Humbled by Love

We made it to Cambodia after a nine hour bus ride, which I hardly slept on....long lines at the Bangkok airport, and a bumpy airplane ride.......we made it! We were told we would be working with an outreach called Remember Nhu, which is a girl's home in Cambodia. This home takes in girls that are at risk of being trafficked into the sex industry. They give them an education, and a stable home spiritually and emotionally. After our journey, I was feeling very tired and exhausted but when we pulled up to the house, all the girls came running out waiving and smiling at us. We got out and they started carrying in our bags which are heavy. And these were a bunch of little nine year olds, who weren't even as tall as our bags standing up. They were so excited to see us, that all my tiredness just left, and I was reminded again what I love deeply....and that's the joy that kids bring. We played the afternoon away, from learning different versions of paper, rock, scissors, to them showing us the chicken coupe. I have already grown a bond with these girls....simply because of their love for me without even knowing me. I don't understand how someone can have so much love for someone that they don't even know. This afternoon felt like what it would feel like if Christ was loving me. He accepts us where we are, stinky, tired, kinda grouchy....and shows us love that is so undeserving. These kids did the same....and I must say, that I was humbled today.  Humbled by love that looks like Christ, and it was shown by a child. How may times do we choose not to love in this way? We have been shown this love by the Creator Himself....and still we choose to love with shallow intentions. What would happen if Nations loved other Nations in this way? Of accepting without even knowing......what would happen to Universities if students loved other students in this way? Change would happen, minds would open, and we would start to look like the generation God has called us to be. Lets be humbled by love....and just see what happens.....

Intentional Lives

It's funny how we go through life not listening to the whispers of God but when He speaks through big things like natural disasters....we all perk up and start paying attention.  Why do we do this as humans? We stumble through life not knowing where to go....passing by burning bushes....but then a natural disaster happens......and we think oh now is the time. One thing I have learned from all of this is that even though the Burmese people as of right now are dying because wells are busted....they were dying before the Earthquake, spiritually, everyday they didn't hear or get shown the love of Christ. I have been given this desire to be a voice for the voiceless and these people need to be heard. These Burmese people are crying out and no one is hearing them. It shouldn't have taken being in the epicenter of a 7.0 Earthquake for me to realize this. So why did it take me this long to understand that we must live intentional lives? When the building was shaking uncontrollably and people were scared all around us in the middle of the street, it was as if God was saying....I want you to be unshakable. There are people around you, looking for answers......and you have it. I don't expect perfection but I want you to be unshakable. At first my response was, "I'm scared, and small, and I want to.....but I'm scared." And then I realized something new about God's character and it was this: God is bigger and intentional with the way He does things....so why am I not the same? God doesn't want us to float around and then when something big happens pitch in and think this is our calling. No, our calling is the mother in the grocery store who needs a word of encouragement, the family member that needs a prayer warrior to lift them up. We need to start living intentional lives, because everything Christ did was intentional, He didn't wait for natural disasters to get up and act. We need to transform into a generation that is unshakable for His name. Before I started this trip...I was asked what I wanted to walk away with from this trip. And I responded with, "I want to know more of God's character, and I want to come back changed, and however that has to happen, I'm not going back without it." And I will say that I never would have thought that it would take a 7.0 Earthquake for me to learn this, but I did. God is continuing to reveal new things and pieces of Himself to me, and steps are being taken ahead of me. God is good....so good......and my heart is His.

This past week....

Where to begin...I don't really know....this past week has been an emotional, life altering, and one of the most spiritually challenging weeks I have been through on my trip thus far. This is going to be a rather long blog.....and I have no other way of expressing this week, but telling you exactly what happened. So I'll start from the beginning of this week. We arrived in Mae Sai, Thailand on Monday simply thinking that we would meet our next contacts and work with some street kids for the up coming week. The first day we met the kids, and I absolutely loved this ministry. Basically just a little background, Mae Sai is right on the border of Burma....so the majority of the kids we were working with were Burmese children, who come over to the Thai side to beg, and more than likely get in trouble. So this drop in center provides a place for these kids to stay, eat, sleep, and honestly just be children, until they have to go back to Burma to worry about things that a nine year old shouldn't have to worry about. This area is also known for a high rate of child prostitution because of their vulnerability being street kids with no home. So our job this week was to love on these kids, play games, and sing songs with them. The few days we did have with the children....I was reminded of how much I love teaching. My passion for the impressionable mind of a child was beginning to grow on me again.
So Thursday night rolled around and I felt like I was getting sick, so I decided to try to go to bed early to see if that would help my sickness. What I didn't know was that I would be waking up to something I never would have imagined. Mae Sai is a city filled with older buildings...that seemed to have had their good years way back when. And we were staying at the drop in center, which was a four story concrete building. I was sleeping on the third floor, while everyone else was having worship time on the second. I wish I could explain in words what happened next, but every time I try...it never comes out, how it really happened. But basically, I woke up to my teammates screaming my name, and the entire building shaking and swaying as if it was a piece of paper.  I ran for the stairs and was trying to process what was actually happening. I finally realized that I was not in a dream and that I needed to get out of the building. So I began running down the stairs trying to step on the unsteady floor, being tossed against the stair walls. Skipping steps trying to hurry and run as fast as a could...I finally made it to the bottom level. I ran for my shoes because my thought was....if I'm going to have to run out of this city while buildings are collapsing....I'm gonna do it with my shoes on. At that point....the Earthquake had stopped, and my team ran outside. We didn't know how to react......some cried, others sang, and my reaction was pure silence, because my heartbeat felt like it was outside of my body. At this point everyone in the city was outside on the streets, scared not knowing what to do. We began trying to call people but phone lines were busy...so we waited, and waited. There were after shock tremors and the panic that I felt running out of the building rushed back in.....and people didn't know what to do. We were sitting on the street, when another tremor came, and people got up and started running down the street trying to find an opening amongst all the concrete buildings. And there we were..... running down the streets of Mae Sai, looking up to watch out for power lines and falling things. Some parts of the night felt like we were in a movie, and we were all waiting for the Director to say cut......but no one ever did.
We waited on the streets for three hours....and our leaders decided that tremors were going to keep coming, and we couldn't enter back in the building....and we very well couldn't spend the night on the streets surrounded with brothels. So contact was made and we were evacuated out of the city and slept or should I say sat on a cafeteria floor that night.
There are so many things that happened within a small amount of time....and I will be sharing some things I learned in my later blogs through all this....but I wanted everyone to know, that I am alive and well. This past week was something I never expected, and I learned things that I never would have....if I didn't go through this.  Stay tuned for stories about the quake....and the goodness of God's character that was revealed through it all. I am safe and sound, and by the prayers of people all around and by the grace of God....I have survived. God is good!

It was Time for Good Byes

We showed up on Bangla with bracelets and flowers on Thursday night. It was the night that we were supposed to say good bye and I was dreading every bit of it. We put together those bracelets that you make in Sunday school with the colored beads, telling about salvation, for all the girls we had connected with. From bar to bar we gave out white flowers and bracelets. It was as if they couldn't believe someone had made something specifically for them. They didn't ask what the beads meant, but we all knew what they stood for. It was the answer to their freedom. We can only pray and hope that someone will come along and tell these women what each color stands for, and the freedom that is intended for them. We gave and received hugs and laid out our hearts one last time, to make sure they knew.....how special they are. Of my time spent here...I can honestly say that my heart was broken for these women. I learned more about the love of Christ in these past two months than I could have ever dreamed of. To end it all, it is tradition to send off balloon lights into the sky for good luck, so our team wrote each lady we connected with on the balloon. We wrote down declarations of freedom and truth to reign over them....and then released it. We gave up their names.....and we can rest in the fact that the God of the Universe knows, loves, and cherishes them. It was hard to walk away, but I must look forward so that I don't miss what God is doing. God did some amazing things here in Phuket, and I can't wait to see what is next.

The Harvest

We have been praying for the harvest......that it would be ready, and it was picked and ready on Friday night. You go out to Bangla Road, praying and wanting God to show you big things......and sometimes you get in the truck after pouring out your heart all night, and you see no real harvest. At first it can be hard because you have so much passion for these women, and you pour out so much love and at the end of the day, the numbers are still the same. At first this is hard to grasp, but then you see how God is in all the small things....and really it's just about you being there and bringing light and life into that place. So you go, regardless of the numbers not changing drastically because the light you bring may be the only light seen down there.
But we had been talking with this one lady, and for her own safety I will call her Kat, a lot this past week. She seemed very interested in the English classes we offered during the afternoons. We asked if she wanted to meet us and we would bring her to English class together. She agreed and so we set a time to meet. These classes are intended to interest the girls and then we can introduce the idea of the program we work with, which gives them jobs outside of the bars. So the day came when we were going to meet, and so we waited. And waited, and I soon began to think she wouldn't show. When all of a sudden a woman wearing a sweatshirt, with the hood up, a hat, jeans, and sunglasses, walked up to me and said, "Remember me!?" It took me a second to recognize her and then we hugged and walked her to class. She seemed to like the class, and was just taking in everything she was learning, like a child eager to learn. We said our goodbyes and told her we would come see her in her bar in a couple days.
We show up Friday night, eager and ready to see where the Spirit will lead and we found ourselves in Kat's bar. At first we did not see her, and was very sad at the thought of not being able to ask if she liked English class, when suddenly she came in with a smile, I have never seen. She saw us and almost ran over to us, giving us hugs. She sat down at our table, and I could tell there was something different about this woman. Something that the bar girls don't normally have....and that's joy. She leaned in real close and whispered words to me that I will never forget, and it was this, "I leave bars in two days, I got job at the mall." At first my reaction was one of disbelief. And then a rush of overwhelming joy hit me in the face and I couldn't stop smiling. She kept saying thank you so much, I am so happy. And I kept saying thank you so much, I am so happy. We hugged and I almost cried but knew the bar owners were already starring at us, so we both just smiled.
The harvest was ready, and there must have been seeds planted before we got there, because it took just someone taking an interest in her life, and telling her she deserved more, that would change it. The joy on her face was indescribably in words, and it was penetrable to the point of being contagious. There was something so thankful in her voice, when all we had done was shared the love of Christ with her. Friday was a night I will not forget....it is one that God smiled at.

Second Chances

The more time I'm here, the more I am amazed at the God we serve. Monday night was once again one of our prayer nights. My partner and I walk the streets and the beach while lifting up prayers for the ones doing bar ministry..... that they would have boldness, love, and compassion for the men and women they come across. I found myself sitting in the sand worshipping and praying very intently when all of a sudden a Western looking man and Thai girl sat down maybe six steps away from me. This has become a common sight that I have almost accepted as the norm down here, but I found myself trying not to stare at this peculiar couple. He seemed very young and nervous, not really knowing what to do or how to talk to this girl. She seemed very unhappy to be there, and almost trying to distance herself from him. She kept looking at me trying to make eye contact, and we exchanged a few smiles. I tried to stop looking in that direction because I felt like the man was beginning to catch on that the girl was having more interactions with me through simply smiling, than he was trying to have with words. So I continued to pray and then it hit me like the waves crashing in front of me. "Give her a flyer." Now if you have read my blog about Hesitation from Fear, you can remember last week when I decided not to listen and I missed an opportunity God had appointed. So this week....I was not going to make that mistake again.
So I went to tell my partner I was going to hand this girl a flyer about the organization we are helping, and just to keep walking after I do.  She agreed and I began to walk towards the couple still sitting in the sand. With each step, I grew more nervous. I began doubting, my head was asking, "How do I hand it to her, Do I drop it in the sand? What if the man gets mad? What if I heard God wrong?" But what happened next threw all my doubts out the window. As a got closer I noticed an old woman with roses approaching the couple as well. We were angling them off to what seemed like, that we would meet them at the same time. When I got close enough I realized that the old woman with roses began asking the man if he wanted any, which drew his attention to the left..... away from me slipping the paper in the hands of the girl on the right. If I could describe my expression in words, it was like I had won a prize without the knowledge of even registering for the prize. I couldn't believe what had happened. We continued to walk away and eventually I stopped, and asked my partner, "Did that really happen?" She confirmed that it was only through God's timing that it would ever be possible. We left the beach and I was overflowing with the joy of second chances. I got a second chance and God was a part of every second, literally. I learned that night to stop doubting when you hear the whispers of God. I learned that when He tells you to do something, He is going to follow through. And I learned that there is joy in second chances. I don't know the situation of that girl on the beach but I do know that I didn't hesitate from fear. I do know that God shows up when He tells you to do something, usually in bigger ways than you ever thought. I am amazed at our God, and how He intricately designs and places everything in your life to be where it is. There is purpose in the Father, there is perfect timing, joy, and there is second chances.