Going for it
…Stay where you were called to be. God is there. Hold the high ground with him at your side…
1 Cor 7:24 MSG
The other day I was doing some reading and this piece just seemed to jump off the page and straight to my heart. My last blog talked about not knowing what to do next. I had begun to make decisions that were basically just what I wanted to do. I didn’t have a clear ‘Thus Says the Lord’ moment. When I read this piece of scripture I figured perhaps I am heading in the right direction after all. (Plus as soon as I really made the decision I got horribly sick, something that has happened each time I’ve made a major life changing decision that has me perfectly where God wants me.)
Now that I’ve built up the anticipation a bit I bet you’re ready to hear what my plan is.
One of the ‘careers’ that I’ve thought about pursuing is massage. I’ve looked into schools here in the States and am just not ready to really make the financial and time commitment since I’m not 100% sure that it is something I would want to do. Plus I would really like to specialize in Thai massage, which isn’t offered at the schools here. And the best way to find out if it’s something I want to do, is to actually do it.
My plan is to go take an intense Thai Massage Certified Practitioner and Teacher Training Program in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In two and a half months I would walk away with not only the ability to do Thai Massage, but to also teach it. The school teaches a variety of other massage courses, my goal is to also take Infant Massage, Pregnancy Massage, and Thai Traditional Post-Natal Treatment courses. A big reason that I want to take all of these courses (and maybe more if time and money allows), is that I see all of this not just as a possible career but it is also valuable ministry tools. Combining massage and Holy Spirit guided prayer will bring blessings, healing and rest to both missionaries and those they serve. Since I will be in Thailand, I hope to be able to go back to Mae Sot and bless those that I served alongside as well as to teach some of them the new things I’ve learned. If I decide I want to be able to practice massage in the States (get paid to do it), then I’ll need to go to massage school here in the States and pass all of the exams needed to be certified in whatever State I decide to practice / live.
The massage courses in Thailand are going to cost approximately $4,000. Travel, living and ministry expenses will have to be added to that – $2,000 for travel and $1,000 per month for living and ministry. Living costs in Chiang Mai will be higher than in Mae Sot, I will need to find an inexpensive hotel or apartment to stay at and I’ll probably be eating out a lot since most places don’t have kitchens. With my goal being to spend time doing missions at the end of my training and that this is ministry training I have talked with Kingdom Inc and they are allowing me to raise financial support through them for this trip. The more money I have / raise the more courses I’ll be able to take (or have fellow missionaries come and take with me), the longer I can stay in Thailand to do missions and the more ministry opportunities I’ll be able to have (I’ve found a lot of my ministry funds in Thailand went to supplying first aid and medical supplies and feeding individuals or whole villages in the past). There is a course starting in October, just one month away, and another one starting in January. I will spend three months doing massage courses, and then hope to spend two+ months doing missions.
Will you consider not only praying for me but also supporting me financially?
Click here to give through Kingdom Inc.
And check out the school / course I’m looking at attending – ITM.
Giving
Today is this year’s Giving Tuesday. As I started to write my thoughts on Giving I realized there is a lot that I wanted to say… so I’ll be doing a short series on Giving. Here is a little teaser to get started.
One of the things that I love about Outpour Movement is how quickly each person is willing to give. It’s as if each person holds their hands open wide to receive, yet their fingers are spread wide so that a portion of what they receive can fall to those around them. They give to the poor and the not so poor. They don’t wait for big planned events in order to give, because each day is filled with opportunities to give. Their eyes are constantly open to see the needs around them, and then trying to come up with the best ways to meet those needs. Their giving comes from their hearts. Giving isn’t something that they do, it’s who they are.
There are thousands of places that you could send your hard earned money to this Giving Tuesday. I ask that you would consider giving to Outpour Movement. (And of course you can give towards getting me back to Thailand – Support Casey.)
Photos speak of the past
I’m looking at photos I took on previous trips into Burma. There are still pictures that I have to edit and others that have become favorites. Sometimes there’s a photo that captures a moment that you want to hold on to, and then there are the ones that make you feel like you can see into the very soul of the person.
As much as I love looking through old photos, they are a reflection of the past. They tell amazing stories and bring forth a range of emotions, but they are not my today. Each of those kiddos has grown since the photo was taken and since the last time I saw them.
My hope is that some of these photos tell stories of the future. That the hope in them is true. That the futures of each of these individuals and villages is bright, happy and full of life. And that I’ll be able to see them all again soon. I miss these faces! I miss sitting down and asking how everyone is doing, only to be taken to the houses of those who are sick or injured to see how we can help, to hear their stories and pray with them. I even miss knowing that they are laughing at me but having no clue why.
Right now I still need an additional $500 – $600 a month before I can head back to Thailand and Burma. With my support raising history and currently being in a very small town in the States, that sounds nearly impossible. I’ve never really had great financial support and have saved the majority of my pennies to pay for as much of my missions as I can. And being in a tiny community traditional fundraising events just either aren’t possible or going to raise the funds they would somewhere else. God has to show up. I NEED people to give, people who I see at my parent’s little store, and people that I haven’t seen in years. So my goal for this month is to raise $1,000. No, that will not get me back to Thailand. But it will help give me some more faith and hope as it gets me one step closer to getting back to the place that I love.
Baby boy
After I made the decision to come back to the States to help my family I had about a week in Thailand to do ministry and wrap up a few things before leaving. I was able to spend time down at the border and even go with my whole team to visit our villages across the border, filling my heart up before having to leave.
While arranging things for my team to cross the border for a day trip, I asked our contact to stop by one of the villages to check on a mom and baby boy we were providing formula to (she wasn’t producing enough milk to provide all her baby needed). I got a call back that mom and baby were doing great, but that they were now having to share the formula since a there was an orphaned one-week old baby in the village. What?! I didn’t even know that a woman in the village was pregnant! Thankfully we have a supporter that has committed to paying for the formula for the first baby boy, and another ministry in town was able to donate formula that day so we could get more to them right away.
When we visited the village a few days later I brought some photos that I had developed from previous trips to give to the people in the pictures. They were flipping through the photos, handing them out, when they got to one picture I heard several people softly gasp… everyone gathered around and said, “it’s her”. Unbeknownst to me, I had taken a picture of the mother who passed away and brought it with me.
My heart broke. I knew the momma. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her smile and her face. I knew her three year old daughter was just getting to the point where she was no longer afraid of us. This was a sweet young mom who had a beautiful smile and you could see her love for her daughter. And now she was gone.
We asked lots of questions trying to get the story of what happened to leave a two week old baby boy without a family. Apparently the mom had her baby at a hospital in another town, but three days after giving birth she died of a heart attack. The father lives and works somewhere else and has the daughter. I’m not exactly sure if it’s a sister or just a really close friend who’s family has taken in the newborn, but we got to sit in her house and hold this precious baby boy.
With the reality of children and babies being sold for sex, slavery and even body parts I get nervous when children are unwanted or parents are to poor to provide for them (I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to the kids I visit). I was so relieved to realize that the ‘adoptive mom’ is a woman that I know from the village! She is an amazing mother of two young boys who has lovingly opened her home to this baby boy. The woman’s husband even came and sat down with us for a bit, he made a bottle and helped hold the baby after a freshly changed ‘diaper’ (not something we normally see men do). The man made sure to let us know that this baby will be loved and cared for by his family.
Leaving was a little harder this time around as the realities of the people here are no longer rumors and stories, but they are now undeniably real and affecting the people I call friends and family. The more we become a part of people’s lives here the more we are going to be faced with stories like this, and have a desire to help meet the needs of these people who just can’t do it for themselves. When I got the call there wasn’t a question of ‘if’ we would help provide for these babies, because the obvious answer was yes. The hard part comes when realizing that right now, these types of calls aren’t in the budget because our ministry budget is coming out of our personal budgets for the most part. Many of the events we do are covered by supporters or teams, but the daily and emergency things aren’t necessarily covered by anyone specific. When you wonder why I / missionaries keep asking for money remember stories like this…. of a newborn baby boy who doesn’t even have a name yet, who lost his mom and who’s father isn’t in the picture, of a young family who is struggling to feed their two boys who aren’t old enough for school yet have lovingly decided to raise a baby who is not theirs, and of a mother who’s willing to share what little she has to help keep this precious life alive… the funds that you give go towards me / missionaries provide not only for personal expenses but also giving an entire village a reminder that they are not forgotten and helps restore the hope that this baby boy will be able to live a long and happy life.
Give – Casey Wells or to Outpour Movement (general fund)
He Needs Good Community
The other day one of my roommates and I got to take a friend down to check out the border area and meet our Burma contact. The border here is interesting because there is a small stretch of land in-between Thailand and Burma, it is a land that belongs to no-one (which is where it got it’s name “No Man’s Land”). Since the land belongs to no-one, there are no laws, it is a place that people go to when they are no longer welcome in either Thailand or Burma. You can only imagine the things that happen in a place that has no laws, lets just say it’s not a safe place for me to go for multiple reasons. From a distance the land just looks very overgrown, but if you look closely you can see that people have created homes under the brush and even have a well and small garden. Our contact said there are at least 150 children living there, which means that there have to be a lot more adults!
Our contact has built relationships with the children and the adults living in No Man’s Land. He was explaining to me that he was at the border that day because the night before he got a call from a drug-dealer that lives in No Man’s Land. This man called our contact asking for advice, his 3 or 4 year old son gets angry a lot and his mother is in prison, so he just doesn’t know what to do. Our contact told the man that his son needs good community, he just needs to be loved. So our contact was picking up the boy to take him to a playground and let him play and be around good community for a couple of hours! As we were leaving I handed our contact a few dollars, he looked at me and asked why I was giving him money. ‘Because you are looking after children, and tonight you are going to take that little boy to a playground to have fun and then you guys are going to have dinner.’ He was just as touched by my small gesture of paying for dinner as I was of him offering to take a boy, that is desperate to just be a little boy and to be loved, to a playground.
I LOVE that the people here who trust no-one, trust our contact. And I love that our contact understands that helping people feel loved, valued, trusted, and giving them even a basic education can transform not only that individual, but a whole nation. Our contact is discipling people in what a Godly life should be without ever even having to share the gospel with them (at least not sharing it quite yet). My prayer is that these relationships will continue, that our contact will continue to be able to reach out to people that no-one else can…. and that one day some of these people who trust no-one else will begin to trust the Outpour team as well, that we will be able to build relationships with them and help them see and grasp the goodness of God and of the world around them.
Photographs are not of No Man’s Land, but one of the villages that we visit in Burma.
From Home to Home
As most of you know I had the blessing of being able to spend almost two months back ‘home’ in the States. While I was there I got to see my niece and nephew dedicated by their parents to Christ and my little sister get married! I also spent a lot of time helping out at my parent’s store – White Horse Grocery & Mercantile in Idaho. It was a trip filled with lots of family time that I absolutely loved!!
I was given a couple of opportunities to speak at churches, share with friends and supporters, and even have an article published in the oldest newspaper in Idaho about what I am a part of here in Thailand and Burma.
Two weeks ago I returned to Mae Sot, Thailand… and I hit the ground running. A lot of things changed while I was away, all really good changes, it’s just taking a bit for me to catch up. I’m back to helping out at Famous Ray’s, the hamburger restaurant that was started to provide jobs and support one of our children’s homes. We are also taking teams back into Burma and hosting them here in Mae Sot again. Since I’ve been back we’ve hosted a family visit, a college group and a team from Bangkok. One of the benefits of having teams visits is that I get to take extra trips into Burma to visit the villages and friends I’ve made!
While visiting the leper village last week one of the ladies didn’t know my name (speaking different languages makes communicating difficult), so she decided that my name is daughter. We laughed and hugged at my new name. It’s an amazing feeling, knowing that I have a “family” in Burma now.
I love being back in Thailand and Burma, it is exactly where I know I am supposed to be. Unfortunately my financial support is really low, and I’ve found myself in desperate need of one-time and monthly support. I need to raise an additional $800 a month. My personal expenses are relatively low, however, I want to raise enough support to give in abundance and to be able to accomplish the ministry that God has called me and the team here to do. Costs add up quickly when buying snacks for kids, purchasing school supplies for poor students, feeding families, paying to cross the border, starting a vegetable and herb garden. God has called me to Mae Sot and Burma to help physically do these things, but I rely on the financial support of others in order to see the things that God has spoken happen, to build relationships and help bring joy and hope into people’s lives here.
Would you take a moment to consider giving financially towards what I am doing in Asia? To make an online donation or for information on where to send a check head over to Kingdom Inc
When water recedes it leaves behind mud
The morning after the flood I woke up with the same question on my mind as everyone else, ‘how high are the flood waters’. Not living in the effected areas I had to rely on social media… I was so relieved to learn that the waters had receded in town! Overnight the water had gone from a few feet deep to not even covering the streets in the downtown area.
A boy sifts through flood waters and garbage looking for anything that might be valuable.
Unfortunately those who lived and worked along the river were not as lucky. On both the Thailand and Burma side of the river the water covered the entire first floor of the buildings next to the river. Being a large import and export border the area is surrounded by large and small businesses as well as villages. Some people received the warning that the river was going to rise and were able to evacuate, but not everyone heard about it before it was to late. Many people were stranded until the waters went down… three days later.
A man wades through flood waters looking for items that can be used to rebuild houses in ‘no-mans land’.
It’s one thing to pray for flood victims that you don’t know, but as I prayed people’s faces came to mind from my many visits across the border. After the waters receded a group of us went down to the border to pray and see the damage. I prayed for those effected by the flood, and that we would run into our contact as I really wanted to know my friends were all ok!
A woman working to clean up flood water, mud, and garbage left over from the flood near the border.
God heard my prayers, and we found Myo, our contact!! We were able to encourage him and remind him that we are praying for him and his people. Myo tried to help many people get to higher ground before the flood, unfortunately not everyone wanted to listen to him. He said that three boats that were crossing the river tipped over. At least 200 people had died in Burma due to the floods. Myo had been renting a small room right next to the border, he didn’t have much, but being an educator he had lots of books and a collection of photos and notes for an autobiography he wants to write, he lost everything. Our time was short with Myo as it was late. We asked him what were the greatest needs at the moment… he said that temporary refugee camps had formed at four different monastaries so people had somewhere to stay and a bit of food, but they needed medicine.
Some of the clean up after the flood in the market area received immediate attention by the government.
The same night I went to the pharmacy to pick up the medicine that Myo said the people needed. The pharmacist was wonderful in helping me find the best options to purchase, and told me if I could stop at a clinic in the morning she would like to make a donation. So on my way to the border the next morning I stopped at the clinic and was given two bags full of medication! She more than tripled what I had purchased!! A friend and I travelled to the border to meet Myo, he was blown away by the amount of medicine and supplies we brought him. As he looked through what we brought he almost came to tears over the small bottles of baby powder in one of the bags. Myo was so excited to be able to get medicine to the people who needed it. (He was able to give some directly to people he knew needed it, and then hand the rest over to a doctor who was also staying at a monstary.)
Myo taking the medicine and other supplies that we purchased into Burma to share with flood victims.
Those living in villages or not on the main road are still struggling with the cleanup from the flood. Not only did the flood waters do LOTS of damage, but they left behind several inches of a clay like mud on and in everything. I watched antique shops have to take every item out of their shop and use buckets of water and paintbrushes or toothbrushes to clean their wooden merchandise. The amazing thing is that it didn’t take long for many of the shops to open back up.
The view across the river at Burma. Note the entire wall that is missing from one of the buildings due to the flood.
A few days ago we got to meet up with Myo once again. He again was beaming over what we able to donate. Myo let us know that all of our friends in the villages were untouched by the floods! All of the people who had been staying at the different refuge camps had gone home or found somewhere else to stay. As Myo said, ‘things keep happening to my people, but we are survivors, we keep on going.’ I asked if people still needed anything and he told me, ‘ we don’t need food or anything, we just need love’.
Please continue to pray for the people of Thailand and Burma who were effected by the flooding. Pray for the businesses and economy (many people in Burma lost their jobs because businesses couldn’t stay open). Rainy season is almost over, but the flood was the worst they’ve had in over 10 years.
Leap of Love
I originally wrote this blog for Outpour Movement, but I wanted to share it with you here as well. It can sometimes be difficult to live in a third world country so far away from the people, things, and language that you know… this is a beautiful reminder of why being here makes an impact even when it doesn’t feel like it.
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Have you ever had a kid come running and leap into your arms? Maybe it was your son or daughter, a niece or nephew, or maybe one of the kids from the Sunday school class you teach.
But was it ever a child that you didn’t know?
One that you never had a real conversation with?
One day soon we will share a bit more with these little ones why we are here and where our love for them comes from. I can’t wait for the day when language barriers fall away and they can understand what it’s like to make that same leap into the arms of Abba, Father God. Until then, we’ll keep greeting the kids with open arms and open hearts, loving every smile, giggle, and hug that we give and receive.
goldenglances 