Two months in Thailand is rather crazy. I am starting off with this photo, it was taken within the hour of landing in Thailand, in our first (of many) Songthaows rides, traveling onward to our first night in Thailand, but mostly I just remember the pure happiness that I had in this moment, of finally, after the many months of preparing, “I am here..”
To begin my time in Thailand, I led (along side my teammate Faith) the Thailand DTS (discipleship training school) outreach, we were a team of 7 (including baby Nolan, aka the most well remembered member of our team) and we went to 3 different locations throughout Thailand. Our outreach focus was on “children at risk” So we have now taught English from Pre-K all the way to 12th grade, We were wildly unprepared going into the start of outreach but we learned so much just by showing up and doing it! My team does so well with showing up and giving it a go, and it carried our team so well in the middle of being very unsure of what each day, and hour held!
Kuhn Yuam
We started our outreach in Kuhn Yuam of Mae Hong Son. Oh how we loved it there. Our contact for this area is a Christian Karen lady by the name of Mae, an absolutely amazing woman. She shared so much wisdom with us, everything from her crazy journey of faith with God, to how she healed cancer by living off the fruits of the land.
During our stay: In the mornings we would teach at the local high-school, in pairs of 2 we would teach 3 classes every morning, repeating the exact same presentation over, and over, AND OVER again. We lost the wonder of doing it after about day 3, but it was a wonderful experience. The rest of our days were just filled with going with Mae about her daily routine, We got to visit a couple Karen churches and villages, of course doing a little singing and sharing everywhere we went!
Highlights
Spending time on Mae’s farm — she would invite us over for a meal and “story time” We spent times worshipping together, we taught her and her family one of favorite worship songs, and they translated the chorus to Thai and sang it, it was absolutely beautiful.
Coffee Jack!! The very first day we arrived, Mae dropped us off at a local coffeeshop to meet with a teacher from the high-school to go over what our time teaching would look like. – We immediately fell in love with the drinks, the coffeeshop, and the owner, needless to stay we visited her a lot over the next 2 weeks! She really cared for us as if we were her own, we had about a mile and a half walk from her shop to our hotel, and she would give us a ride whenever she could, just leaving her little shop open and alone as she would give us a ride in her little truck.
Crazy Drives – Kuhn Yuam is surrounded by beautiful mountains, (think Blue Ridge Parkway) and we took a few drives through them to visit Karen villages or just to see the beautiful sights. The first Sunday we were there she told us she’d come pick us up for church, she had conveyed earlier that her church was just a few minutes away from where we are staying, so we hopped in the back of the truck, prepared for a few minute drive to her church, but we just kept driving (we were sitting in the bed of the truck and so didn’t have a way to communicate with her) we drove past her house, out of town, climbing steeper and steeper into the mountains, through multiple checkpoints, until eventually we weren’t even in the same province anymore, then suddenly a sharp turn started taking us deep down into a valley, we were hanging on for dear life as we drove down through washed out roads, stopping every now and then to put the tailgate back up as is it was flung open. Finally just over 2 hours later our “few minute drive” ended, we hopped off and Mae said that she had to go to vote…. (We don’t know….) – so we just stood there, unsure of what to do next, eventually she came back and we finally headed off to church for real, walking a couple minutes back up the mountain, we of course were asked to sing a song, which we managed to pull of fairly well despite the giggle fits that consumed our team. The next Sunday she again picked us up for church, and this time it truly was only 5 minutes away, by this point we were seasoned enough to expect anything 🙂
Chiang Rai
Our second location was a small village on the outskirts of Chiang Rai, where we spent time at a school/children’s home/boarding school. Here we once again were teaching English every day! It was a little different here as we did grades kindergarten to grade 9, there English knowledge was very small, but we did have a translator which helped tremendously. We did work projects which consisted of sanding and painting metal bed frames…. It was a special time, as well as planning a couple morning/evening programs for the children that lived at the school.
Highlights
Friday Nights – Friday nights we would plan a fun evening for the children that lived at the school, we would do dancing, games, etc. Who had more fun, us or them? We’ll never know!
Food – A very worthy mention, we stayed on the property at the school and so had all of our meals served there, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and somehow there was almost no two meals the same, and so we got to experience so much more of the local cuisine than we normally do (we tend to stick to our Pad Kra Pao aka basil chicken and rice)
The people – it’s been so fun making connections with people here, and knowing that we are going to be able to be able to continue to see them. Our translator was a young girl from a neighboring children’s home, and such a fun, lovely human. As well as the rest of the staff at the home, they cared for us so well and have such beautiful hearts for the work that is happening.
Team – this really was a highlight throughout all of outreach. Teams really have a way of making or breaking experiences in all areas of life, but my team has been so amazing all the way through, marked with joy no matter the task set before them, laughter and amazing attitudes were everflowing and it made the less than enjoyable tasks, great fun.
Mae Kachan
The moment we were all waiting for. Going to New Vision For Life’s Children’s home. (This is where we will be living long term once we finish language school) – our two weeks here were every bit as wonderful as I had imagined. Maybe more, it was so fun seeing familiar faces as well as making new connections, and just being able to tell the children that we wouldn’t just be leaving in a few days but that we would be back and would see them many more times! Most of our locations we would have a specific contact and they would give us a schedule and plan of what we were going to be doing, here we did not really have this, so every day we would show up and just see how we could most helpfully insert ourselves in to the chaos!
The first week there we stayed at the children’s home in the rooms they have for teachers. The living conditions are less than ideal and it was a bit more stressful of a situation as the last while they have been having a real problem with the children stealing anything they can get their hands on, (realistically it is probably only a couple children who have decided that the thieving life is for them) but people have had their cars and rooms broken into and their valuables stolen. So even though we kept our rooms locked, we still had to hide our valuables or keep them on us (doing painting projects, bath time etc, is real special when you’re toting around all you hold dear) but despite all that! I loved being able to stay on site, it gave us a better chance to get to know some of the staff as we shared meals with them, as well as getting to experience what the children’s day looks like from morning to night.
Highs and lows
the chicken pox crew. There was a small outbreak of chicken pox while we were there, the school was trying to contain it my “quarantining” the ones who had it (but every now and then they would bring them out for an activity or event) which was in a little room to the side of the kindergartners room. It was so sad to see them couped up in there for days, but it was so fun to go in there and spend time with them, to be able to spend longer one on one time with them and not have them be lost in the sea of hundreds of other children.
Meet Denqua. I found her passed out on a concrete bench in the dining room one day, lying in a puddle of her own vomit. From what I could deduce, she had been there for hours, and no one had noticed or taken the time to stop and check on her. I was able to take her into the clinic and get her a bed, where she continued to vomit until she finally fell asleep. Not once did she cry or say a word.
There are two realities here that are so hard: the children who are experiencing things that would produce tears in almost any other child, yet don’t cry a tear, for all the times when they did cry, it made no difference and they had no one to care and the ones you do find crying but can’t communicate with to care for or listen to them. It is this reality that motivates me to put all my might and effort into learning the language as best I can.
Meet Suitupon (enjoy all my made up spellings of these names) — what a kid. Never in class when she should be, but somehow always the smartest kid around. But to be fair, her class is often without a teacher as they just don’t show up, and so the class just sits in their room watching TV. One day when I asked her why she wasn’t in class, she managed to communicate with me through signs and wonders that they were just watching the screen in her classroom and that is not good for her brain. She was always trying to sneak up on us and scare us, sometimes she would wait as long as two seconds before trying to scare the same person again. She would always come join us by our painting projects, but was always so diligent in making sure none of the other children came close (it was rare to be able to get through a whole painting project without it being marred by some curious child) love her so much ❤
There is a group of 9-12 year-old girls who for a whole school year, are in charge of caring for the kindergartners in many areas, bath time, getting them up in the morning, and getting them to bed at night and so many more areas, They have a different set of girls who take on this role every school year, and in the past there have been girls who are very unkind and are clearly not happy to be in this role (which to be fair, no girl this age should be having to have all that responsibility and work) but this particular group do so so well, they are so kind and genuinely seem to enjoy caring for the little ones, they miss out on so many fun times that the other children experience, and have work to do in most all of the other children’s free time, so one afternoon we were able to have a little party for them to thank them for their hard work, we had boba tea, nail painting and bracelets and they got to skip out on bathing all 100 of the kindergartners we had no translator so I used every bit of Thai I know to try and convey why we wanted to celebrate them and thank them for doing such a wonderful job. Whether they understood the reason we brought them all together or not, we’ll never know, but we do know they had so much fun and couldn’t stop thanking us
Anyways. It was amazing and I am so excited to go back and be able to go all in and see what all God has in plan for our team and this place!
I am now back in Chiang Mai, we are officially done with DTS and are working on getting settled in here. Apparently it is a whole lot of work moving to a new country, every day is a long day filled with so many long processes, going grocery shopping suddenly is so much work as you travel all around town trying to find everything you need to fill a pantry, getting a license/dmv things are already hard in your own country, but here it consists of getting an extension on your visa, a letter of residency, green books and blue books and papers and slips and lots of waiting in different offices. I was very blessed to be able to find both a house to rent and a moto in the same weekend, so I have those things out of the way, praise God. Next week we will start language school, driving school, and hopefully get our bike license.
Prayer Requests
- Language school – pray that I would just have the gift of Thai or something. Languages are not my strong suit already and Thai is a very hard language to learn.
- Safety – always a good prayer request, but as we start driving around on our little motos in these crazy roads and traffic, that we could withhold from getting the “Thai tattoo/ gravel rash” as long as possible 🙂 In the few weeks I’ve been here I’ve already seen an alarming amount of bike accidents. God be with us all
That is all for now, call me, text me, EMAIL ME. I love to hear about your lives as well, love you byeeee
oneyesatatime 
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