International night, my new friends, and musings on this year

So this is a picture of me in my Phylis halloween outfit- a bunch of us decided to dress up as characters from the TV show The Office. It was pretty funny to see everyone dressed up as such kooky characters. I sure am thankful to have friends here who like to be silly and have fun.

One of those friends and I get to do a 10K (about 6 miles) race tomorrow here in Bangkok! I'm so excited! We've been training and are fired up to get to run through one of the prettiest parts of Bangkok- the old part, right by the palace, the river, and lots of beautiful government buildings. This is a picture of Kamyee and me.




She is a delight. She has a husband named Steve and a beautiful little girl named Noelle and has become one of the people I'm most thankful for this year. We run together most Saturday mornings and she comes to Nightlight with me sometimes on Friday nights. God is just so kind to me in giving me folks like Kamyee.

A couple of weeks ago our school had international night. This is where the kids get to dress up in costumes from their home countries and do songs or dances to teach us about their cultures. One of my favories was getting to see my Indian students dance for us. These little guys to my right are 2 super bright and just delightful kids. I'm so thankful to get to be their teacher and to walk with them as they are figuring out how the world works and what believe is true.



One more big upcoming event is my birthday! Hooray!! I'm turning the big 3-0 this year and am feeling pretty good about it. I am confident that I am living in God's absolute best for me here, so that feels good. It would NOT feel good to be turning 30 in Thailand if I were not confident of that, you know? So how kind of God to cement that in my mind- that his abundant life is available to me here and now, and that loving others on behalf of Jesus will ALWAYS be the best and most satisfying thing I can do with my life.

So here's the killer line-up God has prepared for me for this big-deal milestone of my 30th birthday celebration: James Galway, a world-renowned flute player, is playing with the Bangkok Symphony-Orchestera on my birthday! I play the flute, so it seemed like such a cool and personal gift that I would get to go out for an elegant evening with 7 of my girlfriends to listen to beautiful music on my big day. Then this next weekend, I'm going to a ball with a friend of mine named Julio I met salsa dancing. I got a beautiful red dress made in order to go to the marine corps ball. I'm excited! I guess it's a big deal diplomatic sort of affair. More than excitement about the actual dance is the message God is speaking to me through it- that I am beautiful and desirable even as I pass this milestone in life that many believe makes a woman less attractive. But God seems to be screaming to me that this is NOT true- that I am beautiful to him and to others. He sure is kind to me.

I haven't written as much this year in the ol' blog, perhaps because life here is becoming more normal. I still have eyes to see stuff around me as different- things like roosters that hang out by the motorcycle taxi drivers who are waiting for customers...or seeing people sell golf balls on the side of the road...or seeing an elephant on the same road as a prostitue and a missionary and a sunburned tourist. So I still see those things and shake my head at the wonder of being here in this land that seems so strange to me, but I guess I've become more used to seeing this stuff so it doesn't shock me so much anymore.

But I've been doing some thinking about what my time has been like here this year as compared to last year, and this is what I'm coming up with. Last year was about learning to love different people in a broad sense- the IDEA of loving the downtrodden, the privileged, the men I see in strip clubs. This year has been about coming to love them personally. I have befriended a man who has visited the bars as a customer. I was disgusted to find this out initially, but sensed what God was asking me to do was to love him in the middle of his messyness- to not run away and ditch him, leaving him to figure out for himself why he is loney and dissatisfied, but to point him to Jesus and tell him about how he can be loved perfectly by the God who came to earth 2000 years ago and continues to pursue his heart today. I'm learning to love my button-pushing students in whole new beautiful ways- to see them as the complex and intelligent beings that they are and to engage them and treat them with respect accordingly. I'm getting to take flowers to prostitutes on their birthdays. So yeah- those have been some of the biggies I've been learning about recently. I feel like I've graduated from kindergarten in the "school of how to love" and have been promoted to first grade, getting to apply these ideas that I started to learn last year. So those have been some of them major movements in my heart.

For those of you who are praying folks, you can pray with me as I continue to sort out what to do next year. I'm sensing that God is inviting me to stay another year here, which is disappointing in one sense...I was excited to come back to Colorado and engage life and relationship with the folks I love there...but I've got a good thing going on here, too, and unless God invites me to something else vocation-wise, this seems like a good place to stay. So feel free to offer thoughts or counsel to this end- I would love to hear what you have to say. That's all for now- thanks for reading!

white roses for a prostitute

So I know I just wrote...and I don't even have a photo to put with this post...but this is far too beautiful a story to not tell. I saw God's glory last night in a way that just made me worship today, and so I pass along this story to you. It is kind of a long story with lots of details to pay close attention to, but I truly believe it is a story worth reading and telling. I pray you are blessed in reading it like I am blessed in telling it.

Yesterday (Saturday) my plan was to go to a birthday party in the afernoon for my friend Sophia, go to an opening for an art exhibit, and then finish up the night salsa dancing. Somewhere in there I also wanted to get flowers for this woman I had met the night before on outreach with Nightlight. I will call her Nareeva. Saturday (yesterday) was to be Nareeva's birthday, and I hated the thought of her having to the do the work she does on ANY day, much less on her birthday. So I thought it would be nice to at least take her flowers and a card so she would know that someone nearby cares for her and remembers her on her special day. I was unsure, though, how I would work it out to deliver the flowers by myself- the hotel where the women work and wait for customers isn't really the kind of place I should visit by myself, and I hadn't asked anyone to join me in my journey there...I guess I just figured I would figure it out then or risk going there by myself. That certainly wasn't what I wanted to do, but I really wanted her to get those flowers, so I figured I would take the risk if need be. So this is the setup for one of the more divinely led and beautiful encounters I have had with the Living God in recent times.

I go to the birthday party which was a lot of fun- it felt great to visit with the friends I'm making and to realize that this place really is becoming the place where my heart can fully dwell. Then I go get a pedicure and buy a present for a different friend's wedding shower coming up this week and buy a huge wad of white roses. They are small roses wrapped in newspaper- pretty, but I felt a little badly getting ready to give them to her- wondering if she knew I had bought them on the street for about $1.50. But I put my feelings of cheapness aside and thought about how to spend the rest of my evening. I still had some time to burn, so I went to Starbucks to do some reading and journaling. This British guy in his 40's (guessing on that one) starts talking to me which I'm a little uncomfortable with, but I let it unfold and I ended up having an incredible conversation with him about poverty, prostitution and trafficking in Bangkok, and I ended up getting to tell him about how it makes me so thankful to get to be around the people who Jesus hung around when he was on earth- the prostitutes and all the people everyone else wanted to forget about. So that was cool- I wasn't expecting to get to have a good conversation like that with John the Brit.

I left Starbucks and went outside and try to catch a cab, to no avail. So I decide to take the skytrain to my next destination, my friend Pechula's art gallery where an opening is happening for a new artist. I get off the skytrain and start to walk toward Pechula's gallery, and I acutally bump into her on the street! She tells me that the opening isn't at her gallery; it's at a cultural center. So I go with her to the opening and meet up with my friends Mihoko and Naomi. Mihoko had met Nareeva with me the night before and also knew that today was her birthday, and she offered to come with me to deliver the flowers! I didn't have to go by myself anymore! The artist who work was displayed received tables full of beautiful boquets of flowers, and she was a believer, so she told us to take a boquet of exquisite white roses to Nareeva for her birthday. No dumpy flowers wrapped in newspaper for this lady- God wanted for her to have the best. So after I ate a delightful meal with Mihoko and 2 other friends, she and I walked to the hotel, found Nareeva, and gave her the flowers. The expression on her face...I don't have words. I can only describe it as one who is receiving real love- knowing someone sees you and cares for you and says you are worth something- when the only attention they usually receive from people is those who want something from them. It was the look of life and hope being allowed to flourish inside of her. On Friday she was just a prostitue who is only viewed for what can be taken from her. On Saturday she was the worthy recipient of beautiful white roses- a symbol of purity. She was absolutelly lit up. She couldn't stop smiling or saying thank you. I had written a card to her (in my preschool Russian handwriting) that told her I hoped she believed that Jesus loves her. And then I told her how happy I was to see HER so happy- how I had prayed that when she received the flowers, she would really believe that God loves her. She kissed me on both cheeks (that's the Uzbek way of greeting each other) and I told her we had to go. It was absolutely incredible. And I realized that getting to be a part of loving people and telling them about Jesus is absolutely the best, most thrilling thing I have ever been a part of. Way better than salsa dancing even. I still went dancing later that night, though I could have called it an evening after giving the flowers to Nareeva. I know that life still goes on for her...that tonight she will do the same horrifying work she does every night...but God is after this woman, as he is after all of humanity, I suppose. I pray that she would know know and believe the living God sees and loves her in a way that would draw her into relationship with him. She is Muslim, so please pray for wisdom as I think about how to share Jesus with her in a way that makes sense. Pray, too, that God would give her a dream or vision of Jesus. This is happening to Muslims all over the world, and I want it to happen to her. Please pray for her, that she would choose to receive God's love- to believe that God DOES have a good plan for her life and that she would do her part by inviting God's believing in Jesus. Pray that she would be willing to go home- to leave this lucrative but soul-killing work. And praise God with me for the amazing work he is doing in bringing his love to these women in incredibly personal and powerful ways. What an incredible God we have. I love walking with him and seeing him at work.

That's it. Thanks for reading! I know it was long, but I just had to tell the story. Be encouraged! God is on the move!!

Bug Day 2007 and other recent goings on

As seen here, bug day was another huge hit this year. My personal favorite was my biggest pistol in class dressed up as a cocroach. Perfect. Another little weasel in a different class dressed up as a mosquito. It was a fun day. We had a bug hunt where we hid bugs all over the cafeteria and let them find them (don't worry- I've never found a real bug in there- just the occasional gecko who actually helps us with the bug population). Kids made ants out of playdough. They got to see real dead bugs and play a dead bug game in PE. I think it had something to do with running around and then falling over and laying like a dead bug. At any rate, it was a fun-filled day and I was tired that night. I had a great time planning and executing it with my fellow first grade teachers. Picutred here is Kristin, another first grade teacher who is becoming a good friend.



In other news, dancing has become a more regular part of my life here this year, which has been such a gift to my heart. I'm taking hula lessons once a week from another fellow teacher who is Hawaiian, and I went salsa dancing and met a guy who is loosely my salsa partner. His name is Julio, he is Colombian-American, and he is a marine who is stationed at the US Embassy here in Bangkok as a guard. He actually invited me to the Marine Corps Ball in early November, which I am so excited about. I'm getting a pretty red dress made and am quite excited to go to an elegant affair and feel super beautiful for an evening. I can't wait!

Ministry-wise, God continues to humble me and make me thankful for what I get to be a part of here. My students continue to ask great questions about who God is and what he is like, and I continue to go out with Nightlight Friday nights in order to share life with women there. It remains a challenge and is tougher to see some nights than others. About 3 weeks ago I was hit with the raw reality of how unpleasent that whole situation really is and I took the next week off in order to kind of recoop and center. I was back in the game this past Friday which was hard, but good. I'm always blessed when I get to go and share life and hope with those who don't have much of that. Another cool thing going on with this is I invited my new friends Kamyee and Mihoko to come on outreach with me, and I think they both may start to minister regularly with Nightlight! Mihoko is Japanese but is fluent in Thai, and it was beautiful to see her connect with the girls in the bars, speaking their heart language. And Kamyee is American with great hopes to learn Thai- hopes that increase each time she has come with me to the bars. God has been breaking her heart for those invovled in prostitution, so I LOVE that be brought her here and crossed my path with hers so she has this opportunity to share love with this group of folks for which she feels burdened. A slightly unrelated but interesting fact is that she also likes running. :) We signed up to do a 10K race here in Bangkok at the end of the month! We're so excited! I'll be sure to post pictures of this event. It's sure to be a drippy and sweaty one.

So I guess that's it. I feel like I'm riding the blessing train right now- just slathered with his affections. I hope all of you are enjoying his abundant promises, too. Thanks for reading!