Wow, where to start? The past two months have been some of the most up and down of my entire life. They’ve been some of the absolute best, and not quite the worst, but close. In the past two months I’ve been a part of 24 hour prayer in DC for the ending of abortion in our Country, I’ve been to Cambodia to work with human trafficking victims, only to teach English for two and a half weeks, and I’ve been to Thailand and worked with an organization in the red light district for two and a half weeks.
Washington DC
Our two month outreach phase started with us heading to Washington DC to team up with Jason Hershey and YWAM DC. Jason and his wife moved to Washington DC 7 years ago from Tyler Texas to pray and intercede for the ending of abortion in America. A couple weeks after moving to DC he ran into a bunch of people LIFE sieging at the Supreme Court. What LIFE sieging is is when one person, or more than one person, puts red tape over their mouth with the word LIFE on the tape. They then stand at the steps of the Supreme Court and cry out to God for the ending of abortion in our Country. When Jason and his wife moved to DC, his wife was pregnant, and had the baby in DC as a “protest” against abortion. Every year since his son’s birth 8 years ago now, on March 8, something major has happened towards the ending of abortion. Through a series of prophesies and scripture verses and such, we are believing that abortion will fall in America on March 8, 2013.
Now what we did while we were there with Jason and YWAM DC was, we did LIFE sieging about 4 or 5 times, as well as help him start a 24/7 prayer house. In order to do this we all took time slots throughout the day so we would have 24 hour prayer the entire time we were there in DC. During that time of 24 hour prayer everyone could feel the shifting of something in the air. It was so amazing! Being in DC and being a part of what happened there was an absolute gift from God! It just might be the second best experience of my life, only behind my DTS almost three years ago. It is so hard to put into words exactly what happened in DC, but it radically changed the way I view prayer and life in general.
Phenom Penh, Cambodia
Once our ministry time in DC came to an end, it was time to pack all of our bags and head back to NY for a quick one day turn around. We arrived in NY and went straight to bed. We then had the next day to unpack, do laundry, and repack for a month and a half in Asia, firstly being Cambodia.
Once in Cambodia, we spent the first three days together as a team in Phenom Pehn getting acclimated to the time difference of 12 hours, as well as seeing different touristy things in the area. We were able to see a Buddhist temple where people went to worship, as well as see the Killing Fields from the genocide in the ‘70s. After those three days, our team then got split into two teams, one team stayed in Phenom Pehn, and the other team travelled to Battambang in Northern Cambodia. Both teams ended up teaching English to children. The Phenom Pehn team, the team I was a part of, taught in a Christian school, and the team in Battambang taught children in a nearby village to where they were staying. Both teams had an AWESOME experience. All though, there was one day that team in Phenom Pehn just about died. Very often in the afternoon, we wouldn’t have any ministry planned, so we were responsible for doing our own thing within our group. Well, fortunately, we learned of a pastor of another church right around the corner from where we were staying, and it turned out that he had two schools that he needed help teaching English in. We were told that we would have three hours. So we figured we’d do an hour of English teaching, and then gather the students together for the last two hours, and do skits, and games and such with them, we had the plan “okayed” by the pastor, went to the school, with the pastor, and talked to the principle, who turned out to be the pastor’s brother. Okayed the plan with him, with the pastor there, and went to our classrooms. After the first hour, we had a break gathered together to talk about what we would do, and were told that we had to go back to our classrooms. Confused, our team leader went to the person in charge, who at this point is an intern, because the pastor and the principle both left. He said, “No, you have two more hours to teach”. So that day we ended up teaching English for three straight hours, on top of the three classes we always taught at the other school, not a very fun day either.
Bangkok, Thailand
Sadly our time in Cambodia came to a quick end, and it was time to travel to Thailand. Once in Thailand, we spent our first day in culture orientation, and a scavenger hunt so we could get to know the area a little bit better.
Our first day of ministry we worked with an organization called the Ruth Center, and what they do is they work with older people in slums. What our team ended up doing was clean a small area of a slum. We were there for about three or so hours, and by the time we were done, it didn’t look like we had done anything, but we had collected something like 20 bags of garbage. After that…our plans completely fell through. We had originally wanted to work with a YWAM Bangkok ran organization called BJD (it stands for something, I’m just not sure what at the moment). What they do, is work with the neighboring college campus and get the college students to come and hangout and to learn about God. Through this organization, countless students have accepted Christ, and in turn, have done DTS’s with YWAM. What ended up happening is we worked with an organization that worked in the red light districts of Bangkok for our remaining time there. We “mapped” the four major red light districts in Bangkok. By “mapped” I mean, we walked up and down the streets in these red light districts with iPhones/iPod touches or whatever we could use, writing down names of bars, questionable restaurants, and questionable massage parlors. After we were done with that, we then helped them set up a resource room for when other teams come in to help them. By far, our time in Thailand was the heaviest of our three locations. But in its own way, it was really good. We surprised the students the last three days we were in Thailand. We told them that we were going to a slum about three hours away to help a couple that was just starting an organization that ministered to the slums. But in fact, we took them to an island resort for three days of outreach debrief. It was a time of much rest, as well as processing both for students and staff alike.
Coming home
Finally, it was time to say goodbye to Asia and head home. We had a 30 hour travel day to finally arrive States side again. Our journey started at the Bangkok airport. From there, we took a six hour flight to Seoul, Korea. Unfortunately we were only there long enough to get off one plane, go through security again, and get on our final flight home. From Seoul, we had a 14 hour flight to JFK International Airport. It was a crazy long day of travel, but once we landed everyone was happy to finally be home. We landed a little before 10 am on Thursday, March 1. We then had the rest of Thursday, all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday to rest and catch up on sleep, as well as begin to acclimate ourselves to this time zone again. On Monday we began our debrief week which was absolutely amazing! It was so cool to hear the students take on things that happened throughout DTS as well as Outreach. On Saturday, March 10, we had our Commencement ceremony, and then it was official, the students that we had spent the last five or so months doing life with, were officially graduated, and some had started leaving already. By Monday the 12, all the students were off the base.
It was sad to see them leave, but I know that God has some absolutely amazing plans for each and every one of them. Some are coming back to staff with us, others to staff at other bases around the country. But if there’s one thing I know in YWAM it’s this, “it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later.” I know for a fact, that I will see all of them again at some point or another.
Thank you everyone who prayed for me, and the rest of the team! I definitely felt your prayers!
With the wind,
Mark
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