Where to begin 555

So much seems to have happened this past week that. It's been insane and awesome and amazing.

     Thursday: Thursday is one of my days at the horses stables. I got there a bit early to work one of the young horses; April. When I was almost done with her, I noticed this little boy running around like crazy. I finished up with April and as I was putting her up, the kid and his parents came over and his parents started getting him to try to touch her. I just kind of held onto her and tried to show the boy that she wouldn't hurt him. Thankfully Freudhelm came over and explained to me what was going on. The boy had special needs and his parents really wanted to try horse therapy with him and Freudhelm wanted me to do it. I was super excited, so I ran over and got a horse I thought would be more suitable for it; Cookie. The boy, Freudhelm, the boy's mom and I all went into the arena. He really wanted nothing to do with getting near the horse, so I just gave him the end of the lead rope and showed him I was still holding onto it as well. Eventually I was able to let go of the rope and just let him lead Cookie around. Cookie just put her head down and followed him. A couple of times he dropped the rope and Cookie would walk closer so he'd have to walk back to her and grab it. After a while he hesitantly started touching Cookie. The more he started touching Cookie, the less he was clinging to his mom(he was probably around 7yrs old) Finally his mom was able to just go stand on the sidelines and he just followed me around leading Cookie. He started yelling something(he only spoke Thai) and Freudhelm told me he was saying he wanted to ride. So I asked him if he wanted to, and he let me grab him and put him up on Cookie(which he hadn't let happen at first). Freudhelm and I led him around for another 15 minutes or so, and he just always kept an arm wrapped around me. Freudhelm was super happy about that because of how easily he'd let go of his mom and just grabbed at me. By the time it was over he didn't want to get off the horse. Later I found out that the parents were sooo excited about it and had asked if they could tell a bunch of other people about it and said that normally the boy wouldn't get on a horse or do anything like that until after 3 days+ of getting used to the area and people. That was such an incredible experience.
        That evening I went with all of the German team to this meeting/dinner thing. It was so all the short termers met the long term missionaries. Freudhelm asked me to come because I am working so much with their farm. The food was good but I had to get up and tell everyone where I was from and what I was doing and stuff like that...the only person who spoke English.
       After the dinner, like 7 of the Germans came over to our house and we all went together to go see Cowboys & Aliens. It was a blast getting to hang out with that huge group walking around the Thai mall and going to see that movie.
       Friday: We ended our study on the parables with the parable of the prodigal son. It was pretty amazing. Also Jenn Rathmell made an amazing wonderful feast that I'm still full from. It was soooooo good!!!!!

       Saturday: Grabbed Kurtis and Monique(our friends from Canada) and headed up to the Sticky Waterfalls. We took a side track to this Snake Show. It was crazy!! There were all sorts of snakes, including a huge massive king cobra. They did a cool snake show, that included jumping snakes, thai cobras, rat snakes, and a python. I got to hold the rat snake and even had it on my head.

      We got kind of lost on our way to the Sticky Waterfalls, but finally made it. It had to be one of the coolest experiences in the world. We climbed down this path(like a foot wide) through the jungle, and jumped into the murky water. Then we tried to climb upstream and it didn't work so well so we climbed back to the path and just walked to the next level and jumped in the water again. Then the coolest thing, when limestone and water react, the limestone gets sticky. So we got to climb straight up this multi level waterfall. We climbed up it, down it, and up it again. It was sooo neat.

      We headed home and then Bethany and I headed back out to hang out with Monique. We caught a Song Tao and went to Saturday Night Walking Street. We got interviewed 2 different times for school projects. I was able to find some stuff for my family, and it was just an incredible experience. There was such a range of stuff there. We tried a bunch of different foods, and had a pineapple/strawberry smoothie that was pretty much incredible. We found a place that was playing Jazz, they were really amazing. We got home around 11:30 at night.
     Throughout the week: Learned about the parables through middle eastern eyes, some really amazing new perspectives and ideas. Still getting ready for outreach.

Also, I got invited/asked to come back to Thailand and run the horse stables while the missionaries are on furlough for 6 month-ish. Please pray for wisdom for me as I try and figure out what God's will is in this.

Oh, and for everyone still wondering what 555 means in the title,  5 in Thai is Ha so around here they use 555 as Americans would lol cool, huh?