Chiang Mai, Thailand Mission Trip
Donation protected
Thailand. A place I never considered visiting that, through the simple tug of a heart string before a church sermon in 2013 has brought me back year after year, planting my love into a place that oddly feels like home with a local church who quickly felt like family. With each mission trip to Chiang Mai through Inspire Church to partner with Shining Light Church, our Chiang Mai teams have gone each new year with different focuses: visiting Hill Tribes, providing medical clinics, sharing outreaches at schools, crafting with orphanage children, sharing messages and prayer, and volunteering at church wide retreats. The missions themselves have been different, yet always with the same goal: to encourage, uplift and be in close fellowship with our friends in Thailand.
In each new season I search my heart and consider “life is changing, maybe this is a year I won’t go…”. When business was booming and I had very little spare time on my calendar. The following year when I was 6 months pregnant, and now bouncing a vibrant 8 month old on my hip. But with each year through the worry there comes a shift in my heart and through tears and prayer and sometimes even selfish desire to keep life easy and NOT go, or, let’s be real, instead go to Europe, God always seems to whisper a simple command: “Go on the mission”.
Go on the mission.
This fall alongside 6 others Inspire Church members we will reconnecting with Pastor Allan Bay and our christian family at Shining Light Church, assisting with their specific outreach needs, sharing aloha with their church staff and, most exciting of all, laboring to continue the build of Pastor Mee’s village church by pouring cement and laying blocks. Like, a lot of blocks.
There’s a saying on missions, at least the ones I have been on. “You go expecting to be a blessing and instead are blessed”. With each trip to this country God was worked, shaped and molded my heart in ways I could never envision on my own. He has shown me the love of a country I never dreamed of venturing into, a heart for people and a language I never thought I’d want to learn (Sawadee ka, ya’ll!) and forged close relationships with people who will always be in my life. He is expanding my family into Chiang Mai, growing seeds in ways I can’t even fathom and giving little glistening hints of the future and vision he has for my own family’s life.
With this tug from the Lord, He has called me to let go of my desire to be self-sufficient like I have for the past two trips, and humbly experience His love and financial provision through the help of others. If you feel lead to support either in donation or prayer it would, honest to goodness be a genuine blessing.
Feel free to pray for Marshall watching Baby Nate, too. He’s gonna need it. ;)
In each new season I search my heart and consider “life is changing, maybe this is a year I won’t go…”. When business was booming and I had very little spare time on my calendar. The following year when I was 6 months pregnant, and now bouncing a vibrant 8 month old on my hip. But with each year through the worry there comes a shift in my heart and through tears and prayer and sometimes even selfish desire to keep life easy and NOT go, or, let’s be real, instead go to Europe, God always seems to whisper a simple command: “Go on the mission”.
Go on the mission.
This fall alongside 6 others Inspire Church members we will reconnecting with Pastor Allan Bay and our christian family at Shining Light Church, assisting with their specific outreach needs, sharing aloha with their church staff and, most exciting of all, laboring to continue the build of Pastor Mee’s village church by pouring cement and laying blocks. Like, a lot of blocks.
There’s a saying on missions, at least the ones I have been on. “You go expecting to be a blessing and instead are blessed”. With each trip to this country God was worked, shaped and molded my heart in ways I could never envision on my own. He has shown me the love of a country I never dreamed of venturing into, a heart for people and a language I never thought I’d want to learn (Sawadee ka, ya’ll!) and forged close relationships with people who will always be in my life. He is expanding my family into Chiang Mai, growing seeds in ways I can’t even fathom and giving little glistening hints of the future and vision he has for my own family’s life.
With this tug from the Lord, He has called me to let go of my desire to be self-sufficient like I have for the past two trips, and humbly experience His love and financial provision through the help of others. If you feel lead to support either in donation or prayer it would, honest to goodness be a genuine blessing.
Feel free to pray for Marshall watching Baby Nate, too. He’s gonna need it. ;)
Organizer
Ashley Goodwin Woods
Organizer
Kailua, HI