True Woman 101

I'm going to start a new Bible study book! How exciting. It's called True Woman 101 Diving Design and 8-week study on biblical womanhood by Mary A. Kassian and Nancy Leigh Demoss. Sounds pretty awesome, huh? If you would like to go through the study with me, you can buy the book on amazon here.

The book talks about abandoning the world's view of womanhood and turning to God's. I'm pretty excited. I'll be posting weekly to write about what God's taught me that week!

Make sure you guys keep me accountable! (:

He's my Number One

In high school, I always wanted the "Picture Perfect" experience. The best friend, who knows everything about you and you know everything about her, your like sisters. The group of friends, where you all hang out and go to the mall together. The high school sweetheart, who upon graduation would propose and get married to in the fall.  I dreamed about going to all the football games, senior prom, ect.

But instead of the "ideal" high school experience, what I got stunk. My prom date decided to take another girl a week before prom, my friends never wanted to go to the football games, I always felt lonely, and the high school sweetheart never came. What a bummer.

However, living in Thailand has changed my perspective of the world. As I walk my city and see chidren begging for money in the street, over a hundred Buddist temples (just in my town!) and knowing that Thailand is less than one percent Christian, I quickly realize how silly the "perfect high school experience" and the "American Dream" is. I've learned that he's the only one who satisfies. I've learned that he so desires to be close to me and love on me. He thinks I'm beautiful and worthy. He sees me as no one else does, as someone lovely, precious, and important. He teaches me to come to Him first with things that make me cry, things that make me dance with joy, what makes me mad, what I find is interesting, and tell him all my corny jokes. He's my best friend. And the best thing is, he wants all of that with you too!

I so look forward to my Quiet Times with Jesus, especially when they come with pretty coffee.

My prayer for everyone who reads my blog is that they will understand just how sweet God is. God is my number one, who's yours?

Learning to Be the Light

The truth is, living in Thailand and trying to show the love of Christ can be one of the most difficult things ever, but totally awesome at the same time. Weird, huh?

I walk along the Sunday night market seeing thousands of people and you know that more than nine out of those ten do not believe in God. The feelings you would expect me to have would be disappointment, discouragement, sadness, and a whole bunch of other negative emotions. However, I surprise myself by being totally encouraged, totally humbled, totally in love with these people, and passionate.

Night Market

You see these people walking aimlessly, not aware or accepting the love of Jesus, and the thought that continually rolls through my mind is, "I could have been just like these people." It's only by God's grace that I am a believer and follower.

So with that truth in my mind, I am given courage and boldness to proclaim the good news and to not be ashamed. Even though my Thai skills are lacking, I totally can share with English speaking people. So in the midst of Buddhist temple grounds, the sound of the Monks chanting, the smell of incense burning in sacrifice to idols, I share and pray.

Two men sat down at the table where some friends and I were eating. I started listening to him talk and quickly found out he liked rock music and tattoos. So I jumped into talking to him about his tattoos and told him about mine (which is a Jesus fish) and we got on the subject of God. I asked him if he liked the band Korn. "Oh yeah!" he said.

I shared with him the story of Brian Head Welch (who was the lead guitarist of Korn who left because he became Christian) and he was really interested! I asked if I could pray with him and he said yeah, so I did. Praise God! His name is Josh if you want to pray for him, he still wasn't sold out on God, but he was interested.

So even though Thailand is spiritually dark, I'm learning to be the light.

Loving Public Transportation is a Process

So far, my travels here in Thailand have consisted of being picked up and dropped off at places by either my big brother, or friends. Now that I've been here a month and I need to be more mobile, I am learning how to be independent and get around on public transportation.

My dear sweet Thai friend came over to give me a crash course on how to use Song Tawes and Tuk-Tuks. So we begin by standing at the entrance of my neighborhood in the super hot sun waiting for a Song Tawe to come pick us up. Finally it comes and we pile on, and just as we do, it starts to rain. As it's pouring rain and I'm sitting in a taxi full of Thai people staring at me because my snow white skin is probably blinding them, Tdan starts to explain to me how the transportation system works. "If you take a red one, it takes you wherever, but it's super expensive, so no. If you take a brown one, it has it's own route it goes," and as she's explaining, I'm thinking, "How on earth am I going to remember this?!"

Finally, about two Song Tawes later we're on the street I would have to get off on to go to school. Then we realize we don't have the side street number. So we start walking aimlessly down this street trying to figure out where we're going, which as you can imagine is giving me buckets of comfort.

Finally we give up on trying to find my school and we start on our way home. She shows me where to walk to get a taxi home and she says, "Okay! You got this, call me when you get home!" And she put me on the Song Tawe. I'm like, "WHAT?" And I get on and go home. It drops me off a few hundred feet from the entrance of my neighborhood and as I start walking home, I start to cry, just from the stress of learning how to do all that. (How embarassing)

So as you can tell, learning to love public transportation is a process.