Thailand, North and beyond!

So I've promised a few of you that I would blog on here to tell you all about my trip to Thailand, so here it goes!
I recently returned from a month in Thailand, with an organization called MBMSI. It really is hard to describe this experience in words, I do alot better with telling stories about specific things, but I'll try anyways. So we (a team of six young women) were there working with missionaries who are church planting in the city of Phuket. They haven't been there for too long so right now they have only a handful of Thais, who are interested in learning more about Jesus. So a part of our role there was to make connections in the community to the missionaries and the ministry they have. We went into this not really knowing what to expect or what or day to day would look like but we soon found out! We taught English nearly everyday in different situations, something that no one on my team had ever done before or had any training in, so we had to learn pretty quickly! We taught in a highschool, a hospital and with a few different groups of kids, we even had a booth in a night market where people could come up and practice the English that they knew. Most Thai people are really eager to learn English and to have their kids learn it as well as the see it as the way to get ahead in life, particularly in a city where the main industry is tourism. Of course teaching the people that we interacted with was not the point of what we were doing but a venue to show them the love of Jesus and to create connections for them to continue to yes learn English but more importantly to learn about Jesus and the hope that he offers.
We were able to hang out with alot of kids who live in absolute poverty that broke my heart. It was an honour to just be able to play with them and love them, knowing that for the most part they don't recieve that attention from anyone else in their live. The simple joy they have in being tickled or playing with a parachute is truly amazing.
Thailand is beautiful nation with amazing and incredibly respectful people but it is also a place of a lot of brokenness and hopelessness. There is a very heavy spiritual atmosphere there, which I experienced specifically a couple of times, but despite that knew that God was always more powerful. We were told several times that even our presence there in Thailand was significant, regardless of if we did anything. Just being there and having the Holy Spirit in our lives was making a difference in the Spiritual realm. That was a pretty crazy concept to think about. One sweet story in that regard: our very last morning there we were up on a mountain praying over the city with some Thais and across the valley on another mountain you can see a huge statute of Buddha that overlooks the city. As we were praying a rainbow appeared in the sky and then it began to pour rain over the city, completely blocking the image of Buddha from site and all you could see was the rainbow and the rain. It was such a cool image of God's promise and the cleansing of the city from the spiritual strongholds there.
Another thing that I am sure many of you know about Thailand is that prostitution is huge there and there is a lot of sexual preversion. I won't really go into but it is an area that causes so much pain and bondage to both the women and men of Thailand. It is also an opportunity for Christ's love and compassion to be shown and transform the lives of the young women caught in this 'industry'. One thing that God taught me on this trip was such injustice and oppression and sin is so terrible because He is so holy and great. It is difficult to explain but, it is just so opposite to everything that God is and in light of that is so awful and requires action.
There are many more things that I could say about Thailand but I will leave it at that and if you want to know more just ask! Thank you so much for your prayers.

So now here I am back in Peterborough, my sister is getting married on Saturday, which is incredibly exciting and also hard to believe and then...
the morning after I am heading to Kingfisher Lake and Webequie in Northern Ontario, and I mean NORTH (google maps it), to live on an Aboriginal reserve for July and August and help the kids and youth in those communities to improve their literacy skills. I am going with Frontier College which is a literacy organization, but not a Christian one. I know that this time will be a challenge but also really great. I would LOVE your prayers for my time up there. I'm not exactly sure what I am getting into but I will find out soon enough!