If I’m being totally honest, this has been a pretty rough week. I wasn’t anticipating being this homesick over the holidays. Well, surprise! I am. In the words of my teammate Ella, “Hey! And that’s okay.”
Stretching my skills
Ministry this week has been primarily teaching at a preschool. Well, trying to teach. Sometimes it was more like babysitting. Our team was split in half, and each mini team went to a different preschool. Within the preschool I went to, we were each assigned a different class of students. The age range was about 2-5 years old. My class was 10 three and four year-olds.
I have never really gravitated towards small children. I do not speak toddler. I also do not speak Thai, so that made it even more of a challenge to try to engage them. I went through the alphabet and the numbers to 10 with them a few times. I quickly learned that they can say the numbers and letters in order, but they have no idea what they actually look like. I did not fix that at all this week, but there were no injuries in my classroom and I never ran out of the room and gave up, so it was a good week! 🙃
We had nap time after lunch, and it was great because we got a break for two whole hours! I napped with the kids on two out of three days. After nap time, we had to redo the girls’ hair. I didn’t have any experience doing little girls’ hair, but I do now! I did my best, and I think it came out all right. That might have been my favorite part, actually.
Holiday Homesickness
I’m going to be totally honest (not that that’s anything new 😂). It’s been rough. It’s the first time my whole family has gotten together to celebrate a holiday when I wasn’t there. That’s sad. I did get to call and see everyone through a video call, so that was nice. It’s definitely not the same as being there in person, though. Well, now I get why so many people were so alarmed that I’m not even coming home for Christmas.
Here in Thailand, we had a Thanksgiving turkey (with rice of course 🙃). We sat around the table as a team and shared what we’re thankful for. I’m super thankful for my family back home and the ways that I have to connect with them by phone or Facebook or whatever works.
On Saturday, my family got their Christmas tree (live tree only, of course 😉). I was super blessed to be able to call them on Sunday morning (Saturday night back home) and hang out with them around the dinner table and talk about how God has been our Provider over the years. I also loved seeing all the pictures of getting the tree and decorating and everything. It was nice to be able to be involved even from a distance.
On Sunday night, we decorated the children’s home for Christmas! It was fun to put up the (fake) tree with the kids and put all the ornaments on. It’s definitely bitter sweet to be decorating on both sides of the world. I’m torn between the Christmas spirit and just being sad, but that’s really okay. It makes sense, so I’m chill with it.
Upcoming Ministry Need
For Christmas, we are going to be visiting the village where the kids came from who are staying at the Fountain of Hope children’s home (where we’re working right now). Our host Wanida opened the home to rescue the kids out of the Shelley Hill Tribe’s culture, which left them vulnerable to poverty, early marriage (we’re talking early teens), physical and drug abuse, superstitious religion led by witch doctors, forced labor, and sometimes even human trafficking. I have seen firsthand how Fountain of Hope has provided a home and a family for these kids, and it’s a beautiful testament to how God is working in Chiang Dao.
However, the villages these kids came from still need the gospel because they still have all of those problems. That’s why my team will be going to visit one of the villages to do Christmas evangelism on December 13-15! Our goal is to reach 1500 people with the love of Christ and the gospel throughout the weekend.
That being said, we need to raise some funds for that and for some of Fountain of Hope’s other needs.
- Christmas Evangelism in the Lahu Shelley village: $1,160 to cover…
- Food
- Sound system/stage rental
- Gifts for the village
- Materials for games
- A playground for the backyard of the Fountain of Hope homestead: $1,160
- Social Welfare Work: $580 to help…
- Disabled people
- Gifts for the schools
- Food and toiletry supplies for the impoverished
- The boy’s house: $1,750
- A new law mandates that there has to be separate houses for boys and girls. As of now, they are in separate rooms in the same building. This means that they need another building for the boys to stay in to comply with the new law.
If you feel called to give, funds will be going to my squad leader Ava’s Venmo (@ava-grashorn) and then she will direct them to the Fountain of Hope fund.
The power of worship
Our home in Thailand is beautiful and we have great food and our ministry schedule is good, but several people on my team, myself included, have been struggling quite a bit emotionally. We feel deeply sad, but we have no visible reason to be sad. So while we are so grateful to be here in this place with these people and each other, we are not mentally healthy how we would like to be.
Most likely, this is a result of the heavy spiritual atmosphere in Thailand. For example, we drove past an idol store the other day. It’s pretty common to see temples and large idols in the mountains. Thailand is also known to struggle with lust, specifically. Human trafficking is common, although we haven’t witnessed it where we are. It’s just a heavy country, so it makes sense that the enemy would be using that against us.
Between homesickness and other feelings with no real explanation, it’s been a challenging country so far, but the Lord has been so faithful to sustain and even grow me and my teammates through our time here.
One of the ways God has chosen to comfort my soul is through worship with my team! GiGi and I as our team’s worship coordinators really wanted to prioritize worship and prayer after Malaysia. Our hectic and unpredictable schedule in Malaysia made it very difficult to schedule squad worship. Fortunately, in Chiang Dao, God has provided my team with a schedule where we don’t have anything after dinner almost every night. This left room for us to have team worship or team prayer six days a week!
On Saturday I was having an especially rough day emotionally. I know I have the peace of Christ because I have the Holy Spirit and peace is a fruit of the Spirit, but I certainly was not feeling at peace. I asked a few people to pray for me and continued on with my day.
On Saturdays, we worship with Aaron, Wanida, and the kids from the children’s home. We’ve been doing older worship songs with them because they are in the guitar book that the kids play out of, so they know them and can sing along (in Thai, which is super cool!). As we worshiped together, I felt the Lord bring me His peace. I was given the opportunity to look at Him and give Him my heart, and He is so tender with our hearts. I remember specifically singing “Here I Am To Worship,” and telling God, “You’re altogether lovely, altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to me.” The Lord filled my heart with admiration for Him because He truly is altogether worthy. He is so much higher than whatever emotional brokenness we feel and whatever spiritual warfare we face in a heavy country like Thailand.
If you can, spend some time in worship today and let the Lord minister to your soul. He is more than worthy of our praise, and He is faithful to meet us wherever we’re at. I’ll leave you with a couple of worship album recommendations that I’ve appreciated, but obviously whatever’s most worshipful for you is perfect!
- Campfire by Rend Collective
- Only a Holy God by CityAlight
- Any of Shane & Shane’s hymn or Psalms albums
- With Gratitude by David Haas, Marty Haugen, and Michael Joncas is definitely not from my generation, but I like it 😂
- I like to go back to just instrumental hymns sometimes, but that’s probably only worshipful if you actually know the words 🙃
Prayer Requests
- Please pray for our host Wanida and her family as they seek to serve God in Chiang Dao.
- Pray for the Lord to provide all the funds for the projects, especially the Christmas evangelism and the hearts of the people in the village.
- Ask God if He wants you to contribute financially to Fountain of Hope’s upcoming projects.
- Pray for my team and our physical (some people picked up some germs from the preschoolers…) and especially mental health!
- Pray for effective ministry as we’re teaching at a new school this week.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and coming on this journey with me! Your support means the world to me.
