maybe...

Alright, so here's what's going on...still struggling a little bit with the plan...
This weekend at church the message was about how sometimes the things that seemed foolish at the time, turned out to glorify God the most. For example, have you heard the story about Gideon? Alright, this guy had an army of 32,000 men and God was like..."that's too many men for me to show My power, just so I make sure you can't brag - I'm going to reduce that number"...and then God told him, "separate those who lap the water like a dog from those who kneel down to drink...and take the 300 who lapped and I'm going to give the Midianites into your hands." That doesn't seem to make sense, does it?
Another foolish thing to the world's eyes is that Mary had a baby as a virgin. The speaker said people probably asked, "Who's your baby's daddy" Mary said "God". Probably looked kind of foolish to the world.
So maybe the idea of staying another year looks foolish compared to the world's standards. "You probably should go home and get a teaching job with a good salary and good healthcare and be saving money up." I dont think it would be an easy decision to come back next year. It's actually kind of hard for me to even type about, but God is sovereign...always is, always was, always will be...

Thai Phrase of the day: Dichan rak sawn thii FLC kha! I love to teach at FLC!

Jesus is rAd quote of the day: and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it. - matt 10:39. (that sounds a lot like faith to me...)

step by step.

I feel like this is a theme that God wants me to follow right now, here's how He communicated it.
So lately, I've been feeling a little pressure to make a decision about what I'm going to do next year. Whether I come back to Thailand, stay in SC, move to Montana (I don't know I just feel drawn there) or whatever...So I was feeling totally stressed about this...what am I going to do?!?!?
Then, last Saturday, Damaris and I went and did a little hiking around and we were going up to this waterfall and there were some really steep, difficult concrete "stairs" going up the side of the mountain. As I was climbing them, God said..."look, these stairs aren't easy andyou have to focus on one at a time".
I told Damaris that God just revealed that to me and it reminded me of one time in college when me and Sarah Anne and a few other girls were riding in Sarah Anne's car (connie) and the radio was turned down really low and we were talking about our futures and wondering who we were going to marry...and all the sudden without anyone touching it, the radio turned up in the song right at the line that says "and step by step I'll lead you"...and we all were in shock.
If I didn't have the point by then, God really wanted to drive it home by making sure that we sung that same song - "and step by step I'll lead you" in church last Sunday.
And He know's I'm stubborn and oblivious sometimes, so He even made sure that my friend Kyndra told me too. She said that God kind of told her that I just have take things one step at a time...
pretty rad huh?
so that means that my next step is home to Columbia on June 24 and looks like Charleston after that. please pray that i keep my eye on this step and all that God wants me to do here! thanks!

whyowhy?

Why do you think it is that people (Christians) naturally go 1 of 2 ways...
1. When life is good, they're always thinking about and praising God, spending all sorts of time in the word and in prayer and then when things turn bad, they turn the focus inward and forget what's important.
2. When life's peachy, they forget about thanking God and just think about themselves and when things turn bad, they immediately turn to Him for help.

**my camera is broken for a bit...im going to take it to the Canon store to see what they can do, so I won't have too many pictures until then :(

nye.

New Year's Eve I had one of those brushes with the peace that surpasses all understanding and I knew there was no where else in the whole world that I would rather be that night.

We got home from the south on the 30th and then my friend Aimee came from Chiang Mai to visit/do a border run for her visa that night. Most of the next day was spent getting that done, but in the evening we went out to Baan Nam Jai - Home of the Open Heart. It's an orphanage mostly for children who are HIV+ it was so awesome to get to celebrate a new year with my friends and the kids out there. We had fireworks and they released the khom loys like we did for Loy Krathong. After the kids went in, we came back to our house and we had a party. That day, I (without thinking) asked Phet if normally in Thailand they have a party and watch the ball drop. Sure they do...at lunch time the next day...haha. So, I figured it really wouldn't be New Year's for me if we didn't have a ball drop, so I found the nearest soccer ball, stripped the lights off our tree and cleverly found a way to "drop" it from our curtain rod. Haha...it was a lot of fun and I was so thankful to be here. I hope your 2008 was as much fun and I have a feeling that 2008 is going to be the best year yet!!

"Sawat dee bee mai!" - Happy New Year!

krabi.

The last stop on our trip was a day in Krabi. (pronounced Kha-robbie - except you say it like it's only 1 syllable) It was about an hour and a half in a van from Khao Lak. In Krabi Town you had to take a longtail boat about 15 minutes to this island. Totally worth the $1.50 boat ride. This is where James Bond Island and Ko Phi Phi are...the beautiful limestone cliffs that are on all the travel brochures. This area isn't preserved like the Similans though and there were SOOOOO many tourists, but it really was a beautiful area. There was rock climbing everywhere because of the cliffs. From Krabi Town, we got back on a bus and spent the night travelling back to Bangkok.

This guy roasting/selling corn was seriously in demand.

similan.

My brother asked me if the beaches were like the post cards and I had to say yes after I saw the Similans. What a cool place to worship God on Christmas! We got on a speed boat with about 20 other people and drove for an hour and a half and got dumped off here! We spent 3 nights in this tent on the similan islands, an archipelago of 9 islands. We stayed on island 4, but we went snorkling on 3 of the other islands. You could walk from one side of the island to the other in about 5 minutes, so you could see the sunrise on one side of the island and walk to the other side in the evening for the sunset! This is where we spent Christmas...it was neat, Damaris and I sang Christmas Hymns by ourselves on the beach and we were joined by our tour guide (who isn't a Christian) and we read the Christmas story in Luke. It was pretty special and I really enjoyed being away from the hustle and bustle and commercialism that seems to have become Christmas in America. The idea of the purity and joy of celebrating Christmas on the beach I'll never forget. I love the way that they have preserved the island, there are only about 30 tents and a few bungalows.

The last day, a current brought in trash and it was so gross and sad. Plastic bags, food wrappers, just gross household waste was in the water and washed upon the shore.

tsunami.

I didn't tell my parents b/c I knew they would worry, but the place that we went, Khao Lak was one of the places hardest hit by the tsunami. Even 3 years later, the impact of that day is still a reality in the lives of those who experienced it.

This is a boat that was escorting a Thai Prince. The wave took his life and washed this police boat over 2 kilometers inland.

This is a sign on the Similan Island we stayed on.

Our snorkling instructor showed us a video that his brother made of Khao Lak when the tsunami hit. You may know that the water went out...but I was very surprised that it was for 20 minutes. You could hear the people yelling for the people on the beach to run, but there were a lot of people (mostly foreigners) that were walking on the beach and looking at all that was normally covered by water...fish, shells, you can imagine. One image that I'll never forget was that of a young child looking at shells and unsuspectingly being engulfed by this wave.

It's very interesting to me the way that the Thais have embraced what happened. They sell DVDs and are eager to share what happened, I believe they just want people to be aware and to remember their loss.

the beach.

For Christmas break, Damaris and I went down south for the beach. We left on the 20th and came home on the 30th, but the trip really started a few days prior to the actual departure. Damaris and I knew that our bus left @ 7 for Bangkok, and were discussing when we would be able to get to the bus station (b/c we had to take public transportation). Well, I KNEW for sure that the buses to go downtown ran later than 5:30 ish, so I insisted that we leave 5:45 at the earliest. Around 6:15 when no buses had come, Damaris was about to get mad at me...and a mini-car pulls over and drops a lady off. Another woman from the car approaches us and tells us that they're teachers and asks us where we're going. We said the bus station, and she said she'd be happy to give us a ride. So Damaris, I and our huge backpacks smush in the backseat for our ride downtown. HUGE blessing!

It's an over-night bus, so we left at 7 pm and arrived in BKK around 6 am. Not a bad way to travel really. The seats are pretty big and recline way back. I always have trouble reclining though, there's just something about taking someone's personal space that I struggle with... Around 1 am I was glancing out my window and for about a 1/2 mile this truck had accidently been dropping boxes and the contents were all over the road. What were the contents? Straws. White straws all over the road...hahaha

We arrive in BKK and ride the city bus from the north bus terminal to the south...an hour and a half. Not bad for 18 baht. So we eventually make it to the south bus station, and decide that rather than stay the day in BKK, we'll go to Hua Hin - a beach about 3 hours away and spend the day there and then take an overnight bus down to our destination - Khao Lak. Hua Hin was a nice place, but very touristy.

We took an overnight bus from Hua Hin to Khao Lak - this is the beach.

arrive around 6 AM in Khao Lak walked around for a while, try to communicate where we want to go, get sent to the wrong place, walk a couple km back to where we started and then call Bens, an amazing Thai girl that works at the YWAM base. So, we get settled in our guest room that's right next to the base there that ministers to tsunami survivors. We spent a couple days there in Khao Lak...to be continued...these are beautiful designs made by crabs.