HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! Sooo we made it to 2025 which is insane, and also to our third country! This was a CRAZY week mostly filled with buses and planes.
Monday we started out the week with a fire adventure. A few of the squad woke up at 4:00am to drive to Doi Suthep for a little morning sunrise hike. About half of the group left right at 4:30 and the rest of us were waiting for our pre-ordered van… then it didn’t show up. We waited for about 30 minutes while trying to book other cars, but no one was accepting. We decided to do a prayer walk to the 7 Eleven four minutes away so maybe we’d find someone to drive us to the trail. Caleb went in to buy a sandwich, and while he was doing that, Carter flagged down a songthaew that was pulling over right next to us. We all had just enough cash to get us there. God just casually provided us with that right when we were thinking of just saying home. So we got to our the trail eventually where we found the other half of our group who had been waiting for 40 minutes. We started the hike immediately. I ended up falling to the back of the group where some of my other friends were and it was so awesome because we got to take our time, and I took a bunch of pictures of the sunrise as we got up. When we arrived at the top, some of us got a snack at the market by the massive gold temple, and others were working on a way for all of us to get home. By this point it’s 7:45am and we need to be back by 9:00am for worship. A few of the MOGS got us a songthaew and all 16 of us crammed on in. We ended up getting home at 8:45am! We had some awesome worship all together with the squad and a session, then the rest of the day I hung out for a while. I painted with Kat which was SOOOOOO fun!!! I’m trying to be more creative here so that’s been awesome.
Tuesday we did “Team Awesomeness,” so basically my team drove to Pantip over by Bella Goose and we ran into our friend Lexi on our way over there!! I ordered some busss pad thai, then we went to the book store. That night I packed my stuff and got ready for New Year’s Eve!!! I came outside at 11:55pm where some of our squad was. We counted down and immediately hundreds of fireworks started going off all around us. Not only that, but we saw one lantern go up, and suddenly like Tangled, so many lanterns started flying up into the sky. We made our way up to the roof of the dormitory, and experienced the most movie moment ever. Fireworks were going off and lanterns were flying up all around the city and we had such a clear view from the rooftop. Definitely one of the most surreal moments I’ve ever experienced. Funny story, that next day was the day we started travel, so I just decided to stay up all night again like I did last travel day. At 4:30am, Emery, Naty, Caleb, Brandon, and I all sprinted to 7 Eleven to get a little snack. That definitely woke me up.
6:30am on Wednesday, the whole squad headed out. We drove to the bus station where we boarded our double-decker bus that we were about to be on for 13 hours. We took one stop to get some lunch, then we kept moving. I was actually at the very front on the top of the bus which was fire. It felt like I was in a video game low key. At 10:00pm, we arrived in the Bangkok airport. We proceeded to find a section to set up camp, propped up all our stuff, and got ready to spend the night in the airport. I actually stayed up all night once again to be ready to sleep our 11 hour flight that following morning.
Thursday at 10:00am, we boarded our flight to Istanbul, Türkiye. We arrived at 5:00pm, and the second we got out of the plane, everyone noticed how crisp and chilly the air felt. I hadn’t felt cold like that since being home. We were in the fancy Türkiye airport for three hours until our hour flight to Bucharest, Romania. We arrived in the airport and pretty much had to say bye to everyone right after we got our luggage. I was pretty sad, but it happened so fast I didn’t have much time to react haha. From then, my team taxied to our hostel 20 minutes away. The beds were COMFY. I took a shower and konked out around 11:00pm.
We were actually so lucky because we had a 24 hour time period to spend in Romania before our bus ride to Greece. For breakfast, my team ate at Just Bread in Old Town Bucharest. It reminded me sooo much of London with the beautiful architecture. We were in such awe the whole time. The rest of the day consisted of walking around to different churches, hanging out in a huge bookstore, and goofing around walking down the streets. We got back around 6:00pm, picked up 5 pizzas, and ate all of them. At 8:00pm, we left to return to the airport to wait for our bus, and we boarded around 11:00pm. Once we got on the bus, most of us konked out until we got to customs at the Bulgarian border at 3:00am. We just had to show the police our passport and that was it lollll. The bus took two stops in total on our 14 hour ride (we had no bathroom on the bus.)
Old Town: Bucharest, Romania
On Saturday at 1:00pm, we arrived in Thessaloniki, Greece, greeted by our host Anthonis at the bus station! Totaltraveltime was 83 hours. Our first step to moving in was obviously tour our cute little apartment. It’s a little tight, but it feels like the New York dream. I love it in here. We did have to get some new clothes because it is not eternal summer here to say the least. We will be living in 40-50 degree weather for the most part with chilly winds, so we all wanted some winter clothes. We all got to chill in the evening which was amazing.
Sunday morning we got to experience church at Moses Coffee, which will be one of our places for ministry here in Greece. I will in fact get over my dislike for coffee here. I drank a whole cappuccino by myself 😚. Anthonis introduced us to his family and other church members. It basically was a small house church where we worshipped, then Anthonis gave a message. Afterwards we had an AMAZING lunch that his wife Viki made for us. We stayed for a while and just got to chat with everyone, then we went home and hung out.
Dude I was not super excited for Greece before coming here. I think I was afraid of the uncertainty of what life was going to look like in a place I’m going to be living in for two months, which by the way is the longest I’ve lived in one place besides home. Now that I’m here and know what our living situation is and what our ministry is going to look like a little bit, I am PUMPED. The thing with our ministry is we actually don’t have a weekly schedule. Since Malaysia, I recognized how much better I perform in the present when I don’t have plans in the future. So basically, schedules feel very restricting to me. I’m a pretty organized person, but I get stressed out with pretty much anything planned. I think the root of that is going to school and dreading it, so Thailand ministry was a little more stressful for me even though it wasn’t “hard.” Anthonis has a bunch of places and people lined up for us to help in any way we can. We’ll be going out a lot to evangelize but also to build friendship and invite people to the coffee shop, doing prayer walks, cleaning, and having one on ones with Anthonis to learn how to make good coffee. Sooo we’ll be living life here to serve, which is exactly what we’re going to do when we get home, so we’re just practicing. THAT IS SO AWESOME?!?!?!
Also I am so excited for my team in general. We’re working on our passivity as a group, but having new roles it’s going to be so much more growing for all of us. This is a time for us to grow out of our passivity and really make this trip what we want it to be. I want to be a yes woman here. There’s a lot I say no to out of fear, and I’m tired of giving up opportunities just because I’m afraid of embarrassing myself. AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. LIKE DUDE. That’s a biggg thing that I’m working on still is surrendering perfection and the need to please everyone. So I’m going to try to be the first to say yes to the uncomfortable and yes to serving without condition.
I AM TURNT AND READY FOR GREECE!
