Four more days till I go home....I guess it's home...This place feels more like home in someways. Life in Thailand is not complicated, it's slower, it's simpler, it's real. Life here is real in the sense that people see the reality of suffering or pain. Back home... pain is a lot easier to cover up or masked because we have more...We have cell phones, ipods, T.V's, cars, our very own bedrooms to run away and tune out the pain of life. Here people don't have these things to distract them from their pain...They have to face the pain.

I think that is how God wants us to live. He wants us to be able to face the reality of pain. He doesn't want us to mask it but to look at it head on! It is in those times when we look at our pain and we realize that it is too heavy of a burden to carry on our own. We realize masking pain only makes the wound worst, the emptiness deeper.

I feel that this is one of the many lessons I have learned in Thailand. While I have been working with my friends who are poor, I have come to learn from them that I need to embrace my brokeness and pain. I need to embrace it because it is there, where God meet us in our brokeness. There He promises to hold us during our pain.

Speaking of pain...I guess you could kinda say I am going through it a little right now. It's going to be so hard saying goodbye to Leah, Monicah, and her new baby girl, Anna*. This three girls have capture my heart, and taught me so much during my time here. As I prepare to say my goodbyes I can only look to Jesus as my strength, I can only trust in Him that He will provide for all of our needs. In this situation, I need to face the pain of good-bye and trust that God is watching over all of our lives, Leah, Monicah, and Anna, even when we are far apart.




As I prepare to go back to the States, I am feeling even more confident in where God is leading me. I know with out a doubt Thailand has just been the beginning, of what God has for Josh and I. Working with women in these situations is where God is leading us and we are excited to continue to enter ministry with the Lord- bringing light into darkness.

One last story....The other night was my last night for Outreach in the streets. It was a great night seeing the kids we work with and saying my good-byes. At the end of the night as I was heading home and waiting at the bus stop. I walked past a young women standing on street corner. While I was waiting at the bus stop, I compelled to looked over at this young women. She was standing there smiling at me. I felt a pull to go over and talk with her. I asked her how is was doing, and we had some small talk. She told me, she was 20 years old and from Africa. Soon she began to opened up more. She told me, that she was brought over here to "work". She had only been working in Thailand 2 weeks. She said, she doesn't want this life of work, but wants to be free. I continued to listen to her story, and at the end of our conversation she said to me, " I swear, I really treasure the day I met u. U is a good friend and I pray to GOD dat our friendship should last forever n ever. Promise me dat we will always be friends."

Those were her exact words.

There I was standing in front of this young women, I just met. In that moment, I knew that I was made for this. I was made to be a light, to love, to be a friend. We are all made for moments like that. We were made to be available to God's work, wherever we are. We were made to comfort the weak, we are made to love the unlovely, we were made to feed the hungry....Ultimately we were made to bring glory to Jesus...and these things point to Him.

We are made to point to Christ, so that when a young strangers come up and talk to us, we can be ready to give an account of the hope that is in us.

That night, I left the young women, knowing I that I just planted a seed, and I might not see her again. But that night I also knew that I left her with a piece of Jesus. She knew I cared for her, that she was valued, and she was loved. I share this story not at all to talk about what I did, but to truly point to Christ and his love that shines through us. Matthew 5:14-15 says, "You (believer) are the light of the world...let your light shine before men... that they may praise you Father in heaven." This is my prayer that I may decrease so that Christ's light may increase!