Cultural Collision

Once again, what an incredibly crazy amazing awesome week. First, I have a super awesome roommate with the amazing Ms Bethany. She's awesome. Also, I have a super-occasional roommate, Akari. She's just pretty much incredible. Ange, also wonderful daily keeps our lives running smoothly.  In overview of the week, I started doing a lot more therapy at the farm. I'm LOVING that. It's so incredible. Every time I get to see the way the kids react to the horses I'm almost brought to tears. Just seeing them improve just over that short amount of time. Continuing riding lessons. Loving the chance to really build relationships with the kids I'm teaching as well as with their parents and siblings. I'm learning German a phrase a day, so hopefully will be much better at that by the end. Also working on learning Thai, but it's much more slow going. It's a tonal language and I am getting sooo confused. Maa is horse and dog, and several other things just depending on how you say it.

 Classes in the mornings continue to be incredible and I'm learning so so so much. This Friday morning, we went to a meeting about how to use business as a way to reach people. It was sooo cool to hear this man's story as he used his life as a what to do and what not to do. So many things none of us had ever thought of.

Thursday night was super cool as we got to go see our Canadian friend Kurtis get baptized. We hiked up this mountain to a waterfall. We had a lot of climbing and wading and almost slipping(ok so I fully slipped and slid on my butt down this rock, but it was really funny). It was just a neat experience to get such a glimpse of God's power in creation but also in Kurtis's life. We'll miss him a lot when he leaves on Tuesday :(

Saturday night we got a group of 18 college age people and went to the huge mall here. We did a photo scavenger hunt. For those who don't know what that is, you and your team(we mixed everyone up) are given a list of things you have to find and get a picture doing it. The group consisted of Germans, Americans, a Canadian, and a Thai. It was soooooo much fun and just so cool. Everyone had a blast just getting to relax and be silly with each other. After the hunt we came back to where we are staying and watched all of the teams pictures and eat some brownies and ice cream. We started to watch Megamind and then most people got tired and went home. 

this is team 1 getting a group of people to sing jingle bells with us for the hunt

Today though, was the coolest day of the week, by far. Our group was invited to go and lead worship and share our testimonies at the German church. I really wish there was a way to put into words the overwhelming feeling of being there.  We had 5-6 different countries represented there, yet everyone was just lost in complete worship to the same God. Such a wonderful thing to experience. Also, we have some super incredibly talented people who can lead worship on our team(go Justin and Ange and Kurtis!!) Also, we had Louise helping us. She generally plays piano at church and so we all got to practice together and then lead today. So cool how it just doesn't matter where you come from, when your lost in your identity in Christ. So many things we get stuck on; whether it be our past, our future, how we define ourselves etc., all just become irrelevant when we chose to first and foremost define ourselves as God's beloved children.