JDTS 2009/2010 – Final Blog Post
From Jesse Hunter, JDTS student blogger:
It’s strange to be sitting in our Winnipeg living room yet again. The month in Thailand and ten days in Vancouver were packed with a wide variety and great quantity of experience, however, it feels like it slipped through our hands and into the past in a heartbeat. The pictures and souvenirs, along with each others impressions, will hopefully preserve the stories and senses embraced in the past month and a half for a long time to come. I will share with you some of the stories that made great impressions on the team in my perspective, however, I encourage you to probe deeper into your friends and family who went to find out what their eyes and hearts encountered on outreach.
The travel to Bangkok brought with it some fun little snags which allowed the team to start practicing patience right off the hop, but thankfully we arrived in Thailand with all our luggage and sanity. One of the first days in Thailand we embarked on a temple tour with our translator and friend Aum who led us into the heart of Bangkok via a myriad of transportation services. I believe we rode a bus, boat, and a taxi all in that first journey. The temples we visited were astonishing. Quantity and quality were both amply present in the different Buddhist artistry we gazed upon. Those worshiping with incense or placing gold foil on the statues, starkly contrasted with the masses of tourists snapping shots of the deeply spiritual experiences being had, made for a confusing atmosphere. At times it felt like a market, others a museum, and still others an extravagant altar for worshippers. Buddhism is very integrated into the Thai culture, and so to be an informed participant in communities there would certainly require some intimate knowledge of the religions inner workings.
We spent two weeks in hill tribe villages in the northern region of Thailand, a couple hours outside of Chiang Mai. Homes composed of bamboo sprang up throughout the hills and valleys that were filled with a lush forestry that spanned all of ones periphery. Small streams winding through the landscape seemed to be icing on the cake of breathtaking geography. For me, God’s goodness and wisdom spoke to me as much through that canvas of earth as it did through any other aspect of the outreach. In the first village, made up of a group of Karen people, we partnered with them to help conserve an area of forest that they have adopted as their responsibility. There is no payment for these people, and yet for more than a decade they have been ascending into the densely forested hills on a regular basis to enforce the absence of illegal or irresponsible hunting and deforestation. During our time with them, we had the privilege to work along side them making paths of fire breaks on both sides of the area they monitor to ensure that wildfires do not devour the land. This mostly consisted of sweeping dry grass and leaves to clear a few meter path up the mountain. On these days, one group would hike up into the mountain, and the other would work nearer the camp doing similar work. Our team worked up a good sweat along side the locals, which proved to be a quick way to transcend language and engage in relationship. The hospitality received there was shocking to us all, and blessed us more than we could have ever hoped to bless them.
The second village was a Lisu village, and during our stay there we worked on an organic farm doing mostly manual labor. The bulk of our work was in transporting a mound of sand and gravel across a bamboo bridge, as well as clearing big rocks from a river bed to prevent flooding. The real treasure of the Lisu village was in the time we spent with the children. Massive games of duck duck goose, which affectionately became known as, “uh uh oo”, had many of the parents amused by the hysteria of screams and laughter. Our time at the Lisu village felt far too short, but even in the week we were there, there were some special connections made. Some of the girls spent considerable time with a lady named Loi from the village who was keen to share her language and love with the whole team. In return, we were able to bless her by purchasing the homemade crafts that are her means of income. During our time in the villages, a local pastor named Manop stayed with us the whole time guiding us through the experience. He was our translator, tour guide, boss, and in the end our friend and brother. He has given his life so wholly to the Kingdoms Coming, and he was a deep well of blessing for our team.
Once back in Bangkok, we worked with the Ruth Center for a week. They have a staff of four, and yet reach out to a great number of elderly living in slum communities, who are in need of some expression of Christ’s love. Perhaps it is prayer for sickness, simple companionship, food, a clean house, or in our case a new bathroom floor, but in any case the Ruth Center utilizes their resources and faith to project life and hope in to the desperation and hopelessness that marks these communities. We spent half of our time cleaning garbage from the toxic blend of sewage and waste that is the lake lying underneath entire communities built on docks in the lowlands. The aromas and sights of such waste were startling to see so close to peoples living spaces. In one man’s house, half of his floor had rotted away, and so the littered black waste water was literally the only thing where his living room should have been. We were able to embark on a two day construction project and build him a safe path to and from his washroom, which before consisted of two narrow beams that were by no means safe. The heat was unbelievable when working in Bangkok, but it was an experience that will not soon be forgotten.
After being in Thailand, we traveled to Vancouver and spent ten days working with the More Than Gold program and YWAM Vancouver, volunteering in many different areas of service. Some things we did were: A silent protest relating to the sex industry, a march for abused or murdered women in the downtown east side, offered prayer on street corners, and handed out free hot chocolate at train stations. The jet leg of such a radical time change combined with the cultural transition created an emotionally difficult atmosphere for many of us, and having to press forward with service and love certainly required us to exercise a deeper trust of the spirit we have learned to draw our life from. I would suggest you ask your friend or family member who went what they thought of the different ministries we were involved in. Our hats are off to the lovely people who have been pouring out months of energy to make our outreach in Vancouver possible.
This will be the last blog of our DTS, and so I will say a final goodbye to all the friends and family who have utilized this as a place to hear a bit more deeply about the experiences we have had. My fellow students and staff are now my family, and we have grown to love each other deeply. Separating will be the greatest challenge we have faced yet, and so your continued prayer and support for us is of great importance. Thank you all for your vested interest in young peoples lives, and for your support through prayer or any other ways, and please ensure you find ways to love the returning students or staff in the months to come.
February 26th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I pray that each of you will take what you have learned and be able to be God’s ambassador’s where ever you go. You have been hand chosen by God to make a difference for Him! You are all amazing.