“He’s awakening the hope in me by calling forth my destiny. He’s breathing life into my soul; I will thirst for him and him alone. He has come like the rain; showers on the barren plain. So my heart and tongue confess: Jesus Christ…the hope of man! When my hope is in you God. I am steadfast I will not be moved. I’m anchored never shaken; all my hope is in you.”

“Let HOPE arise”

Saying goodbye to pretty much my family in Honduras was super hard but I supernaturally took it really well. A few tears were shed while I looked at those sweet faces one last time before I went through security to be on my way across the world, but I did way better than I ever even hoped. I received a few notes and read them at the gate, and it still didn’t hit me that we were leaving. Even getting on the plane I didn’t feel like I was actually going to be many miles away from Honduras. I fell asleep before the plane even took off and when I woke up maybe an hour later, only an hour away from the Miami airport it finally hit me. I just said goodbye to people that I had been living with for the past 3 months. I just said goodbye to these boys whom I have seen grow SO much and who are continuing to grow. I just said goodbye to a new home and new family. And I finally realized that just like my family and friends at home in Columbus, GA, I wouldn’t see these people in at least 6 or 7 months. Probably even more. And I took that pretty hard. And in my past few blogs I have talked about my love for Honduras and how I am going back and stuff so I’m not going to blab on about that. On the many long plane rides here to Thailand when I wasn’t sleeping, I was listening to music and doing a lot of thinking and praying. Praying that God would give me the strength to finish these 6 months. But I quickly realized that this wasn’t the prayer I needed to be praying. I needed to be praying that God would do amazing things in Thailand and South Africa. Not just that He would help me get through it…. that’s ridiculous. So my iPod was on shuffle and the song “Hope’s Anthem” by Bethel came on. I’ve always loved this song but God showed it to me on the plane ride in a whole new light. Most of the lyrics are what I wrote above in quotations. These words are so powerful. They are proclaiming how God is our hope and with Him we are steadfast. And with Him we cannot be shaken or moved. And with Him we can go to Thailand where Buddhism is the number one religion and we can preach the gospel! And with Him the boys in Honduras will continue to grow and walk in his paths even though I’m not there to be with them. HE is our HOPE. And the word hope just kept coming into my mind. There is hope for the people of Chanthaburi Thailand. There is hope for the women in the prison we are going to work in. And for the boys and girls in the schools we are going to be working in. And for the people on the streets and in the markets that we are going to be spending time in. God just showed me that there is hope for the nations. And this got me super excited and ready to jump into the ministry.

We spent a few days in Bangkok just relaxing and learning the culture and just enjoying our time. Then my team of me and 4 other girls took a 3 hour van ride to Chanthaburi. We pulled up to a church and the sweetest little Thai family: Pastor, his wife, his “young son”, his “old son” and his wife and little girl. To be honest I don’t really know how to spell any of their names so maybe later I can let y’all know. The Pastor lives where his church is and we live above the church on the 2^nd floor. We are going to be teaching English at different schools and visiting a juvenile prison, a women’s prison, sick families, and a hospital. We started ministry today and it went very well. We met the students we would be with this week and probably more weeks to come. Then in the afternoon we went to the juvenile prison. We had no clue what to except or what we were even going to do. We were nervous going in because we didn’t know how the kids would react to us. But it turned out so awesome that we decided we are going to go back as much as possible. We were able to share the gospel to these kids in the same room where there was a huge idol. It was an amazing picture to see.

Okay so this is a long blog post so I will stop here.

Things to be praying for: The people in Honduras, my heart for Honduras, the people of Chanthaburi, Thailand, and my team as we jump into these next six weeks of crazy cool ministry!!