I really hate blogging... It's just not my thing I
guess. So for those of you that were hoping to keep up with me over this
last year I'm sorry about that. If you'd like to get a general Idea of
what my year has been like (and trust me it's worth it) then I would suggest
looking over the blogs of my teammates this past year.
I recommend taking a look at Caleb's as he blogged a lot and
put into words the struggles and joys that we all went through much better than
most of us could have hoped to.
I also highly recommend reading Alycia's blogs. I was only with her the last 4 months of the
race but can tell you that reading about her time on the race is well worth
it. Be sure to check out one of my favorites
of hers entitled "Your Word Mean Nothing".
Well I think all that's really left is..
To all the friends and family back home that prayed and supported
me all year, Thank You. To all the
people I met around the world this year that impacted my life when I was only
hoping to impact yours, Thank You. To my
traveling companions, ministry partners, and the people who became friends
along the way, Thank you.
For a lifetime of experiences all wrapped into one year
living around the world, words can't really express it the way it's meant...
but Thank You.
Well if you watch the news at all these days then you are probably already aware of the crazyness going on here in Thailand. I'm not going to go too deep into all that's happening but basically this is not the greatest time to be a foreigner in Thailand. With that in mind I thought I would give you all a little update as to how much attention us guys are paying to all the crazyness durring our month of "manistry". Not much. Insted here is a little video about some other fires we heard about that threatened the home for girls we have been working at all month and how we decided to act.
It's was our first sunday afternoon since getting to Chiang Mai. Elsie, our ministry contact came running in short of breath and panicked."There is a fire at the Girls home! Nam will be here in the truck to pick you up in 5 minutes!"
The house of 13 guys got silent. No questions asked, no seconds wasted. We dropped our playing cards, and closed our computer. In no time at all we were out of our church clothes and in our work clothes, we had collected all the buckets we could, and before we knew it all 13 of us and 5 missionaries were sardined into one truck, flying towards the girls home.
Clueless of any details about the fire, we were praying for the best, and grabbing whatever we could in preparation for the worst. We were laughing and excited because we are guys and guys love adventures, mysteries and challenges, and yet we had a sick feeling in our stomach that something terrible could have happened to the 30 little girls living at the ranch that was burning.
~
Crammed into the back of the Tuk Tuk (truck with seats and roof in the back) it was impossible for most of us to see anything outside. It was when Tyler said he could see smoke from about 2 kilometers away when we started to get silent and started praying.
"God we are nothing, and we can't stop this fire with buckets. But God here we are and we are willing to help. Use us. Protect these girls. Save this property. WE NEED YOU GOD TO STOP THIS FIRE!"
Well it's been a while since
I've blogged so in an effort to become more disciplined at this and also to make
sure I don't accidentally become the person who blogs the least on my team (Lauren)
here is a blog for your reading pleasure.
Crap... now I have writers
block...Ok, let's just stick to the
facts.It's May.We are in Thailand.This month the guys and girls are split into separate
groups and so all of us guys are spending the month in Chiang Mai working with Remember
Nhu, an organization that works to provide a home and education for girls in
danger of being sold into the sex trade.
Hey well actually now that I
look at it that's a pretty decent update.Keep watching for more coming soon.
Today is
Mother’s Day, and it just so happens that all the guys are together
this month so we all wanted to make a video to show our appreciation
for our moms. It’s not always easy without our moms around. In fact, we
are quite lost without them. Who do we go to when we can’t find
something, or when we are sick and no one there to care for us, or when
we do something stupid and no one tells us just how stupid it was. We
are doing our best here in Thailand but it’s just not the same without
our moms, so here is a tribute to you. Happy Mother's Day Mom!!!
So we have been here in the Philippines for a little over
two weeks now and despite all that is happening around me every day I am here
whenever I try to blog about it I can't think of anything to write. What does keep coming to mind is what God
has been showing me and so I thought I would share a bit of that.
One of the things our squad leaders ask us to do the first
week we got here was to write down the "Cry's of our heart". This was something I hadn't really thought of
for a while but since I wrote it down I have had very little else on my mind.
The cry of my heart is a simple one but I believe the
effects of it actually happening would be immeasurable. My cry is to see the men of God in this
generation STEP UP! All too often I look
around the church today and ask myself "Where are the men of God who are ready
to lay down everything they want and desire in life to boldly follow Christ and
become the Spirit filled leaders of this generation we so desperately
need?" I ask myself this question
because when I look at the men of this generation most of what I see are boys
age 18-40 that are more concerned with how to make their life more comfortable
and easy rather than being challenged and growing spiritually. I recognize this because most of the time I
have to put myself in this category and it frustrates me that in my 28 years I
have not pursued God with greater zeal.
So 4 weeks with no blog posts... sorry
about that. Sort story is that during that time Australia came and
went and now we just started our first week of ministry here in the
Philippines. Now you all might be thinking "wait a minute Matt,
you said you were going to Malaysia not the Philippines." Well my
friends that was the original plan but as previous World Racers tell
us all the time "things change" and when they do you just learn
to roll with it. So when ministry contacts weren't working out in
Malaysia God opened up doors in the Philippines and here we are.
Anyway, my plan is to post some blogs
about Australasia soon but in the mean time I wanted to go ahead and
get started with what is going on right now so that I don't get so
far behind that I just end up not blogging at all. Actually since
this is more like an announcement/update rather than a full fledged
blog I would really like it if you all would post any questions or
thought for blogs you might like to read. I'm not so great at this
part of the adventure so it might help me to know a few things you
all want to hear about.
Thanks again for all your prayers and
comments. Keep watching for my first blog about the Philippines.
It's coming soon...promise.
Another week has past and I find myself
almost in a daze. It really is hard to believe that my time in New
Zealand is almost up. Lets do a bit of a recap since my last blog...
We arrived in Fielding where we were
going to be helping out at a christian festival called "Soul
Survivor". My team and the other team with us were assigned the
job of Stewards for the duration of the festival which is pretty much
the same as saying were the muscle. Trash pickup, toilet cleaning,
gate duty, whatever needed doing that's what we were there for. Its
not the typical kind of thing you might think of when you think of
missionary work but for me I really saw it more as just an
opportunity to serve others and so personally I rather enjoyed it.
Anyway, the days went by quickly even with what seemed like a never
ending drizzle kind of hanging around (isn't this suppose to be their
summer down here?). The wind picked up once or twice and a couple
tents almost blew away. On one of the days I ran kind of a ring toss
game where one person held up a hula hoop and the rest tried to
through soaking wet sponges through the hoop for points. Needles to
say the people holding the hoops got soaked, it was pretty sweet.
And then all the sudden it was Monday and it was time to move on to
the next festival we would be helping out at.
A two hour car ride brought us a little
further south to (Why-ka-nie, don't ask me to try and spell it) and
the site of our next festival "New Wine". For me it meant a
change in scenery but as I was to be on the Steward team here as well
not much of a change in what I would be doing. The rest of the team
however got a change of pace as they all ended up working with the
various groups of kids attending the festival. This week has been
especially challenging but good for me in a personal way. Amidst
helping with the festival I have had some really great conversations
with some of the staff here as well as other world racers. God has
really been speaking through some of them and making me take a deeper
look at how God works in my life and also how I try to limit the ways
I am willing to let Him use me. Some of it honestly has not been the
easiest to hear and even harder to actually receive it but Pride was
one of the things I ask God to help me really lay down before Him so
it wouldn't make a whole lot of scene to fight it when he starts to
dig at some of the roots.
Well the week is coming to an end here
as well and in a day or so we will be heading Australia and month 2
of this little adventure. I'm told that I can expect a bit more
sunshine over there, lets hope =)
So the last couple of days have been a bit of a blur but I'll try not to leave anything out. I'll start with the good. Lets see... We hiked to the top of a waterfall, got a taste of the rainbow, and learned to do the "Haka" (it's kind of a war dance that the native people of New Zealand would do before going into battle). I'm told their Rugby team still does something similar before the start of every game. Anyway, Reway (one of the staff here at the YWAM base as well as being one of the native people of New Zealand) was kind enough to give us a demonstration of the Haka so I will try to get a video of that posted as soon as I can.
We had a rain storm blow through on our last day at the base and when the sun cam out a few minutes latter it made a great double rainbow show up right over the mountains so we had a bit of fun with that's you can see.
The next morning we started off for our next assignment part of which included a 9 hour buss ride and for me personally probably the worst day of this trip so far. The main reason for this involves the decision I made not to bring a computer, mp3 player, camera, address book or anything else that might take up a lot of space and chose instead to bring only my blackberry which could serve as all of the above. Well two weeks in and my blackberry has died and so far is unwilling to be raised from the dead. Needles to say put a bit of a damper on my long day of travel.
Anyway, we arrived at our destination here in Feilding last night and should start getting our assignments for our time here sometime this morning so for now that's all there is =)
So my nose and ears decided to forgive me it seams as they have seen fit to stop glowing bright red and the pain they were delving out has all but subside. The pealing and shedding of dead skin however is well under way and in recent mornings I feel as if it would be among the simplest of tasks to trace my every step for the day.
Since we arrived in New Zealand we have been camping at the YWAM base (Youth With A Mission) at Chrystal Springs in Matamata. Today most of the teams started heading out to their perspective ministry assignments for the rest of the month at locations all over the North Island. My team and one other are hanging back for a few days to help out at the base as well as clean up and make sure we leave the place looking either as good or better looking than when we arrived.
It's easy to get mesmerized by the country side around here. You can look in practically any direction and see beautiful mountains, rolling hillsides, trees of every variety (palms, furs, oaks, pines) all growing right next to each other creating one of the most beautiful landscapes you could possibly ask for. I think there is a sermon in there somewhere but I'll get back to that latter. Oh, and there are no snakes! None! Someone call Indiana Jones for me and let him know cuz he and anyone else like me who really cant stand the slithery little rodents will love it here for that reason alone. Unfortunately they do still, like most places, have ants here and as much as I have been enjoying the shade of a nice tree as I write this and look up at the beautiful mountains the ants seem to have no respect for such things and are rather intent on driving me from my spot in the shade. I wonder if I can find a little bit of peanut butter or something to lure them away with?...
