Let it Rain

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We are currently in the midst of what has been called the worst flood in Chiang Mai history. But it’s not just this city that is under water, it’s pretty much anywhere in the country that is near a river. The weather predictions show at least two more storms coming before the weekend is over. Pray for Thailand.

If I were a real photo journalist I’d be out there shooting some amazing photos for you but instead I’m hiding out on high ground because I’m a bit of a germaphobe. Here are some shots of the city taken by friends:

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The photo above is the street where my church is located.

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For those of you that have visited Chiang Mai, this is the famous Night Bazaar. This photo was taken standing in front of the McDonalds (not pictured to the right) and last I heard, they are still serving food. Although you have to swim there to get it…

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The local hardware store (think Lowe’s or Home Depot) located not too far from my house.

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My friend Mark’s daughter standing outside the bus stop. The Ping River on the right is overflowing, causing the flood.

 

Many families are without homes and have lost all they own. There are people missing and several reported dead. Please just keep all of this in your prayers. Thanks!!

You Were There

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My older sister Tiffany was a wonderful poet, even had a couple her poems published. She wrote this poem early on in high school and I’ve got a copy of it in my bible. Every time I come across it I smile and miss her a little more than usual.

You Were There

“You were there when I wanted to be my life’s own boss,

You were there to lay Your life for me on the cross.

You were there when my life seemed that it would end,

You were there, I always found the love You’d send.

You were there when I wanted to do it on my own,

You were there to say I wasn’t all alone.

You were there and sent Your only son to me,

You were there when I realized this is what I need.

You were there when I laid my life down to follow You,

You were there to say You’d always help me through.

And now that You’re here I know we’ll never be apart,

Because You’re here in my life and in my heart.”

I love you and miss you every day, sis!!!

News from Thailand, September 2011

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Thank you to everyone who prayed for me when I was sick a couple of weeks ago, I really appreciate it! I was pretty miserable but after I sent the email out, I could feel all your prayers coming my way and I’m feeling much better now. Thanks for believing in healing for me!

It is never easy to ask for help of any kind, but I believe that God uses meaningful relationships between people like you and me to bless and encourage one another in times of need. My heart smiles when the people I love ask for help because it allows me to bless them in a very specific way.

Even so, I’ve been struggling for a couple weeks with what to write to you and all my other friends too.  A friend encouraged me to just be honest. So, this is me laying my need on the table before you and trusting that God will lead some of my friends to help in my time of need.

I am struggling financially and have been for several months. I don’t need much, but over the past months I’ve barely been able to pay the basics (rent, utilities, etc.) and still have money for groceries afterwards. I serve an amazing God and month after month He provides, sometimes quite miraculously. But, I know that God doesn’t want me to carry the stress that I’ve been burdened with over these financial difficulties so I’m asking for help. I need to raise at least $300 a month. It may not seem like much, but it is enough to lift this monthly burden from me.

My ministry leader, Julie, said to me recently “You have to spend money to make money, even in ministry.” This statement is very true and so I am planning a fund-raising trip back to the states. I’ll be visiting different churches and individuals in the hopes of spreading awareness of the ministry here in Thailand and in turn, raising more financial support so that I can continue to serve here. 

It’s been four years since I’ve been with family over the Christmas holidays and I long to be with them, so my hope is to plan the trip around that time. I will spend a couple months traveling and sharing from my heart, with a break in the middle for the holidays. This trip is going to cost me about $3000, with half of that being my plane ticket. This is a much bigger amount to raise but I have true peace in my heart that this is a trip that God wants me to take.

How can you help? You can pray and ask God if He can use you in my life. If you feel led to give, there are two options. You can give monthly towards the $300 goal or you can give a one time gift towards the $3000 goal for my trip home. Either way, you will be a big blessing to me!

I want to encourage you that a little bit goes a long way here in Thailand. I’ve often heard people say “I don’t have an extra $100 to give a month” but I encourage you to let God show you how much to give. I have a couple supporters that faithfully give $5 or $10 a month and they make a huge difference in my budget each month, I couldn’t do this without them. Please know that any amount, whether it seems big or small to you, will help me greatly!

I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I was offered an awesome opportunity to teach a session at the annual Chiang Mai Women’s Conference this weekend. I believe that we can worship God in many different ways, including our hobbies and creative outlets. Over the past year I’ve been able to show my photos in a couple different settings and share how I worship God through my photography. I must have reached a couple different people because I was asked to teach on worshipping through photography and I’m very excited about it! I’d appreciate your prayers for me.

My ministry is funded entirely by donations from friends like you. If you are interested in helping me financially, you can do so with one of the following two options:

Send money to:
Empower International
P.O. Box 938
Anaheim, CA 92815or submit it online at:
www.PowersPlanet.org
Either way, please be sure to include my name!
*You may or may not have noticed that the ministry name has changed from ‘Powers Ministries International’ to ‘Empower International’. Same great ministry, new great name!

My Personal Randomness

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I just came across this “25 Random Things” post that I did on Facebook a few years ago and it made me smile. Thought I’d repost it here. Here’s some randomness about me:

1. My favorite color is green, it makes me smile. If I could, I’d paint the whole world green and never get sick of it.

2. I LOVE learning new Thai words and use them as much as possible.

3. My favorite sound is when the spine on a brand new book creaks for the first time.

4. My favorite smell is paper.

5. My little sister is my best friend in the world, she knows me better than anyone else and I don’t know what I would do without her.

6. Phone calls late at night or really early in the morning make my heart skip several beats in fear because that is how I heard that my older sister died.

7. I love to make people laugh and spend far too much time looking stupid to invoke laughter.

8. I can’t watch horror movies or war movies or anything bloody because the images stay in my mind for years and cause nightmares.

9. And yet, one of my favorite tv shows is Supernatural. It freaks me out but I can’t get enough of it.

10. I miss my dogs during the day and can’t wait to get home and see them every night.

11. I hate talking on the phone and avoid it as much as possible.

12. I daydream a lot.

13. I had my ear cut off when I was 14 years old.

14. My dreams at night are so vivid and I spend a lot of trying to figure out if something really happened or was just a dream.

15. Photography is often my only creative outlet and I depend on it to relax sometimes.

16. I love to write and in another life might be an author. However, I can’t handle people reading my stuff in front of me and I have to leave the room. I think this stems from the time in 6th grade when my English teacher told me I was a bad writer.

17. I enjoy problem solving.

18. I’m an introvert and need a lot of down time.

19. I hate feeling left out. I always want to be invited to everything, even though I will often say I can’t go because of my introvertedness.

20. I am super claustrophobic and hate small places and big crowds. Even watching them on tv sometimes makes me hyperventilate.

21. I passed out when I tried scuba diving in 2006. Regaining consciousness under the water was the scariest moment of my life and caused me to pass out again.

22. I have a very strong love/hate relationship with fund-raising. (maybe I’ll blog about this soon.)

23. I absolutely love cheesy teeny bopper movies and I’m not at all ashamed to admit it.

24. Sometimes I wish I was Thai and sometimes I really love being a foreigner in Thailand.

25. Sometimes it freaks me out that bugs don’t freak me out anymore like they did before I moved to Thailand. I mean, is it really healthy to not care when there are bugs crawling on you?! (This definitely does not include moths or butterflies which are still the freakiest things in the world.)

I love my life and often feel so blessed and lucky to be living it!

Repost: An Adoption Story

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I have to repost a story written by a friend. Actually, I’ve only met Ashley a couple of times but I went to San Jose Christian College with her husband Josh. Over the years since college, our friendship has existed solely over email and Facebook but that’s the way of things nowadays, isn’t it? Especially since I live on the opposite side of the world!

This story made me cry. Like sitting at my desk, all choked up with tears streaming down my face, cry. I have a heart for children and I love that God has placed me in a ministry where I get to love on kids on a regular basis. Someday I might have my own but for now, I am completely content with all the orphans that have wiggled their way into my heart over the past couple years. Unfortunately, the majority of them have been rescued from the sex trade or are considered illegal refugees whom nobody seems to want or they have simply been thrown away by the ones who should have loved them the most. My heart is constantly breaking with every story I hear and it just makes me want to love them more and more. And so naturally, I love to hear adoption stories. Families who adopt children into their hearts, who have so much love to give that they want to share it outside of their own DNA, those whom God has specifically called to care for the lost children of the world, I think those people all deserve super-hero status. Whether or not they wear spandex and a cape is up to them, in my mind they have super-powers. Josh and Ashley Christian, you are both super-heroes!

The following is an excerpt of their adoption story, a story that is still in process. As Ashley says “I pray this story has given you HOPE, if you’ve had none, that God still answers prayers, but not in the way we expect.  Nope, even better.  I pray also this story has given you FAITH, that if God has called you to something you can confidently follow.”

“This story will contain many references about God, so now you’ve been warned!  This story begins 5 years ago, when there was just Josh, Ashley, toddling Jaden, and baby Trace.  God put adoption on our hearts.  It was not fully the thing to us then that it is today, just so you know, you don’t have to feel over-the-top adoption passion to consider it.  It’s a feeling that grows, and maybe it starts because of infertility, or age, or wanting a certain gender, or something, but given time, it has the power to stand on it’s own.  And it is a thing of intense trial, and stunning beauty.

We spent about a year researching, discussing, pondering, praying, jaw dropping and scheming over the cost.  We changed programs a few times and settled on adopting a little girl from Vietnam, her name was going to be Taliah Riann.  We started our homestudy, met with our social worker, got finger prints, passports, filed our 1-600A, started our dossier, all that fun and expensive international adoption stuff.  Now let me tell you this is a story of chances and odds, and how God totally disregards those.

Chances were 99.9% against a little surprise who was born to us 9 months later and never stopped spitting up and then smiling at us for the first 15 months of life!  I do admit my very first thought was, seriously God?

Proverbs 20:24 “The LORD directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?”

You can find the full story (and I strongly encourage you to go read it) on their blog: Life According to the Christians.

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The Non Blogger

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I know that I’ve been horrible about posting lately and I apologize deeply. I’ve been busy. Really busy. It may be all the traveling I do that keeps me from writing. Or it may be the crazy severe anemia that I’m struggling with that drains me of all energy. Or it may be one of twenty other excuses that I can think of. Who knows? But it seems the only time that I have the time to write out blog posts is when my insomniac self is lying in bed at night processing life. I’ve probably written over a thousand blog posts in my head at night that never quite make it to the computer. Maybe I should start sleeping with my computer??

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Questions For a Missionary, Part 2:

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What is the hardest part about being a missionary? (Come back later for the best part about being a missionary.)

I get this question a lot and it’s a hard one to answer. I can’t really narrow it down to one thing so I’m gonna share three areas with you.

The first (and most obvious in my opinion) is that it is really hard to be so far away from my family and friends in the states. There are more than 8000 miles between Chiang Mai and California and that is a lot of space to miss someone! I could probably go on and on about all the special people in my life but I’ll narrow it down for you. I miss talking books with mom and watching her do crafts. I miss discussing everything from a bible passage to the winner of American Idol with dad. I miss Dave, Danielle and Cole Gleason and the way they make me feel that no matter where I am in the world, I’ll always have a home with them. I miss Steve, Jessica, Haley, Nathan and Jacob Banks and how every time I walk through their door, I’m reassured that they love me and are proud of everything that I am. I miss the SD Wild Women (Wendy, Erin, Katie, Hilary and Tam) and all the laughter I associate with their names. Around them I never have to think about who I am trying to be, I can just be. Speaking of Tam, I miss her like Reepicheep missed his tail, like Voldemort misses his nose, like Bill would miss Ted if one of them got stuck back in time. And I love her all the way to the lost continent of Atlantis and back. I am blessed by so many incredible people in my life and it’s hard to be 8000+ miles away from them!

The second thing I’m going to mention kind of goes along with the first, but at the same time, it’s completely it’s own. Sometimes being here in Thailand is incredibly lonely. As you know, I have amazing friends in the states. I also have amazing friends here in Thailand but the past 5+ years have been the loneliest of my life. Ask almost any missionary and they will tell you that people constantly come and go in this line of work. It may be nationals that you build relationships with and then they move away for school or jobs. Or it may be fellow missionaries that come for 1 or 2 months or years and then head back home. Either way, you get used to people leaving you and it’s hard. A few years ago, I decided not to get close to anyone else because I was tired of the tears that came with always saying goodbye. Around that same time God put Aon and Ya in my life and blew that plan out of the water. Let me tell you, God knows what He’s doing! They were my first friends here that didn’t have plans to leave eventually and they were exactly what I needed. But I still get lonely. I’m surrounded by missionaries who are married couples (because honestly, what kind of crazy person moves to the other side of the world by themselves?) or college age students who are doing a short term mission trip. And of course, I’m surrounded by Thai people. But no matter how well I understand the culture or speak the language, I’m still separated and will never fully fit in. It can be hard.

The third thing is probably the hardest because I experience it on a daily basis. God gave me a really big heart when He called me to love people. I’m a thinker and I tend to get emotionally involved in almost everyone. I’m continually in contact with people who are living in extreme poverty, people who are dying, children who have literally been thrown away, people who don’t know God. Everywhere I go in this country, I sense an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and every lost person I meet breaks my heart. I spend a lot of time processing and praying at the end of each day. Because the truth is, I will never be able to reach and help every lost person in Thailand. And even though my head knows that it is not possible, my heart wants to try. It’s hard but I wouldn’t trade the bazillion broken hearts I’ve felt during this adventure for anything in the world!

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