This past July I experienced one of the best adventures of my life.. I went to Thailand! This was only my second time out of the country (went to Costa Rica a few years ago) and it has sparked such a passion for traveling ever since. I went to Thailand for ten days with other college students in my church family back at home. The purpose of our trip was to ultimately share the love of Jesus and provide hope to the unsaved who have never heard the gospel before.

To say this trip was incredible would be an understatement. I am so so blessed that God gave me the opportunity to not only go to Thailand, but provided me the entire funds for the trip as well. I had to trust in God like I never had before - praying over each and every support letter that I mailed out and leaning entirely on Him. All of my worries and doubts quickly vanished though as the Lord continued to provide me the money and peace that I needed. Two days before we left the country, one of my best friends was able to join the trip because of a situation that arose, and that in itself was such an amazing blessing. I loved being able to share my experience with her as well.

Thailand taught me a lot and God revealed himself in very tangible ways. The majority of the people in Thailand are Buddhist and many of them haven't even heard the story of Jesus before. The day after we arrived (21 hours of flying by the way -- not fun), our group visited a Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai. As soon as I stepped onto their worship area, my heart felt so heavy. It's a feeling that I will never be able to express with words but that I will definitely never forget. My heart broke for these lost people as I watched them pray to idols, light incense, and offer gifts to their gods. I had never experienced such spiritual darkness before and it honestly made me so uneasy; many of us in our group had trouble even praying or trying to focus because I know the devil was hard at work in that place. I craved to share the love and promises of Jesus with all of those people kneeling in front of statues. The temple was an incredibly beautiful but sad place that I think about all the time.

That one experience from Thailand has stuck with me (along with so many others but I chose to focus on this particular one for this post), and there's so much that I have taken away from it. I'm grateful that we worship and serve a living God. The Lord is alive! We don't offer up prayers to elaborate golden statues that don't communicate back. I am so forever grateful that God gave me the chance to experience this first-hand. We worship a truly wonderful, breathing God.

If you enjoyed hearing a little bit about my mission trip, please let me know! I would absolutely love to write more posts devoted to my Thailand trip because there are so many amazing things to say about it. I encourage anyone who is contemplating on going out of the country for missions to GO. Answer the Lord's call regarding the purpose of our lives and allow Him to use you and teach you.

Below is a video put together by the International World Changers, the organization that my church and I worked with. More information about it can be found here. This video encompasses our week in Thailand but is only a brief glimpse into each individual's unique experience and the crazy things that God did! I make a super quick appearance at 2:15.



I'm participating in a weekly blog link-up called "Grateful Heart Monday" with Emily at Ember Grey. Check out the many other blogger's grateful heart posts by clicking the button below!