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!