In Your City.

My time in Bangkok has come to an end. Tomorrow morning, I fly out to the Philippines. It's been a hard day, knowing Thailand will soon be a memory, but I'm incredibly expectant of what is to come.

The last two weeks have been awesome. Two weeks ago was "Personal Week." We took the DISC personality analysis, a spiritual gifts test, a conflict resolution class, a class on integrity, and others. It was definitely a week of soul-searching and growing in my identity with Jesus. We also got the chance to take a class on loving Muslim people, and a Muslim man came in to speak to us. We were able to ask him whatever we wanted! Such an amazing opportunity.

On Sunday, we ran the children's ministry at Life Centre Church. We were going to tell the story of the fall of man, do a craft, play some games and love on the kids. We were thinking there were gonna be some Thai children and some English children, because it's a Thai/English church. But when we arrived, there was NO dominant language among the kids. One spoke Thai, one spoke English, one spoke French, two spoke Tamil (they were from Sri Lanka) and some didn't speak at all! So it's definitely challenging trying to get your message across when no one understands what you're saying. But I know that even when you feel useless, God has asked you to serve there for His purposes.

This past week was Ministry Week, which was just incredible. Each day we had missionaries come speak to us about what they're doing. The pastors of Life Centre came and spoke one day. When they were newlyweds, they were kidnapped and held for 165 days. Their story of faith and their amazing marriage rocked me. If you want to read their story, you can google their names (they're pretty famous in Scandinavia- Daniel and Paulina Brolin.) We listened to Annie Dieselberg from Nightlight talk about her work rescuing women from the sex industry. We had a missionary named Celeste come speak to us on gender confusion and the Thai "ladyboys." We even got the chance to teach English to the students we have been eating lunch with every day. By the end of the session, I got my whole class to stand up with me so I could teach them the Macarena. 

We finished today with prayers of blessing and commissioning over each other, and a little graduation ceremony. Tomorrow I will fly to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and then on to Manila, where I will stay the night, and then drive 250km (a 10 hour drive) to my new home, Banuae. 

Thailand, I will miss the helmet-less motorcycle rides, the abundance of "my-kow-jy" (I don't understand), your smiles, the sky train rides, using baht (the currency), a 711 every 30 feet, your grace to foreigners, and so many other things. You have a piece of my heart.. I will be back some day!

Kelly