Hill Top Tribes

Sorry about the lack of updates, we have little to no internet access especially this last week.  This is an update that Ali sent to all of her family so we are just going to put it up as our blog.  Hopefully you all enjoy it!  We will try and get pictures up as soon as possible!  Thank you for all of the love support and prayers we have received!  You guys are awesome!
We got to our pastors house in the morning and led a bible study for some thai girls at night (our translator is sweet so it works actually pretty well ) then the next morning we did 2 performances at a school (skits, testimonies, games) these wet pretty well although since our plans change so spiratically here, everything was on the fly but hey its made it kinda fun and interesting lol. ok and this is were it gets good. so wednesday night we drove up to the mountains to where there are hill tribes and did a performance for them at night. then we slept in a little hut on the hard ground with no pillow. oh and squatty potties? most def. cold bucket showers? oh heck yeah. theyre actually not too bad surprisingly. and the food they fed us was seriously grown right on the mountain we were living on..rice for breakfast lunch and dinner? yuupppp. the foods all been super good though just bc its alot of veggies and organice although its left me crying at several meals because its so spicy. ok so anyways the next morning we packed up and went to another hill tribe about 2 hours away ( oh and did i mention that our transportain is riding in the back of a truck? its fricken sweet especially through the mountain bc the views are so gorgoues. it kinda hurts though when it rains (which is everyday) but whatev. so then at this hill tribe we went on a walk and passed a hut that was full out roasting and skinning a pig..yeah then we ate in this hut for dinner (no joke it was a tree house..yes i feel like im in a movie since everything is so surreal but fricken awesome) and discoverd that the pork we were eating was the same one we saw earlier since we were theyre honored guests! then that night we did another performance for them (we needed 2 translators since they speak theyre own tribe language, not thai) and then left to go to our 3rd hill tribe the next morning. this place was like a boarding school kinda for kids and i got to play soccer with the boys for the first time in like 4 years! it was so fun bc the guys were super legit at soccer but i actually found i wasnt too bad so they actaully passed it to me every once in a while lol. oh and i dont think iv ever sweat so much in my life just bc its so hot. i got to play ping pong too! reigning champ? yup. i think so. and yes, even this made me drip sweat lol. they guys in my group decided they should give me a chinese name bc thatd be fitting with my abilities lol. then we did another performance for them at night and i gave a testimony about confidence and finding my idently in chirst and one of the girls came up to me after and told me that she really appreciated my story and that shed remember it forever. it was so encouraging to hear. the next day we went to this camp where Compassion sponswered kids come and play and we played with them for a little while. it was so cool to be able to actually play with the kids after sponsering one last year. then we went to this monkey cave thing and came within a foot of like 50 wild monkeys. it was sweet bc some of them were babies (wayyy better tahn the zoo) but they were fricken vicious, especially since they were like all buddhitst monkeys im prety sure as there are temples and staues every where..its kinda creepy. but yeah then we came back to our chruch were staying at and pretty much all crashed. like i said longest, craziest week of my life. but it was super cool to live the hill tribe life style and also at some of the houses we saw miracles as once lady couldnt move here arm and after we prayed for her could! and another lady was def and could hear after we prayed for her! it was so cool. but yeah the people here are so nice and hospitable..and if you want a good view of my scenery, just watch rambo lol.

Traveling Tales

The day started this morning around 5:30am when we left for the airport in Brisbane, Australia.  It was very sad to say goodbye to some friends and the house that we have been living in for the past three months yet we are all EXTATIC because of the adventure that lay ahead!  We flew from Brisbane to Sydney and then had about a 4 hour layover and they flew from Sydney to Bangkok (10 hour flight).  We arrived safely in Bangkok at about 11pm their time (though at times during the last flight we may or may not have feared for our life during CRAZY turbulence.  But God is good and we were greeted in the Bangkok airport by 2 lovely staff members from the YWAM base here in Bangkok. 

Walking out to the cars I don't really know what we were expecting but were all SO EXCITED to see the cars that we got to ride in from the airport back to the base.  They looked almost like little safari trucks.  Basically we all jumped in the back of the pick up that had roll bars and two rows of seating and held on!  This was an EXCELLENT introduction to Thai culture and we finally felt like we were in another culture.  It was also a nice wake up after 10 hours on the plane.  When we arrived at the base we walked up to our accommodations and were so blessed by the way they had set up the room for us.  Not only did we have bunk beds to sleep on with a bottle of water, flowers and a little home made note with a bible verse in it, but we also had AIR CONDITIONING!  This is something that all of us have already realized how thankful we are for it! 

The orientation the next day (Day 2) was AWESOME!  Chris, who is the Thailand, Bangkok YWAM director and is extremely amusing!  He made us do all kinds of crazy demonstrations and things just to get us excited about Thailand!  The first is a rap about Bananas and Peanut butter from the boys on the team, Bianca and Coleen were back up dancers and Lyndzie was the beat boxer.  Jason ended up getting the most votes for the win and got a free T-shirt!  The second is one of Andrew demonstrating the proper way to go to the bathroom on a squaty potty.  VERY FUNNY! 

After a wonderful lunch and quick walk around the city we packed back up to get taken to the bus station to get on the bus for our 12 hour bus ride up north.  Now normally we would be a little irritated with a LONG bus ride like this, especially one that went from 7:30pm to 7:45am but this was NO ordinary bus!  This was a bus with seats that layed FULLY back to sleep, had a little massage going on in your lower back with a kick out foot rest.  Needless to say we all slept very well and are now excited to be in our final destination for the next 3 weeks.  We are staying at Yellow Bridge Church with Pastor Sanguin, his wife and 5 year old son.  They are the sweetest people and we appreciate everything that they have already done for us!  All of the team had our first few Thailand squaty potty encounters throughout today and are excited to say that we all passed!  Andrew must have been a good teacher!  Tonight we will be having an outreach at the university close by to help out in a Bible study type setting.  Very excited to get started!  Thank you so much for all of the prayer that we have received, we truly feel it every day!

Prayer Request

Just a quick update on a prayer request for our team is that there has been a delay in 3 of the girls on our team Indian Visas which are in their passport, restricting them from leaving Australia.  We are praying that God would show up in whatever way he chooses (Including asking him to leave the visas and passports under the girls pillows tonight haha).  The plan so far, unless God performs a miracle, is that the 3 girls on our team that don't have their passport and one staff will be staying here in Australia for an additional week and will be doing ministry here around town.  Please pray that God would show them exactly what He wants from them during this time.  They have good attitudes so far, so we pray that the devil will NOT get a foothold on our team.  We are such a unified team already and we are praying that this does not change that.

A cool God moment that has already happened was that the price for changing the airplane tickets we thought was going to be somewhere around $85 but then when we checked with the travel agent she said that because it was holiday season it was going to cost the girls $300 EACH!  This was such a sad moment and we just were lifting it up in prayer.  A few hours later the travel agent called again and said it turned our WHOLE teams original airplane tickets were actually cheaper that what we payed and therefore we used that money we were going to get back and just put it towards changing the ticket.  With this extra money it brought the changing of plane flights back down to about $88!!!  God is so good!!  We KNOW that God has a plan with this and are excited to come along side Him and say Yes Lord, Your will be done!  Please pray for this stressful time and situation that has turned up!  Thank you so much!

And We're Off!

Starting this Sunday, September 18th, our team of ten will be flying out from the Brisbane airport all the way over to Bangkok, Thailand.  We have been looking forward to this day ever since week 4 of our lecture phase where we found out our team and location for this outreach.  We will be spending 3 weeks in ChangRai, Thailand and 4 weeks in Chenai, India.  Though we don't know exactly what specific ministries we will be working with from day to day in each country we are extremely confident that God has an AMAZING plan for this trip.  We want to be led by the Holy Spirit to different divine appointments and serving opportunities, in order to be the hands and feet of Jesus in both of these places.  A couple ideas of the ministries we will be working with are things such as "Open Airs" where we will be posting up on street corners and performing dramas that portray the gospel message through drama with a message directly to follow.  We will also be serving our contacts and the churches they are involved in with anything that needs to be done, helping orphanages, street evangelizing as well as praying for the different cities (just to name a few).

Some prayer requests that our team would have in these next few weeks are travel safety, that God would prepare the heart of individuals we are going to meet, team unity, needed team visas, patience, sickness within the team, and that we may help further God's Kingdom.

Thank you so much for the Prayer, Love and Support you have already shown us!!