Author: Adventures

Doing ministry in Thailand is a daily surprise. You never know what exactly you’re doing, where you’re going, or what you’re going to see. Most of these days have consisted of excessive amounts of painting, shoveling sand filled with angry fire ants, scrubbing walls, and more painting. Wednesday’s ministry didn’t look much different. We spent the day cleaning out a building from top to bottom. We were moving furniture, organizing boxes, scrubbing walls- the usual. While the jobs we’re doing here are important, there’s nothing glorious about them....

On September 10th after a long day of ministry, our Passport Team headed home to clean up before dinner. After a few minutes of chatting and struggling to connect to the wifi, Josh, Jordan, Morgan, Madison, and I decided to hit the streets. Our mission: to take pictures of the wild dogs of Mae Sot to post on Josh’s Instagram page, “thaidawgs.” As we were wandering the streets, clueless to where we were going, we made a series of turns that lead us to Grace Life Church. It was in the middle of a quiet Thai neighborhood. As we stumbled upon it, we heard what we thought was...

When I imagined what this missions trip to Thailand would look like I thought it would be completely different. I imagined we would be living in small straw huts inside a tiny village in a rainforest. I thought I’d be spending every day at an orphanage teaching children and that I’d be doing evangelism with my team throughout villages. If someone would’ve told me God brought me to Southeast Asia to do things like breaking chains I would never have believed them. Now here’s the funny part: My team is actually spending time here breaking literal chains. Bike chains, to...

After months of planning, hours of packing, and countless tears, I said one last goodbye to my family and stepped into my next big adventure. I boarded my 45 minute flight, and before I knew it I was landing in Atlanta. After retrieving my gigantic blood-orange bag, I headed to the food court to meet my “family away from family” for the next three months. We wandered around the airport and finally found our vans. Everyone squeezed into the van and we were off.As we arrived at training camp we began to get to know each other with awkward hellos and stories of our homes. The first...

Is this experience anything like what you were thinking it would be? My dad asked this question of me in response to the Q&A session. When I was writing the answer, however, I realized that I wanted to explore my thoughts on it in a bit more depth than the two- or three-paragraph responses I gave the other answers. Thus, it receives its own blog post. The answer is: yes and no. Truth be told, I did my best to walk in without expectations and have not thought much about how it compares to those I failed to quell. When reflecting on this mission I cannot help but compare it to my other...

Our team time last night consisted of a big group prayer. We prayed for Thailand, for the death of their king and the grieving of the nation; for the building tension between Russia and the United States that appears to threaten war; for the people of Haiti and anywhere else hurricane Matthew struck and tore apart; and for the success of Outpour movement and any other missionaries working around the world. It reminded me — and everyone else, I think — of the amount of pain and hardship around the world. Struggling is pervasive and inescapable. Just as that prayer time reminded...