hello friends

This is not going to be a long post. Not a full update on life because at this moment I don't have the patience for that as it takes me forever to write a blogpost and life is crazy. I know that I should probably do one soon, though. Well, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here it is...

Soo... in 3 days i am flying from Australia to Thailand and meeting up with a couple of friends there to adventure/help out at a church and orphanage/eat amazing thai food/love Jesus/etc. No, I don't know why I used slashes instead of commas. Basically, the day after arriving in Bangkok we are heading to a fishing village nearby to help out seving at a church and orphanage for a week or two. We'll be helping out with a vbs that they are doing for the week for kids in the village, as well as possibly preparing sunday school lessons, helping kids with homework, perhaps assisting with some art therapy (i am not an artist, this may be interesting) and basically serving in whatever areas they need. Pretty much we're coming alongside to help them with existing programs and just to love and serve the children and adults in the community. After hanging out there we will possibly be going and doing a similar thing serving with a church in Southern Thailand, but communication with them seems to have disappeared recently, so we don't know about that. The rest of our trip will be mostly backpacking around and experiencing the culture and adventure and awesomeness that Southeast Asia has to offer. Oh, and one other super cool thing that we will be doing is getting to visit the IJM field office in Thailand and potentially the one in Cambodia as well. We aren't able to do much work with them because the work they do is very specific but we will get to meet the workers there and spend time praying with them and learning more about what they are doing there to combat human trafficking and how we can help in the future. It will be awesome and a half.

So I would greatly appreciate your prayers during this next while. Especially in next 3 weeks-ish as we're serving with one or two church and orphanages in Thailand. It would be sweet if you could pray specifically for:

1. Health/Safety. Southeast Asia is quite similar to India as far as health concerns go so there is a good chance that one or more of us could end up sick for quite a while and that wouldn't be nice. Also, it ain't really the safest place on the planet, and I am sometimes not the greatest at accessing risk/danger in certain situations. I can be senseless sometimes.

2. Energy. Children drain energy and we will be spending a lot of time with children in the first few weeks. Also, we'll be travelling a fair bit and exhaustion is probably gonna get to us.

3. Creativity and focus as we plan and organize activities, bible studies, music, etc. for the children at the vbs.

4. Pray that we will be open to sense and experience the gospel in new ways from a people who live very different to how we do in North America.

5. Pray that we will live out the gospel and love those who we serve and come in contact with. That the Lord will use us in powerful ways.

6. Just pray! He knows what is needed and He is sovereign.

Anyway, that's all I have time for because I need to head out the door. I miss all of you.