Saturday we were full of energy. We ALL feel asleep the night before at around
6:30pm, getting almost 12 hours of sleep each. Good thing because we did a LOT
of walking the next day. We started our day with prayer and worship as a team. It is
so encouraging to be on this team-God is already speaking to us corporately
about similar things. This morning it was “rest” and “seek Him first” and He
will give us those “hidden treasures of darkness”…the “long lasting fruit”. We
were almost brought to tears at how faithful God was in putting this team
together. After strumming the ukulele and guitar for bit and even dancing, we
started our prayer walk into Bangkok. Peng, our guide is awesome-he is 24 and
thinks we are so weird, shaking his head at all our questions but you can tell
he really likes us. He even joined in on a practical joke, where we all hid
from Bensch behind temple statues as he came back from the bathroom, confused
as to where we all went. Yes, we got it on film. Speaking of the temples, we
prayer walked two today. It is easy to be captivated by the beauty and
elaborateness of these places, very photogenic indeed. Yet again I am reminded of Jesus and
His humility and simply His love for this nation amidst the idols; going
straight to the heart. Bangkok is so colorful. Peng took us by bus, train and
even river boat, which we leapt on at the very last second. The food here is
amazing! But I think we are all most captivated by the street smoothies! We
cannot get enough! Anyways, today was good and we got lots of b-roll!
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| Smoothies!! smoothies all. the. time. |
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| Buddhist Temples |
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| River Boat taxi! |
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| Our friend Peng
It was very interesting to spend Christmas in Thailand. Christmas is not a celebrated holiday here-however we did see a Christmas tree outside of the Buddhist temple we visited. Christmas Eve our team visited some families that live in the slum near where we are staying. These families are some of the few that live there and they were such a joy to meet. It amazed all of us that there homes were so peaceful-inside the presence of the Lord was so apparent you didn't feel like you were in a slum. We had the honor of praying for these families, giving them Words and encouraging them on in their ministry. It is a humbling experience to visit places like these. But with Jesus, you remember that this is where He is always. He doesn't simply visit the slums every now and then, He is there. That is where He dwells. It was a reminder of how He came to this world, making our Christmas Eve more special and meaningful.
After this our guide/friend Robert (whose name isn't actually Robert but because we can't apparently pronounce Thai names he just gave us this name to call him haha) cooked for us. We could not believe it-it was better than any restaurant we could have gone to. And fun fact: Robert taught himself how to cook (and I mean cook) by reading a book. It was a spicy Christmas meal buut so good! When we finished our meal, we had our secret santa with small gifts that we had gotten the day before at the night market. It was such a gift from the Lord to be with each other-we all stepped in as each other's family that night. Then we danced. Gungdam Style.
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