Our new ministry has begun! We have been living at Abba House for the past 4 days. The ways God has blessed us already have been tremendous! Let me explain. Our living conditions are very pleasant. We have beds, hot showers, free Internet, free water, a washing machine, beautiful nature all around us, and it’s all a 5-minute walk away from a wonderful market filled with Thai food! Jesus is so good to us. Also, David and Joyce, who started Abba House, are so passionate about the people here. The love and joy that flows out of the kids is amazing to see. I’m excited to get to know them more and to join their vision and mission for this place.

Another thing is that we have gotten a chance to meet the YWAM team that has been staying here also. All of them have some type of musical talent so it has been great to have them lead worship. We have learned some fun songs from them and creative ways to entertain or teach the kids. They’ve only been here for a week and only have one week left, so our team has been more observing them. With our jet lag that brought constant tiredness it has been a blessing to not have to jump right in to all the teaching and ministry.

Our team is very excited about what God has planned for us here. As far as we know....a typical day looks like this:

8am-10am: Wake up. Eat breakfast. Get ready. Spend time with Jesus. Pray.

10am-1pm: Meet with family. Plan for lessons. Eat lunch. Some days we will get to visit other places to do ministry like the hospital, senior center, drug rehab center, or the university.

1pm-4pm: Teach English for an hour. Teach Bible for an hour. Teach music lessons for an hour. (This is all for the boys here at Abba House. They live about 20 minutes away from the place where we live. We live where the girls are housed and the church is also here).

4pm-6pm: Play volleyball with the girls. Eat dinner.

6pm-7pm: Split into 3 groups and teach English to the girls.

7pm-whenever we fall asleep: Hang out with girls. Go to the market for a snack. Be with our family. Worship. Occasional movie night.

On Wednesday nights there is a service in the evening that our team will be in charge of. It’s going to be great to be able to share testimonies and worship with the boys and girls. I believe we will be doing some crazy group games so I thank the Lord and Bob Anderson for my time in JAM/1:20. :)

On Sundays we have church and then afterwards we have the entire afternoon to play games or have an event. For example, today was our first Sunday and the YWAM team put on a carnival after church. We started off with face painting and then had a volleyball tournament, which they all love playing volleyball by the way. Next was the baseball tournament. They had some carnival stations, like 3-legged race, potato sack race, jumping jack contest, bowling, etc. We also tie-died shirts, which was interesting because the kids have never done that before. Let’s just say they ended up tie-dying more than the shirts in their hands. We ended the evening with a wonderful candle-lit Thai buffet. It was a long day, but great to get to know the kids more and attempt to learn all their names.

This sums up pretty well what we know so far about our ministry here. I hope this answers the questions I was getting about what we are doing here. I wish you could all be here to see this beautiful city, but I’ll get some pictures to try to capture the magnificence of God’s creation here! Love you all. Thanks for the continual encouragement and prayers.

The amazing crepe lady. We plan to become best friends with her :)

The colorful market we went to on Saturday.

A glimpse of what our place looks like. Yes, that pond does make me nervous. One of the boys fell in it today!

The kids playing volleyball after church.