YWAM Thaibodia Outreach 2008-2009

Thaibodia Team Video

2009-05-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

Here is the video from our outreach:

Back in Australia

2009-02-15T03:03:00.000-08:00

Hello to all our blog readers,
Most of you have probably already heard but we are all back safely in Australia now. We are just getting ready to start our week of debrief before graduation on Friday night. Thanks for all your prayers during outreach. We had some awesome ministries that we were involved in and a lot of people we were able to impact in the 2 months we were out. I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more from your sons and daughters soon if you haven't already. Be sure to ask them about those stories where God was really moving. Thanks for being a part of this journey!

Pray for our last week

2009-02-08T01:47:00.000-08:00

Please pray for both teams as we finish up ministry in Thailand. The girls have been doing some hard core ministry with the prostitutes down on Bangla Road in Patong Beach, Thailand. We've been building up some realtionships with the girls who we even go down to see during the day time. Pray against the spiritual strongholds and spiritual warfare we feel in there every time we are down there. Pray that lives would be changed and we'd be able to connect these girls with the ministry we are working with here as we are leaving in a few days. Pray for salvations and Jesus to reign in that place!

Update from Phuket girls

2009-02-02T23:54:00.000-08:00

Update on girls ministy in Phuket:
We arrived in Phuket on Monday afternoon. We are loving being here. We are working with Mark and Sharon who are running the SHE Ministry in Phuket. They reach out to women and children at risk, primarily prostitutes. They run a center where the girls who come out of prostitution can live and work. They go out into the red light district and talk to the girls and get to know them. So eventually they carry the conversation into offering them a way out of prostitution by making jewelry and chocolate. A lot of the girls will become Christians too. We are living in the center with 5 of the girls and an older couple (in their 70s from England who came to help for 4 months). Some are not yet Christians. We get to live and work with them by making chocolate and boxes. During the day we also go out for prayer walks and really pray into the ministry we are doing. Tonight we will go down to Patong Beach where there is a street with hundreds of bars and about 1200 prostitutes. We will do a lot of praying and a lot of talking with the girls. We're stoked to be here and know that God will do some amazing things as long as we walk in courage and boldness.

Update from teams

2009-01-30T02:22:00.000-08:00

Update from team in Khao Lak (Megan, CJ, Brent, and Joppe):
We've been spending our days teaching English and doing construction in the afternoons at a new church and at a preschool. On Saturdays we work with a kids program and Sundays we speak in church, sharing testimonies and preaching. The church is amazing because it's new Christians and some non-Christians. We have a great opportunity here to impact a lot of people with Christ. We know people here will be saved...please pray with us for that. We've gotten to do a few fun things here....we hung out with a DTS outreach from Singapore for the first 4 days we were here, we've gone on a boat ride into the "little amazon" with snakes and monkeys (it looked like something out of the movies), we went to the tsunami memorial, and we've gotten to cool off at the beach a few times. It is SO hot here and humid. The living conditions have been super rough for us here but it's good to have that "real" outreach experience where you realize that you can only make it with God's strength. We've been spending so much time with God here individually and as a team. We've had time to really study the Bible and reflect on things God has taught us over the past 5 months. So as hard as it is here, it's so worth it and we wouldn't trade this experience for anything. God is so much bigger than any problem we will face here. We truly believe the words in Romans 5:3-4 where it talks of how our struggles lead to perseverance, then to character, which leads to hope. We are such stronger people because of persevering through the hard times.

Team in Phang Nga:
They have been teaching English and doing construction. They are also working with the church during the morning service and hanging out with the youth group. They rode elephants on their day off. They've been living with air conditioning and free internet because of a festival across the street but half of the team has been sick.

The next plan is to move to new locations again on February 2nd. The girls will all head south to Phuket to do prostitute ministry and the guys will come up to Khao Lak. Hopefully they will help finish off some of the construction so the new buildings are ready for use. We will all meet up in Phuket on the 11th for 2 days of debrief before going back to Bangkok and then back to Australia on February 14th.

Please pray for us to have a powerful impact these last two weeks and to persevere to the end. Keep praying for good health and protection with the heat.

Thailand Update

2009-01-22T00:59:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone....
Just wanted to let you know that internet is a lot harder to come by here and we won't be on much. So if you don't hear from us in a week or two please don't be worried.

We are in two different locations right now. One team of 8 is in Phang Nga working with a church and teaching English. Another team of 4 (Megan, CJ, Brent, and Joppe) is near Khao Lak working with a pastor who is rebuilding houses from the tsunami. We'll update you more when we switch locations around February 2nd.

Here are some outreach pictures from Cambodia: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018058&l=2eec6&id=135000015

We're in Thailand

2009-01-19T18:34:00.001-08:00

We arrived in Thailand on Saturday night. Wednesday was an emotional goodbye to the kids at the orphanage. There were many tears from every chid ages 4-20. I had 3 little boys I taught in kindergarden that would not let go of me that night. Everyone on the team had the same experience. They wanted to pray over us and how powerful that was. Every child in there was screaming out to God for us and crying their eyes out. They gave us so many presents. It was an emotional night. It's hard to say goodbye to kids who you fell in love with who are used to people leaving them. Thursday morning we woke up at 6:30 to see all the kids outside our guesthouse. It was another goodbye for us. They didn't leave until our tuk tuks drove away (I think they were all late for school). We stayed in Phnom Penh for 2 days. Friday we went to see kids who live at a dump, well we actually went to feed them. It was pretty hard to see but awesome to be a part of something that is really changing these kids lives. The people who bring food come in every 2-3 days to bring food as well as medical attention. We had 3 pretty serious medical problems while we were there. They had to take one little boy to the doctor right away to have surgery. More and more we've been learning on this outreach how blessed we are.

Sunday we hung out all day and flew to Bangkok that night. We arrived close to midnight but waited up for the other girls team in Thailand to get back from doing ministry. It was awesome to catch up with them and hear their stories. They are an amazing group of 4 girls really working hardcore with prostitute ministry. Sunday we hung out with them all day and saw some of Bangkok. We got to have our first Starbucks in a month! We traveled back to the YWAM base and had some prayer time with the girls as they were leaving in the morning.

Monday we had orientation with YWAM here in Thailand and went on a scavenger hunt of Bangkok. We had dinner and then met together with Merv (who came to visit from Sunshine Coast). He was awesome to have around to talk to and just kinda talk to the team about outreach. Today is a Buddhist temple tour and tonight we fly to Phuket. Once there we will drive 2 hours north to Phang Nga to work with a church there. We will be doing construction, working with the church, and teaching English. We plan to be with them until February 1st when we will be working with another church in Khao Lak. Keep us in your prayers that we would stay focused these last 25 days here in Thailand and for team unity.

Leaving Sihanoukville

2009-01-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning we will be leaving Sihanoukville to head back to Phnom Penh. Our time here has been amazing. We've really left an impact on everyone we've met from the kids at the orphanage, to the teachers and the school, to the staff at our hotel, to people on the street, and many more. God really used us to encourage the Christians here and to love on the kids. We got to pray for healing many times and share God's Word daily. Right now we are waiting for the school to put on a dance for us. They are finishing an hour early today to have time for it. And tonight we will have a dinner party with the orphanage, then worship with them, and then we have to say goodbye. It is so hard to leave kids who are so used to people coming and leaving. I think they have a hard time understanding how people can love them when they come and go. Please pray that they would fully understand God's love and how he will never leave them.

Tomorrow we will take a 4-5 hour bus ride back to Phnom Penh. Tomorrow night we will get some pizza and ice cream. Friday we will be taking the team to visit a dump where kids live in Phnom Penh. We will be bringing food to them. I hear it's really hard to see and will probably break our hearts. Pray for strength and that we don't get overwhelmed by how much need we see. Saturday night we will fly to Bangkok where we will spend 3 nights before flying to Phuket on January 20th. We will get to meet up with another all girls outreach team there for a little mid-outreach hangout and celebration of what God has done so far.

Playing with the kids

2009-01-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

We've had an awesome week down here. Just about all the team is feeling better so we've been back at full speed. We've worked hard this week on the wall and all we have left is to paint the outside. It's been a cool testimony to people driving by to see a bunch of westerners working so hard. One guy driving by stopped to ask what we were doing. We found out he runs an HIV orphanage in town. He asked us to pray for their funding as their supporters have stopped. We hope to be finished with the wall on Tuesday. Wednesday this week was a holiday so we hung out with the kids all day. It was so much fun. We played games in the morning and took them to the beach in the afternoon. Then we ate dinner and went to worship with them. They are so crazy when they worship the Lord. It's exciting for us to be a part of. They are going to be so sad when we leave on Thursday and we will be too. They have given us to many gifts with the little things they have.

One cool story for me from Wednesday was when I went to hang out with some of the little boys. They were in kindergarden and I had taught English to them. They came running over saying, "teacher, teacher." Then they started counting to 10 (which we taught them) and singing the song "head and shoulders." It was one of those moments where you realize that what you are doing is really making a difference. We've been sharing the love of Jesus with these kids in a powerful way.

Last night six of us went to do some prostitute ministry. It is so hard for us to understand why these girls are in this line of work and why so many old white men come here for holiday for the girls. We didn't really know the best way to minister to them so we just tried to be friendly and treat them with respect. The street where all the prostitutes were is pretty hidden so the only reason anyone would go there would be for that. Men can hire girls for $10 a night. We talked about it on the way back and tried to figure out what we can do about the issue. I'm hoping the other girls team will head down here for a week when they are in Cambodia because that is the focus of their ministry.

Most of the team is out on a boat ride now for our day off. The food this week has been excellent. We found a cheap restaurant down on the beach that we've enjoyed as well as eating with the orphanage. They always give us more food than we can finish. God's really been blessing us. As were were doing worship on the roof last night, there was a fireworks show down on the beach. It was one of those moments where you just say to yourself, "life is good." Yeah outreach hasn't been the easiest time for our team, but the more we stay focused on Christ the more we see all the blessings he has given us here. God's been taking care of us so much. Keep praying that we'd be bold and step out in faith in sharing the Gospel cause that's what we're here for. Pray we woudn't settle for the things we have planned but living a lifestyle of evangelism...always showing the love of Jesus to everyone. We leave here on Thursday at 8am to head back to Phnom Penh for 2 nights before heading to Thailand.

One week down in Sihanoukville

2009-01-04T18:03:00.000-08:00

We just finished our first full week of ministry in Sihanoukville and are starting our 2nd week. Our week was full of teaching English, scraping and painting the wall surrounding the property, preaching, intercession, worship, and prayer walks. The English teaching went a lot better as the week went on. We have been working on conversation with the older kids and basic letters and number with the younger kdis. The kids have enjoyed the songs we have taught them. I think everyone knows the song "head and shoulders" now. Friday we did the chapels at the school....high school and elementary school. Saturday was our day off and most of the team went to the market in town. Matt and I were pretty sick from the food so we took the day to rest. We're feeling a lot better now. We tried a new restaurant and it wasn't that good. We won't eat there again. Sunday we did the church service again. Alex and Evan did a great job speaking and Kenton, Keara, Brent, and Isaac did awesome leading worship! Then we went to a cell group. It was a group led by a teacher and some high school students from the school we are working with. They gather the children from the community to do a sort of Sunday School program. It's in a very poor community. We showed up on Sunday and found out once we got there they wanted us to do part of the program. We're getting used to doing things on the fly. It took us about 5 min to put together a 20 min program. It's all about God working through us. It's amazing what God can do through us when we are available and willing to allow him to use us.

This week will look a little different because the school is off on Wednesday. We hope to put together a games/sports day for the orphanage that day. Monday and Friday we will be teaching English and doing two chapels on Friday. Tuesday and Thursday we will be spending more time in intercession and doing some more painting/scraping and other projects. We are planning on leaving Sihanoukville on January 15 to head back to Phnom Penh for 2 nights. We fly to Bangkok on the 17th. Keep praying for more opportunites to share the Gospel here. It's hard cause we can't really just go out on the street and start preaching because of government regulations. But we do have a great opportunity at the school (School of Hope). It is a Christian school but not all the kids are Christians.

Tonight we are having a fun night...pizza and mini-golf for my birthday! It will be nice to have time to hang out as a team. Thanks for praying. Everyone is doing well and has been stepping up a lot. Keep praying for protection from getting sick, especially from the food.

Just wanted to end with a cool story...so we are having to pay an extra $200 in housing costs because of the holidays. After I went over the budget, I figured out that we would be $100 short in the housing category for our guesthouse in Sihanoukville. A girl from Canada who found our blog wanted to give us some money. She ended up giving us $100. That was such a blessing from God. Thanks Beca!

Teaching and Scraping Walls

2008-12-29T21:22:00.000-08:00

I'll give you a short recap of the last few days. Sunday we went to church. It was actually not too bad considering it was mostly in a different language. On Saturday the pastor asked us to do part of the service. We said we would do our drama and share 2 testimonies. The morning of he asked one of the guys (Brent) to preach that day. We are learning to be prepared for anything and really listen to what God wants to say through us in every situation. Next week we will be doing the entire service, including worship. We actually have almost a full worship team within our team so that has been awesome to worship almost every night. We go on the roof of our guesthouse where we can see the entire town and the ocean. It's beautiful up there at night and a perfect place to meet for worship, prayer, and team bonding. We are so thankful for God blessing us with such a nice place to stay.

Monday was our first day with the school. Some of us were going to observe the English classes to get an idea how we can help teach. That observing turned into teaching right away. We walked into a 2nd grade class after lunch and the principal let us in. I guess the teacher was gone that day. He just said, "you teach." So we looked around the room and just started throwing stuff together. That happened the entire day. Despite not being prepared to actually teach, let alone be in a Cambodian classroom with no Cambodian teachers it went really well. It's surprising how much the let us do. I don't think you would have known that we were coming up with stuff on the spot. The loved the songs we taught them. Now we have a few lesson plans so hopefully we'll get better every day. We also led the teacher devotional this morning and will every morning. They are super willing to let us do anything. The rest of the team has been scraping paint off a wall all around the orphanage and school. We are about half done scraping after 3 days of work. Then we will be painting the wall. That should go a lot faster.

The team is really starting to come together and we're getting serious about why we're here. We're starting to talk to more and more people around us about God. And we've been doing intercession twice a day. Tonight and on New Years Eve we will do a prayer walk down at the beach. That is where all the prostitutes are as well as men who hire them and men who abuse children are. Pray that we would be bold and talk/pray for whoever God leads us to. We've been praying for healing over some of the beggers and will continue that. We want to see miracles. Happy New Years!

First day in Sihanoukville

2008-12-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we took a four hour bus ride to Sihanoukville on the coast of Cambodia. It was a pleasant ride and we had air conditioning. We arrived and took tuk-tuks to our guesthouse. It's quite funny trying to pile all our stuff inside a vehicle meant for just 4 people. We got checked in and had some dinner at our guesthouse. After that four of us (Brent, Isaac, Keara, and Megan) left to go check out the town. We ended up at the beach. It's a really nice beach but this area is filled with lost people who came here to do bad things (such as sleep with prostitutes, drugs, alcohol, and even abuse the children who wander at night). They call this area the Pattya of Cambodia. We got down to the beach last night wanting God to move in some way. The four of us prayed as we started walking that God would take us out of our comfort zones. We saw this guy begging in the sand who couldn't walk. He was crawling on his hands. We walked past him and the stopped and prayed a little ways off. Keara heard God say that if he came and sat behind us we would pray for him. As we finished praying there he was. We asked if we could pray for him and he had a friend come over to translate. He said yes. We did and he was very grateful. But the best part was after when we wanted to tell him about Jesus but ended up talking to the translator. He said he wanted to know Jesus and have him come into his life. He wants to talk to us more about it. We got his number and plan to go back soon to meet up with both guys. We are trying to get our hands on a Bible in Khmer but the goverment makes it hard to get them in the country. Pray that we can find one for T-Ruk I think is his name and possibly locate a wheelchair for the guy who is disabled. Our plan especially over the next few days with so many tourists here for holiday is to do prayer walks and evangelism with the people here. It will be pretty intense and really challenge us to step out and be obedient to God's leading. Most of that will be on our own time. The rest of the time here we will be busy working at the school, orphanage, and with the church. We are taking on the task of repainting all the walls at both the school and orphanage. First we need to scrape them then paint. At the school we will be teaching English, teaching devotions, teaching sports, and I'm sure a lot more. At the orphanage we will do more of the same and just spend time with the kids. We just found out that tomorrow we are performing our drama in church and sharing testimonies/a little preaching. So basically we arrived yesterday and now outreach is full on. It's awesome to see though cause we felt too much like tourists for the first few days. Now we're diving in with all we have. Please pray especially over these next few days as we go out on the streets and pray with people and tell them about Jesus.

Heading to Sihanoukville

2008-12-24T20:18:00.000-08:00

Good news: They do have room at the guesthouse in Sihanoukville. We will be staying across the street from the orphanage and school we will be working with. The only bad news is that they charge more over the holidays (double what we have in our budget per person/per night). Our budget is pretty tight already (mostly cause they use the US dollar and we came in with Australian dollars). We don't have any other option to stay elsewhere so just pray that somehow everything works out and we have enough money for everything. Some people are out right now trying to get the bus booked for tomorrow. It will be a 3-4 hour bus ride. We plan to leave Friday morning. Thanks to everyone who sent Christmas notes and gifts to the students. They LOVED them! I will update you more once we arrive at our next location.

Merry Christmas from Cambodia

2008-12-24T02:29:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to everyone back home! Today we really saw the sights of Cambodia. It was a pretty intense day but we also got to do some great shopping at the Russian Market. Everything was super cheap and we bartered some great deals! Today we went to see the Killing Fields, the museum (where prisoners were kept), and a temple. The Killing Fields are a big part of the history of Cambodia and the fighting has only been over for less than 30 years. The country is trying to rebuild itself. The things we saw today were hard to see, but the hardest thing was all the beggers. We had children running along side of our van everytime we pulled away trying to get money from us and tugging at our shirts. It's very sad and brought some of us to tears. It's a bit overwhelming right now the need in this country. We are still taking it all in.

Tomorrow we will have a Christmas celebration...pizza and ice cream for dinner...and then hopefully head down to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Right now they don't have rooms available for us there so we are trying to work that out. We will be working with the Assembly of God church and they also run an orphange with 84 kids. There is a school there too we can work with that has 300 kids and we hope to do some soccer ministry. Everyone is doing well, nobody has had any problems with the food so that is a blessing. Please pray for things to work out with getting a bus to our next location and having a place to stay. It's pretty booked up because of the holidays. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Arrived in Cambodia

2008-12-21T23:32:00.000-08:00

We have arrived at our guesthouse in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This country really feels like a 3rd world country. Flying in we looked down and I thought I was in Africa. I saw dirt roads and huts everywhere. The place we are staying is pretty nice. We have beds and a bathroom. We will be here in Phnom Penh for the next 4 days (including Christmas). We are probably taking the team out for pizza that night!

We are all doing fine. We aren't too tired considering we flew all night. Bangkok airport was easy and getting through immigration and getting our visas in Cambodia was so easy. Pray that we can start to come together and get focused on why we are here. We have orientation tomorrow and then we will tour the city a bit and see the killing fields (a big part of Cambodia's history). There are so many opportunities for ministry here. Pray that God leads us to the right ones for our time here.

We love you all!

Arrived in Bangkok

2008-12-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

Hey,

We are in the Bangkok airport just waiting to board our flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Everything has gone smoothly so far and we didn't have to pay extra to bring the team stuff. Everyone is in good spirits and excited to get outreach started. Thanks for praying so far. Talk to you in Cambodia!

Meet the Team

2008-12-15T16:52:00.000-08:00