. So at least I don't have to say good-bye to everyone all at once.

Anyways, that is about it for this blog, this is going to be my last post. Thank you guys all so much for reading it and for your prayers. I hope you stayed somewhat entertained, and I hope that it all made sense.
I will be home in A WEEK! (and a couple days) So if you guys have any questions or confusions... just talk to me in person.. YAY.

Today's Fun Fact:

Today, on the last day of DTS, on the last day that I will probably ever be in this cafe, we discovered that they have the most amazing banana smoothies. Tell me why we couldn't have discovered this 5 months ago.

(I'm sorry that fun fact was kind of sub-par, especially because this will be the last fun fact. buuut, It's the best i could do for this week  so you're just going to have to deal with it. :) )

Back to Base

So, as of yesterday, our Doi Inthanon outreach team got back to the base.

I think that we really finished up well as a team on that mountain. The last few days there were spent finishing up the work in the the fields, as well as in the school. We said goodbye to all of the kids and the families that we had spent time with, packed up the truck and went to the city. 

We spent three days and two nights as a team in a little retreat house in Chiang mai. 

So the one morning there, we started our meeting at 10 o'clock. We finished that meeting at 9:30 at night... it was kind of ridiculous. We spent the whole day giving our highlights and low lights, as well as telling each person what they did well on the outreach as well as things that they could improve on. I was glad that we did it. it was worth the almost twelve hours. 

Our team was very thankful to have the time off that we did, it was so nice to be off the mountain and in the city again, and have rest and have nothing required of us. :) We were given a lot of free time to go wherever we wanted.  

Coming back to the base on Saturday was good too. In a way, it felt like we had come back home. I suppose it is our home away from home anyways. We were the first team back so we had time to unpack everything and get all settled in before seeing everyone again. When the other team did get back, it was just a frenzy of screaming and hugging.  We all kind of talked and shared stories with each other. It was great to see them all again, but so strange to think that we only have a week left together!

This week is going to be run on the same schedule we had during lecture faze, but I'm not sure what we will be doing to fill the time when we usually had people speaking. 

Melissa, Sarah and I are also spending some time now planning what our little vacation after outreach is going to look like. I'm getting quite excited for that. I think that it's going to be a nice transition from being with everyone at the base, to only a few people, to going home. 

I am also getting quite excited to be home in two weeks, it's definitely going to be bitter sweet leaving all these people, but I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends and family again.

Well, I'm sorry that this is a little bit shorter than usual, but not a whole lot has happened since last time. Oh, one big thing is that E.E. is doing a lot better, only now Hosanna, her daughter, is really sick and they think that she might have pneumonia too. So that's something that can be prayed for. 

Anyways, that's it for this week. :) See you all soon!

Today's Fun Fact:

Unlike at home where we only have plain, boring, white rice, here in Thailand they have PURPLE RICE!! Yes that's right, deep purple rice. Most of the time we just eat the white rice, but every once in a while we eat purple sticky rice. It's actually very pretty on a plate. Apparently its better for you than white rice because it has lots of vitamins and minerals in it. 

3 Days Left in Outreach

Well, I know that its been less than a week since my last update, but I’m trying to get back into the routine of updating the blog on weekends, so here its goes.

            So, I just finished up my laundry, and now I’m listening to a CD my sister sent me (Jon Bryant- Two Coasts for Comfort, check it out, its amazing) and enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon. Now let me tell you something, when I first came to Thailand, hand-washing my laundry was kind of fun, actually it was rather relaxing. I’m gonna go ahead and say that the fun has worn off a little bit. In all honesty, I don’t mind the actual washing part (except for the socks, they’re wretched pieces of clothing that get the dirtiest by far, and they are expected to be so white when you’re done washing them, plus, you get not one, but two of them dirty every day!) Anyways, the washing is not so bad, it’s the wringing them out to dry and then waiting for them to dry that gets me. You see, if you wash a thick sweater, you have to make sure you wring it out REALLY well, and that it will dry within the day, if it doesn’t dry during the day, then it gets dew on it overnight, starting the drying process all over again. And if it doesn’t dry properly the first time, it’s most likely going to smell nasty. I have a sweater that I’ve washed three times and it still stinks. I’ve given up on that one until I can bring it into town to wash and dry it, that’s the only way to guarantee it will smell good. I will be thankful to have a washer and dryer when I get home.

            Sorry that you had to fall victim to my little vent session about the laundry, I’ll do my best not to let it happen again, although I can’t make any promises. :) The work in the tea field is done, yay! Although I’m sure that if we asked, more work could be found for us up there. This week we attacked a hill with our hoes and made levels with rock walls. It kind of looks like an RV park now if that makes any sense. We had to pick through rock piles to find good-sized stones for the retaining walls. As it turns out, there are a lot of little creatures that call rock piles their homes. I can’t even begin to count how many scorpions we killed.

            Work in the school has also been going well, although, with all their days off, we’ve had to read through the Bible stories so fast. Tomorrow, even though the kids don’t have school, we’ve invited them to come and listen to us tell the Jesus story. Hopefully lots of them show up. We teach them again for the last time on Tuesday, and then we pack up and leave on Wednesday to go to a different place for debriefing.

            On Friday morning, we split into our little groups of three and went to the houses we were assigned. Pong, Gai, and I ended up in Asaweend’s house. He’s a 9-year-old boy whose Gr. 3 class I teach in. He’s the youngest in his family, him, his mom, his dad, and his oldest brother live in the house together. There are five other kids in the family, but all of them are in the city for schooling. On Friday, we went to their flower fields, where we spent the day pulling the leaves off the bottom half of the flower stems. If the leaves are left on, they take all the nutrients from the ground, and then the flower itself doesn’t get enough. It was a lot of crouching and squatting. I was totally fine doing it for one day, but I have a respect for them for being able to do it all the time. On Monday Asaweend’s mom and brother will cut one of their other fields of flowers. They are able to get anywhere from 1 Baht- 4 Baht (3-14 cents) per flower depending on the grade of flower.

            That night, after dinner, we spent some time praying with the family for whatever prayer requests they had. The next day we didn’t do a whole lot of work, but Asaweend’s mom took us to their other fields and showed us around. I got to try sugar cane for the first time, which was fun. It’s really good. She also shared with us some of the problems that she has within her family. Six months ago, her husband told her he wanted a divorce. He needed to get out of the house, so he went to spend the night at the flower fields. When he tried to go to sleep, evil spirits came and he says he almost died. After that he started questioning what he was doing. He prayed to God and asked him for forgiveness for wanting to leave his wife, and went back home. They’ve been doing a lot better since then. Crazy eh?

            Some good/bad news that we’ve got from one of the other outreach teams is that one of them is in the hospital. Her name is E.E., her, her husband Tun and their two kids (the boy is almost one, and the girl is 3) are all in this DTS together. Anyways, she’s been in the hospital for a few days with a high fever and she’s been really sick. The bad news is that she has pneumonia, the exciting news is that she’s pregnant! The doctors didn’t know she was pregnant when she first came to the hospital, so we’re praying that the baby is still okay seeing as E.E. has had such a high fever for a couple days, which could have a really bad impact on the baby. They’re moving her to a different hospital today or tomorrow I think, so that she can have better treatment. So hopefully her and the baby will both be healthy again soon.

            Anyways, that’s about it for this little update. Some prayer requests

1.     E.E., the baby, and her husband and kids. Also for the team who has been helping take care of the kids while Tun stays with E.E. in the hospital

2.     Asaweend’s family’s prayer requests:

·       That their oldest son will be able to go into Chiang Mai and complete a two year course to be a lawyer

·       That their fields will produce lots of flowers

·       That they will have enough money to build a new house

·       That the dad will give himself completely to God and not go back and forth between God and spirit worship

3.     That our team will push through and give 100% in these last couple days of outreach

4.     A revival in the village that we’re in. A lot of people here come to church off and on, but don’t really understand the real meaning of being a Christian

Well, I will be seeing most of you in 3 WEEKS!!!!! Bizarre!

Today’s Fun Fact:

Geckos like to poop on beds. Actually more accurately, geckos like to poop on pillows. Luckily the gecko living in my room hasn’t aimed for my pillow yet. 

Second Last Week of Outreach

I figure since I have the chance to update my blog right now, I will. (If you didn’t read my last post, you might want to skim over it so that you know what the heck I’m talking about in this one.)

Things have definitely changed in the past few days, for myself at least, and I’m going to say that it is completely a God thing because I couldn’t have done it on my own. So, you know how I was saying we were really frustrated and tired and angry a lot? Well on Tuesday of last week, that was true, BUT on Wednesday, for whatever reason, that completely changed. It was like a switch went off in me and all of the sudden I was totally chill about the whole thing. My attitude did a complete 180 degree turn. Now instead of being irritated by the smallest thing that the guy we are working for does, God is showing me all the good things that he is doing and working on. I’m so thankful though because it makes the day go a lot quicker when you’re not just bitter the whole time. For example, I was helping out at their house on Friday, and usually when 5:00 roles around, in my head I’m thinking, “Okay, my times up, I’m outta here.” But this time, 5:00 came and went and I was still looking for things to do and ways to help and I didn’t even notice it was 6:00 by the time I got out of there. So yes, I am thankful for the attitude switch to say the least.

Also, another answer to prayers is that the guy we’re working for has been a lot better at just asking us about ideas he has instead of saying that we have to do them whether we like it or not, and also, he has been doing better at giving us time off as well, we had both Saturday, and Sunday off this weekend. It was a great rest. Actually this weekend was even better, because not only was I able to just chill and do nothing for the day, I also got a package from my parents and on from my sister in the mail. Not that that is very important to you, but it made my day so I figured I’d share. J

So a little heads up, if I die from a tarantula bite, blame the people on my team. They found it while we were working in the fields, and now it’s in a little jar in our house. Although to be completely honest, I don’t mind at all, I think it’s actually kind of cool. It has these two HUGE fangs. I had no idea tarantulas had fangs like that! We have a tiny itty bitty little scorpion in a jar as well.

Now what else has been going on this week…? Hmm. Okay, here’s something for you guys. (Dog lovers, I would advise you skip this paragraph) So the other morning, like every morning, we went over to the missionary couple’s house for prayer. When we got in front of their house I saw this cute black dog. So I thought, “Aww, they got another dog, how nice.” So I get inside and I was talking to Melissa, and she says, “Ya, that dog outside, isn’t going to be their pet, it’s going to be their dinner!” So here I was thinking that this was just a joke and that they were trying to pull our legs, that was until we came home for lunch and there was meat on top of the fire, and the dog was nowhere to be found. So they sent us home with some ground dog meat for dinner, which I refused to eat. The story goes, that if you eat dogs meat, it does something inside of you that will keep you warm for days or weeks, or apparently even years. I don’t know if it’s true, but I was not about to find out.

(Okay, dog lovers, you can start reading again) So things in the school have been going really well, the kids are picking up the letters, and the sounds that they make, as well as colours, weather, emotions and a bunch of other stuff. They are always super excited to read the Bible stories every day which is fun to see. The only thing that is difficult, is that since we’ve been here, they’ve had sports day, children’s day, new years, teacher’s day, and random other days off, which leaves us with a lot less teaching time than we were expecting, which means we have to try to rush through things more, which means the kids aren’t learning the things we’re teaching them as well as we would like them to learn them.

This week we were also told that we will be splitting up into 4 groups of three, each group spending two days and one night in a home of one of the Christian families in the community. That means that we will be getting up early with them, eating with them, working with them all day, and sleeping in their houses. I’m partly nervous, and partly excited.

So, prayer requests for this week:

1.     Most of our team still isn’t sleeping through the night, so pray for good, solid sleep.

2.     Although God has changed my attitude, a lot of the team is still in, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” Mode, so prayer that we can finish of the outreach strong, not just “make it through.”

3.     That when we stay at the people houses, none of us will get sick from the food or water, and that we will have the energy to get through both days because I have a feeling they are going to be long working days.

So that’s about all I have to say for this little update, we finish outreach on the 26^th or the 27^th and then its back to the base for debrief, graduation is on the 3rd, and then I’ll be home a week and a half after that. Things are coming to an end quickly!

Today’s Fun Fact:

When you cook the bananas here, they turn pink-ish purple

Only One More Month!!!

Well hello everybody!!! Its been a long time, I know, I know. Only one more month and I will be back in Abby! How ccraaazzyy!! I still don’t know if I can believe that! It’s definitely going to be bittersweet coming home. I’m starting to hit the point where I’m ready to be back in Abby, sleeping on a legitimate mattress and having consistently hot water, but at the same time, I am going to miss the people on this team so much. Especially the ones that I have been on outreach with. We have definitely become a lot closer

         In fact, our team has been doing really well. We don’t fight, we generally have the same ideas of how things should go, and we agree on most things. Most of the people are pretty balanced and chill so that makes for easy relationships and stuff. But just because our team is doing well, doesn’t mean we haven’t hit some rough patches along the way. I’m not going to get too into it, but there have been some disagreements with the couple that we have been working for since we got here. Our main issue is that we just don’t get enough time to rest. We work hard all day, and then are asked to do things at night and on weekends as well. We don’t really get a chance for a day off either. A lot of us are getting very tired. Many of us aren’t sleeping like we should be, and now people are starting to get sick here and there.

         Another thing that we have been frustrated with is that we haven’t really had a chance to do a whole lot of actual outreach/evangelism. We mostly just work in the fields for the couple. There are two people on our team that have been able to do evangelism because they speak a different language so they are the only ones who are able to reach a certain people group in this village. So that has been good at least, but we would like to see our whole team being able to share the story of God. We have been told that if we would like to do outreach, we have to go door to door in what little free time we have in the evenings, which is not a whole lot, and people are usually pretty tired at that point.

         This week our leaders will be approaching the couple we are working for and asking for some time off so we can do some evangelism, so pray that that goes well and that we can see some progress through that.

         Anyways, enough of that, I’ll give you a bit of a summary of what else has been going on in the past couple weeks:

First off, its getting quite a bit warmer now as the hot season is fast approaching, making that the shortest winter I think I have ever experienced. It’s nice to wake up in the morning and not be able to see my breath anymore. J

This past weekend we climbed a mountain. Now let me tell you, it wasn’t just some quant little family hike, no no no no, it was a flippen CLIMB! It was 3 hours of super, crazy steep inclines. So much so, that the way down was just about as difficult as the way up because you had to make sure you didn’t just slide down the whole way. The mountain we climbed was almost the highest mountain in all of Thailand. I’m pretty sure that theres only one mountain that is higher than it. The view from the top was beautiful though. We had some sore muscles for a couple days afterwards though.

Like usual, we have been working in the tea fields, we finished weeding the whole field and now we have just about finished pruning all the tea plants as well. They will be ready for harvest in March and April. The plants they have produce three different kinds of tea. Not only have we pruned the tea bushes, but we have helped in the roasting, as well as the weighing and packaging and selling of the tea. It sells for anywhere between $3-$6 for 50g, depending on which type of tea it is.

 Something kind of new and exciting is that we started teaching at the school. For the first couple of days I was a little bit nervous because it was crazy. The kids were nuts and they didn’t listen very well. We always have one English speaker and one Thai translator in the class and I think we have a pretty good system down now that we have made some plans for each class. Melissa and I teach grades 1-3 and David and Jennifer teach grades 4-6, and we switch out translators every day. The goal is to teach them some English. It’s harder than I thought it would be because you want to be able to teach them the letters of the alphabet and their sounds, but if they don’t know any English words, you have no way of helping them apply it. BUT if you want to teach the English words, you find yourself wanting to write the world on the board, but they can’t read, so its this vicious little cycle. We have figured out ways of using pictures and repetition to help the things stick in their heads though, and because they’re young, they learn pretty quick. At the end of each class, we read out of this flip Bible story thing we have, and the kids love it. It goes through the Bible from Adam and Eve to Jesus. We usually read it to them outside the classroom because we don’t know if the teachers would let us read them if they knew because most of them are Buddhist.

Anyways, I think that’s about it for this week. I hope all is well at home. And I will see you all soon-ish!

Today’s Fun Fact:

Those lovely little Christmas flowers we call poinsettias? They grow wild in parts of Thailand.