Week 1 and 2 of Outreach

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! I hope you guys are all having a good time with you’re families and such. I’m goanna be honest, I thought I would be a lot more homesick than this, but I’m actually not. It doesn’t really feel like Christmas here, so I don’t really feel like I’m really missing out on anything.  Actually, the people group that live in the village that we’re in (the mongo) celebrate new years on December 24 according to the lunar calendar.

            Their new years rituals are a little different than ours, actually, a LOT different. At the beginning of every year, the people make pledges to the spirits saying: if the spirits give them this or that, then the people will give the spirits a pig or a cow or something, so through Dec. 24-26, the people sacrifice their animals to repay their pledges to the spirits. They do all sorts of spirit rituals, calling demons to the village to help them, and calling their ancestors. At the same time the church spends the night in prayer for God to send out all the demons and spirits so it’s a time of spiritual warfare for the area. It’s weird because back at home, the whole spiritual realm, and calling demons and stuff, sounds so bizarre, but here its part of their every day life. Some of the people are designated to call the spirits and will do rituals until they are completely demon possessed.

            Another interesting little tradition the Mongo people have during these three days is that any single guy can find any single girl that he likes and take her away and then they get married. Does the girl have any say in this? Nope, none at all. If she notices that she’s being followed, she can run away, but if the guy gets her, and is able to get her home, then that’s the end of that, there hitched.

            So anyways, I suppose I should give you an update of what I have been doing for the past two weeks up in the mountains. Getting here was something special that’s for sure. Our vehicle was packed so full of stuff and people that we barely made it up the hill. There were times when we had to get out and push the truck. Plus the roads are full of potholes, and there are places where half the road is gone because of land slides, it was an adventure to say the least.

            We live in a house with five bedrooms, 13 people and one bathroom. Thankfully the shower has hot water because oh my goodness is it ever cold up here, especially at night. We’ve got a little fireplace in the living room, but threes so many holes and open spaces in the walls and stuff that it only helps if you’re sitting right next to it. 

            Most of the work that we have been doing up here so far has been gardening type stuff. We do a lot of weeding, and planting and watering. The people that we’re working for are a missionary couple that has been living here for 18 years. They’re married and have four kids. Their main source of income is their tea. So we’ve been weeding and trimming in the tea fields as well as heating the tealeaves and packaging them as well. We also planted a whole bunch of coffee seedlings. Lots and lots of coffee seedlings. J

            Lets see, what else has been interesting here…. Oh ya, we slaughtered a pig. 7:00 in the morning we were over at the house where we watched the pig get killed and then we watched then burn the hair off and then slice it open and gut it.  They use basically every part of the pig for something.  They made sausage with some of the meat that they ground up and put it into the small intestine as the sausage casing. All the fat is used for oil and lard and then of course there are all the normal cuts of meat. I’m not goanna lie, I was extremely disappointed when our house smelled like delicious bacon, and then I came around the corner only to find it was deep fried large intestines… not really what I was hoping for.

            Now even though the Mong don’t celebrate Christmas, it doesn’t mean that the people on this outreach team don’t. I would say we have successfully Christma-fied the house. J We have a Charlie Brown style tree. Now you see we don’t have much for decorating, so most of our stuff has been crafted out of pop cans some how. Although we do have a little tinsel and some legit ornaments. I even made a little nativity scene out of pop cans. Also, last night, we each hung up a sock by the fireplace and Santa came so we all got something! Haha (It’s possible that there was more than one Santa this year and that I may have been one of them) haha.

            So far everything has been good though. The team has really been getting along and we’re having a lot of fun. It’s weird to think that we’ll only be out here 5 more weeks, then a week back at the base and then DTS is over! Thank you for all your prayers for the team, I can tell you from personal experience that God is hearing them and blessing this outreach.

            I think that’s about it for now, again, I can’t make any guarantees as to when the next time I’ll have internet will be, so this is Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you again. J

Today’s Fun Fact:

When Thai people have kids, they give them Thai names, but as the kids grow up, whatever their nickname is, becomes their name. Which can be cute but some of the names they end up with I'm not so sure I would be thrilled with. Here's some of the names of the people from my base and the meanings of them:

Bow- As in the bow in someones hair

Mai- Silk

Gai- Chicken 

and my personal favourite

Uan- Fat

Outreach Tomorrow/ New Mailing Adress

(If you didn't notice, I also posted a new fun fact to make up for last weeks forgetting)
Sadly, this is potentially the last time I'll be updating you for a long time. Tomorrow we leave on our major outreach, which means I won't be able to see all your lovely faces over Christmas OR New Years, which is rather sad, but February is not that far away, and then I'll be back home.
We'll be on outreach for 7 weeks, and I'm pretty sure we come back January 27 or 28th... I think :). Doi Inthanon sounds like its way out in the boonies, which means limited cell service and we'll see about the Internet. If I get a chance to update the blog, I definitely will, but I can't make any promises as to how often that's gonna be happening.

This week was our very last week of lecture phase, I know I've said this a billion times but its going SO fast! The teaching was about the Two Kingdoms (I realize that kind of sounds like a Lord of the Rings movie, but its not. haha) Anyways, the speaker was from Norway, and he taught about how the world is a Kingdom and its ruled by Satan, and his constitution is selfishness and humanism but we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, where the constitution is love. We can be living in the Kingdom of the World, but we BELONG to the Kingdom of God. I really, really liked the guys teachings, he taught on a lot of things that I so agree with, but he said it in ways that were so clear and to the point.

He talked about how because believers and non-believers come from two different Kingdoms, the laws are different, so what is normal in one kingdom like lying, stealing, homosexuality etc. is against the law in another kingdom. So when we come to situations where we have choices on what to do, we need to base our actions on which kingdom we are from.

Another point he made was how humanism is creeping into our churches, and how its scary because humanism is similar to the real thing. Being a Christian says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself." But humanism just says "Love your neighbour as yourself." So humanists justify what they do by saying "I'm doing this because I love the other person" but as Christians we need to put our love for God first.

Anyways, things here are getting Christmafied (yep that's a word) We're having a Christmas dinner and celebration thing at the base tonight. I might just be a little bit excited. I am currently listening to Amy Grant's "Home For Christmas", which if you have ever been in my house around Christmas time, you've had the privilege of listening to it on repeat. Gotta love the Amy Grant.

There's a Christmas tree set up in the Geske's house (our base leaders) and we have a mini Christmas tree in the girls house. Not to mention, Melissa's dad sent her a gingerbread house kit in the mail, so we listened to Christmas music while building a gingerbread house, which is now filled with candy canes, AND smelling the wonderful smell of the fir branches and pine cones that smell like cinnamon and cloves, that her dad also sent in the mail. It was a definite Christmas moment.

For our Little party tonight, a bunch of people are performing and there's a little skit planned, and Kathryn and I will be singing... Ya, that's right, I am going to sing in front of a group of people. It's possible that YWAM has pushed me out of my comfort zone a little bit. =P

A couple people have asked me about mailing stuff to me, so here's, a new address for you to send things to if you so desire:

YWAM Chiang Mai
100/2 Moo 9 T.Khii Lek
A. Mae Daeng Chiang Mai
Thailand
50150

I guess that's basically it for now, some prayer requests for you guys:
-Team unity/ safety
-Good communication
-To remember for our team to keep God in everything we do
-Good attitudes/ patience

Oh here's a bonus fun fact for you guys. When we were doing all the prep work for our outreach, our leaders told us this, "Dont' pick up anything shiny, or actually anything at all of the roads!" Apparently, Where we're going, they cast out evil spirits and stuff on to hand woven clothes and stuff. So last year, when the DTS team went there, somebody picked up one of these things and he ended up having and evil spirit in him that they had to cast out and everything. A little intense? I think so. It's like a whole different world compared to North America. So also pray that we don't have any problems like that!

I hope I can get Internet during outreach but I guess this is potentially, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas! For all those school-goers, and anyone else who gets time off, enjoy the break!

I'll talk to all you guys later!

Today's Fun Fact:

Back at home, I was convinced that there was nothing that couldn't be fixed with baler twine or duct tape. 

The Thai have taught me that there is nothing that can't be made or fixed with banana leaved or bamboo.

Forgotten Fun Fact

Okay, so I realize that I may or may not have forgotten to include a fun fact on my last blog post... somebody may have emailed me about that. SO to make sure I don't loose any of my faithful readers, here is the fun fact from this past week:

Today's Fun Fact:

Often when people try random meat like gecko, or kangaroo or something like that, people ask what it tastes like, the common response is, "It tastes like chicken" 

Well ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that chicken heart kind of tastes like pork.

3 Months Done

So I may have lost track of how many weeks I've been gone, but I know that I've been officially gone from home for 3 months now! And our outreach is coming up fast!
This week we learned about evangelizing. Instead of having just one speaker, a whole group came and took turns teaching us. They taught us ways of telling people about God using things they are used to. There's a saying in Thailand that says, "To be Thai, is to be Buddhist." So everybody here knows a lot about Buddhism. The speakers gave us ways to tie in what people already know about Buddha, and turn it into Christianity. So they pray in similar ways, but to God instead of Buddha. Some of the people in my class really liked the way they did things, but other people found it really controversial. I thought it was a good way of doing things, because then people can relate to what you're saying.
I spent this Saturday with a few of the DTS people at one of the guys from my class' village. He's from a tribe called the Karin tribe. They speak a different language, and they live up in the mountains. It was so beautiful. I felt like I ate all day there. They just kept on feeding us and feeding us and feeding us. The food was all really delicious though. We helped make this "cake" which was basically pounded up sticky rice with sweet things put in it. It was really good too. We got to meet his whole family, and we helped them harvest their bean field.
Afterwards we went to a waterfall. The water from the water fall comes from a hot spring at the top. So the water was really warm, and the rocks were grippy from all of the minerals and stuff, so you could just climb up the waterfall no problem. I'll put some pictures on facebook at some point.
As for the issues from the mini outreach, I think God is telling us that we need to let go of our rights to an apology. A lot of us feel like we deserve an apology, but we need to learn to forgive without getting the apology in the first place.
Some really exciting news is that we found out where we are going for outreach. I'm going to a mountain tribe in a place called Doi Inthanon. We'll be doing a lot of work on a farm up there and stuff like that. I'm really happy with the team I'm on, I think we'll have a really good time.
Anyways, I think that's about it for this week.
I'll talk to you guys later! I hope you're all doing well!

In the Land of Jackie Chan

Well hello everybody! It's been a long time since I've been able to update all you people so I figure its about time I give you all a heads up as to whats been going on for the last couple weeks.
SO, not this past Monday, but the Monday before, we flew out to China. We had to take two flights because it was cheaper than a direct flight. Not our entire group could go because some of them don't have the proper paperwork and passports and stuff to be able to go, so those ones all went to Burma.
We stayed in an apartment. It was actually really nice, it was on a high enough floor that we had a bit of a view too.
Anywho, the schedule changed basically every day. But we did a lot of English teaching. One of the days we taught in a university there. We taught two classes. We started off by playing a couple games that involved them speaking English if they were chosen and stuff. Turns out it doesn't matter how old people are, they still willingly participate if there is candy involved. We also gave them vocab words and they had to incorporate them into skits. Some of the skits they did were really funny.
We did a lot of English corners as well, which is basically a couple foreigners who speak English, leading a group of people who are trying to learn to speak English, in discussions and little group conversations. They also play English games and stuff. We were in charge of leading a bunch of them.
My favourite part was teaching in one of the kindergartens there. It wasn't an orphanages, but they wanted us to do a couple classes for them. The nice thing about that was that was that the teachers gave us some stuff to teach on, so we were actually doing their curriculum instead of just making up random stuff.
The one day we taught them about tastes. Sweet, Salty, Bitter, and Sour. We gave them little taste testers of things. They got candy for sweet, seaweed for salty (which they LOVED), lemon rinds for bitter, and lemon for sour. You should have seen their little faces when we gave them the lemons. So cute, we got some pictures so hopefully they'll end up on facebook at some point.
We did a bunch of "teaching" in an orphanage school there. Basically we just sang random songs with the kids and played with them and gave them candy. Trying to teach was ABSOLUTE CHAOS!! it was ridiculous. It looked like something from a movie. There were kinds gambling in the back of the class, other kids were wrestling, other kids were throwing things at each other, they would just walk around and get up and leave whenever they wanted. It was CRAZY. But the more we went there, the better it got because they would start to recognize us and know the songs that we were singing so that was cool.
The interesting thing about our time in china, was that it was like a little test run for our group for our major trip coming up. Needless to say, we have somethings to work on. So if you guys could pray for that, that would be wonderful. It's a lot of communication problems, and misunderstandings, and people feeling left out. But I hope that we worked through some of it for our major trip.
But don't worry, China was a good time and I'm happy that we were able to go. I'm gonna miss the cold weather in China though, I finally got to bundle up in some sweaters and even a toque!
Oh and I almost forgot, I got to celebrate my birthday in China, I figure most of you can't say that! haha. I realised that I made the mistake of letting the people on my team know that I like cows. I'm pretty sure I have never owned so many cow related things. Pencils, a pencil case, a toy cow, cow tape, a dancing cow and even a cow toque. It was a little ridiculous. haha. My birthday was fun though, they got me cake and everything. :) Oh also a little happy birthday shout out to my mamma. :)
Anyways we're back at the base now for two more weeks of lecture and then out on the major trip, i hope everything is good with all of you, and I will talk to you all next weekend!

Today's Fun Fact:

In Thai, the way you pronounce words is very important, you could be using the same word, but with different pronunciation it means something completely different.

For example, if you say "cow", depending on how you use your intonation it could mean: rice, news, knees, white or nine.

SO, if you say the Thai sentence for "I'm sorry", but use the wrong intonation..... you actually say, "I farted."

Week 10

Welcome to week ten. It's definitely getting colder here. To the point where i can wear a sweater for like a couple hours in a day before i have to take it off because i get too hot. But I do hear that at home its freezing cold. I'm a little jealous of that.
This weeks topic was spiritual warfare. So get this, his parents moved from friesland after WWII, to Canada and started a dairy farm. Yay for Canadians. haha
 It's been interesting because at the beginning of the week we were warned that we might be affected by the spiritual warfare. So during the week we had one person twist their ankle really bad, two people got pretty sick, one girl's eye really started to bother her and hurt a lot and theres girls in the upstairs room that can't sleep because they keep seeing a dark shadow/ spirit thing that wont leave. SO it kind of seems like there might be some warfare going on.
But something that is really good is that we all got our visas for our mini outreach. YAAY. so we'll be leaving at 3:30 on Monday morning. It'll be just like getting up to go milking! haha Then we'll be gone for two weeks and I can almost guarantee that there won't be any Internet access so this is going to be good-bye for a couple of weeks.
But I'm gonna head out for now, I'll talk to you guys in a couple of weeks.

Today's Fun Fact:

Tinkerbelle, the sweet little 300 lb pig that we have at our base?

ya, she bites... she bites hard.

Week 9

So, this week marks two months in Thailand! RIDICULOUS!
I'm gonna start off with the most exciting part of this week. Do you remember how I asked you to pray for Mai because of the potato sized cyst? Well, this past weekend she went back to the doctor for her checkup. He ran some tests and when he came back to talk to her, he made her check the paper to see if he had the right patient, she said yes, he asked if the date on the paper from her last check up was right, she said yes. So he said. "I don't believe it! The tumour is completely gone! I don't know how this happened!" yep, thats right, no meds, no surgery no nothing, (well other than a TON of prayer) and the tumour is COMPLETELY gone! So amazing!!
We applied for our visas for our mini outreach, and we're not totally sure how thats gonna go because its not necissarily easy to get visas for the country that we're going to. But we go on tuesday to pick them up so hopefully that goes well for everyone. Then not this coming monday, but next monday we leave for the outreach, apperently its really cold where we're going and often the Thai people get sick because they're not used to the cold but I'm looking forward to it becasue that means that i get to wear my hoodies. yaay.
The speaker this week talked about the Holy Spirit, it was nice because we often get a lot of teaching about God and Jesus, but not a lot about the Holy Spirit, so it made it pretty interesting.
Now for the other best part of this week. Yesterday, guess what I went and did? Oh just chilled inside some tiger cages. I pet huge tigers and sat with them and played with their tails and feet and stuff, and then (get this) i went and played with tiger cubs!!! They were so ridiculously cute! I wish I could have stayed there all day. Some of the people there were volunteer workers, I would LOVE to do that for a job, just hang out with tigers all day? Sounds good to me! We even got to see a tiger cub that was only two weeks old! We couldn't touch it or get very close to the cage though. Who needs a house cat? When I get home I think I'll just get a pet tiger. =D
Anyways, I think thats about it for this week!

Today's Fun Fact

Tigers have tickleish feet.