Thailand Info and Beach Trip

Hello, friends!

This has been both a basic week and a crazy week in Malaysia. This is day 65 of my race, including training camp, which means I am 25% through! That’s kind of insane to me. We have basically two more weeks in this country, and then…drum roll…

We’re splitting up!

For our first country, we have been blessed to have all 34 people in our squad living and working together in basically three total rooms. We have the bedroom/church sanctuary, the dining room/late night hangout space, and the school/storage room. Our squad leaders tell us that this is not typical. My team leader, Ava, was fortunate enough to have a bed in every country on her race. Most likely my team will not have beds when we get to Thailand, but it won’t be all 34 of us in one room because we will be in different cities with different hosts altogether. Two teams are going to Chiang Mai, one team is going to Bangkok, and my team is going to a village in Chiang Dao, which is way far north in Thailand. I did a little research, and our host has 12 children, so that should be fun! It’s sure to be an adventure!

What We Know

The ministry team Radiant is partnering with will involve helping with a children’s home. We might be teaching English. We might be doing manual labor. We might be doing a combination of the two. Our ministry host has worked with AIM (Adventures in Missions) for quite some time, so she’s quite experienced with working with racers. Chiang Dao is about an hour and a half from Chiang Mai, so we might be able to visit the teams there at some point. I’m hoping we can get together for Christmas.

What We Don’t Know

Everything else.

Breaking News (Part 2)

Today we finally found out what our third country is in Eastern Europe! One team is going to Greece. My team and the remaining two are going to Albania! We will still be split up into four different ministries, but we don’t have any information about what each team will be doing or precise locations. Then when we go to Guatemala, we’ll be back together as a squad again!

How I feel about that

Some people are pretty disappointed that we aren’t going to have all the new friends we just got so close with in the past two months, but I’m just so thankful to God that I’m going to have nine godly young women with me in Thailand. That is for sure enough for me. 😊

Anyways, Sabbath…

America does not really understand the concept of rest at all, much less Sabbath. On the World Race, we have a whole day every week dedicated just to Sabbath. They aren’t super strict with how we choose to use our Sabbath, which is nice because people rest in different ways, but as a squad we have not done a great job of actually resting with the Lord on Sabbath. It’s super tempting to go out to a coffee shop for a couple hours just to get a few things done with the WiFi, but it tends to turn into being out most of the day hanging out with people and getting work done. I have been one of those people nearly every week, but last weekend I decided to change that. I knew that going out is not restful for me, so I put my foot down and stayed at the church the whole day. It was absolutely wonderful! I slept in until 12:30 (we were up late Friday night for church) and spent the whole day reading, spending time in my Bible, prayer walking in the parking lot, and chilling with the couple squad mates who weren’t out. It was lovely to just sit out on the porch area and be alone with God and a book. It was so much more fulfilling than trying to push myself to get something done or hang out with people.

This weekend, I did not Sabbath so well, and I am paying the price, but it was kind of a good reason because…

Penang Beach Trip!!!

This weekend we went to Penang, which is an island with lots of beaches and a beautiful city. It’s pretty touristy, so it was fun to just have fun for an overnight trip. Our hosts were kind enough to make all the arrangements and drive us to Penang. Our first stop was Penang Hill, where we took a mountain train thing to the top of the hill and were able to look out over the city. It was pretty cloudy, but you could see bits and pieces of the city through the clouds, which was cool. I walked around for a bit at the top before settling down and taking a brief nap (I’m sick again…). After I woke up, the clouds had cleared quite a bit, and the view was even better! Before we headed down we watched a bunch of monkeys hanging out in a tree and then jumping to the railing where we all were standing. They got pretty close to people, which was crazy! I wasn’t one of the closest ones, which I was definitely not upset about. 😂

We headed to our two Airbnb houses. I was with the guys, a few other girls, and our drivers. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I guess some driver’s family showed up and they hung out until 2:00am, at which point I got to sleep in a real bed at all for the first time since Mississippi, and I got my own bed for the first time since August 30.

In the morning we got breakfast, checked out of the Airbnb, and headed to the beach! It was great to just hang out and swim in a new-to-me ocean. The water was super salty and also pretty warm, but still very refreshing. Nine other girls and I went out on a boat for a bit, which was super fun! The sea breeze was lovely and either helped with or distracted from my congestion, which was nice. Everything was great at the beach until two people got stung by jellyfish and had to seek medical attention because they reacted poorly. Fortunately they’re both doing a lot better now.

We finished off the night with dinner at the mall, and then a church service in Penang. It was pretty similar to our services in Sungai Petani (the place we’re staying), except there was a full meal afterward! I was not anticipating that, but the food was good! Also, I did get called up to lead Holy Spirit again at the very end of the service, and Carter (our squad’s resident piano guy) accompanied. I was so thankful that God has blessed me by not messing with my voice this time around with sickness so I could still use it for His glory. I’m also learning to point the glory back to Him when people come to me with compliments about my voice, because it truly is not about me. Also, I’m not great at taking compliments, so having somewhere else to direct the glory is helpful. I also really do not want to get caught up in pride because that just would not be good for me or for anyone.

Stay Tuned!

Next week’s blog will cover filming the music video, so definitely check that out! We’ll be recording on Saturday and Sunday. We already got our costumes and everything and we’re working on our last rehearsals to learn the choreography.

Prayer Requests

• I am sick, so pray for a quick and full recovery and plenty of rest. I took a four hour nap today, which was a good start, but I still need some healing.
• We have only two more weeks with our students, so pray for us to represent Christ to them well and to be effective with the practical teaching.
• Pray for the choreography for the music video to come together well. Apparently this is the third time they’ve tried to film it, so it would be fantastic if we could finally get that done.
• Pray for patience with one another and with the hosts as we are still living virtually on top of each other for two more weeks.