connect 4 anyone??

So. Today. Was a good day.

It started bright and early. I shared my life with the women of SHE during our devo time and it seemed to go pretty well. A few of the ladies talked to me after so it was good. And then Kyla and I spent the next few hours making bracelets with Jum. It was a lot of fun. She doesn’t speak much English but she laughs so beautifully and her smile could brighten up a bat cave. So it was fun. I messed up a few times and had to pull off quite a number of tiny beads but it was okay. Kyla is pretty much a professional now. Her bracelt was perfect. Then we loaded up and went to a lake nearby and ate lunch. Anita had a girl come and eat with us. Her name was Toon and Anita had meet her the night before. It was very cool to see a woman come and be interested in the work we can offer here. There were also 3 other girls that came but I don’t remember their names. That’s the tough thing with the Thai people. Their names are much different than ours so it’s really hard to remember. I just have to say their names over and over and over. And still I’m not usually saying it right. But anyways. Where we ate lunch was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. For lunch we had rice with some little chicken wing type things and a hard boiled egg. It left quite a nasty smell in my mouth but luckily we returned back to our home so I could clean that out. We had about 30 minutes of down time so many of us took the opportunity to catch some ZZZ’s. it was good. The bad thing was we all woke up dripping of sweat. That was the gross part. So. We left to prayer walk Bangla Road and the surrounding areas. We got to get some Starbucks drinks so that was beautiful, but the drinks make us not look so akward as we walk and pray up and down the roads of bars. Nikki, Ben, and I walked down around Bangla Road, past the beach, and down Bangla Road. We saw some interesting stuff and had some good conversation so it was nice. Then we all met up and prepared to get on the bus.

We waited. And waited.

Then this little thing drove up. I’d say it was a few seats bigger than a squat bus but was very small. There was no room to set down, so myself, Nate, Ben, and Bond got to ride SWAT on the back. It was SO fun. Plus a lot cooler than the hot nasty body filled bus. The normal 20 minute ride took 1 hour. There had been a wreck on the mountain so traffic was awful slow and it was a tiny bus loaded down with Farangs (white people).but we had a grand ole time and made some sweet videos and got to see this spirit house. We drive by it every day, but we were stopped outside of it for quite a bit today. It’s this building on the side of the mountain that the Thai people drive past and honk to Buddha for good merit and for driving safety. Nearly every car/ motor bike honked. So, we finally made it back.

We have a lovely 2 day guest named Christine Lederle with us so it was a treat to get to see her beautiful face again. We all said our hellos and headed to the beach to do our devos. We arrived and had to walk down about 100 small steps but it was SO worth it. The sunset was beautiful. Sunsets are something special to my heart so it was a pure gift from God to see the sun slowly fall down to the softly flowing ocean. We then did some praise and worship on the beach followed by small group prayers then we headed off.

We drove to Bangla Road and were surprised with the choice of eating supper at either Subway or Burger King. A juicy cheese burger sounded too good to pass up, so I went there and enjoyed every greasy ounce of it. Then we were off to the bars.

The people in my group were Ben, Karin, Bond, Christine, and me. We started and I got to go and visit a woman I’ve grown rather close to. Her name is On. She is absolutely gorgeous. From the first day of our prayer walk I’ve known her and she’s been close to my heart. We talked a bit and was just catching up because I didn’t see her last night and she said she was very sad because the last 3 nights, she’s had to go with men. That broke my heart. Nearly shattered it right on the spot. Yet she still smiled her smile and carried on talking. No words can explain how sad/ heartbroken I was for this beautiful woman. While we were talking she said that she couldn’t come to our BBQ tomorrow night unless I wanted to pay the bar owner 500 baht ( 32 baht to the dollar. You do the math) because work starts at 5 at the bars. So I’m just praying that she can come on Thursday lunch. Anyways. I reluctantly left and traveled on with my team. We went to a few other bars and gave out the number to quite a few girls. Even though we aren’t getting flooding with women coming here, we know they deeply consider it. Life changing decisions like this take time. As we go back to bars to see how the women are doing, they’ll mention SHE and say that they’ve been talking to a group of their friends that want to come, but they just haven’t been able to yet. So, patience is defiantly a virtue around here.

So we left and did our debriefing and overall we had good spirits. Phone calls will be made tomorrow and the next so that hopefully goes well.

Prayer requests:
Deep sleep. Sleep is precious and minimal lately so our sleep needs to count big time.

Protection of our minds.

Health. Little things seem to come up everynight.

Love for these women and men we come in contact with.

Woman we’ve met to leave the bars. I’m gonna pray big for this one. Our God is mighty and he can do mighty things. I want to see those streets cleared out but it starts with one girl at a time so prayer for the woman we’ve met to come and visit.

Love you all!!!
Shout out to my family. I miss you all
Shout out to WMW peeps. 500 miles played tonight at one of the bars and I danced and thought of you all. ☺ God bless

leah