2019 Thailand Missions - Getting Equipped & Trained
Hello everyone~!! Sawadeeka~!! Thank you all once again for all your support and for committing to pray for our team! Wow, I can’t believe that we will be leaving for Thailand in 9 days!! It’s amazing how time flies by so fast...It felt like it was just yesterday when I committed to go back to Chiang Mai for missions~. Let me tell you why I decided to return to Thailand...
I felt a tug on my heart to return when my fellow team member, Alisa, went back to Thailand in January for her seminary class. She gave me a call via FaceTime and described how she had been settling in and was excited to drop by the Centre during her stay. I had given Alisa a few letters to deliver to a few of the students we met last year, and seeing the photos of them receiving the letters made me miss them so much. It reminded me of the love I developed for the Thai people and made me yearn to go back to reconnect and further the relationships I’ve created there. I felt like last year’s trip ended too quickly as I was just getting comfortable with our routine, and became braver with being more intentional with the students. I’m glad that I have an opportunity to go back and pick up where I left off!
Ever since I’ve committed to going, I feel like God has been shaping and training me in different ways. During the past semester, God has been permitting hardships to discipline me. Every idol I had, whether it be friends or academics, He shot them all down through mentally draining trials. He even revealed to me my weaknesses and the sinful parts of me that I needed to work on (like my lack of patience and insecurities of failure) during my recent 2-week vacation trip in Asia. God has been preparing me to be ready for any challenges that may occur during our trip, and reminding me that He is the one and only I should rely on. This is very important, as I learned from my experience last year, that trusting in God is one of the main aspects of a missions trip and our walk with Christ.
What’s different about the Thailand mission trip this year is that we will be stopping by Chiang Rai for a few days to assist our FCBC missionary, Lillian, with teaching English at high schools. At the Centre, we’re more like TA’s for the staff and will mostly focus on relationship-building with the students. What we will be doing in Chiang Rai though, is going to be drastically different as our main objective would be to teach English ourselves.
To prepare for this, our team has been helping out at FCBC’s ESL classes! We were able to get a feel of what teaching English was like as the teachers let us practice leading the class, even reading and pronouncing a Bible verse with the students. As a normally reserved and soft-spoken person, it was a whole new experience for me to lead an entire class to repeat after me as I slowly read off every word. It was really interesting to experience the proud and satisfying feeling my former foreign language teachers felt every time our class successfully understood or pronounced words correctly. Also, this past week some of our team members unexpectedly had to teach an entire class by themselves without any teacher but were able to successfully pull it off! Although we are still newbies at teaching, our growing patience and enthusiasm to teach will definitely help us in Chiang Rai!
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| Our helpful ESL teachers and volunteers! |
Thank you and please continue to pray for us as the day for our departure gets closer and closer! Here are some prayer requests:
- Whether it be work, finishing off the semester for school, or attending CIT training meetings for summer camp, please pray that we will set aside time to prepare our hearts and minds spiritually and physically rest prior to the trip despite our busy schedules!
- Although most of us are returning members, there are big changes to the dynamics of the trip compared to last year. Pray that we won’t be anxious nor too relaxed about what God has in store for us in Thailand and that we will practice trusting in Him!
- Pray for the Centre’s staff! That they will continue to have strength, energy, and have time to spiritually recharge themselves after pouring into the students every day.
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