DId you know!

Did you know that I.H.O.P. ( not the pancake house hehe) has prayer rooms 24/7 with praise and worship constantly being played?! AND you can tune in @ IHOP.org??

I just realized that yesterday and have been listening on and off all day!

Check it out

Kids Club!

Yesterday was awesome! so much happened oh my word! I felt like I lived two days by the time I went to bed. I had classes all morning which makes time go Super duper slow anyway, but then I left with some girls from my building to do Kid's Club @ Restoration Ministries.

Talk about a great time! The kids were so full of life and energy I just could barely stand how cute they were! We helped them with their home work and drew picture, then we went to the gym and they played tackle rachel, lol.

One of the boys fully kneed me in the stomach -- whew, took me a few seconds to recover from that one! Good thing I was prepared by my ultimate beatings in Thailand (not by the goverment, mostly by New Zealanders)

Lol, here are some pictures of our fun afternoon!

Just being lazy

Not much going on today, Just sitting here enjoying a Cinnamon roll and some juice watching "August Rush" and wondering what to do with the rest of this lazy Saturday.

I have a stack of homework as usual so I figure I should chip away at that for awhile, maybe grab some coffee, call my sister.... whatever tickles my fancy at the moment :-)

Annie on broadway was so good on wed! The girl that played molly ( one of the orphan girls) was phenomenal! I guess that she's in some commercials and an episode of CSI Miani. i want to google her because I think she's so awesome! She started performing when she was four. Her name's Mackenzie Aladiem

Anyway, I think I'm going to go take a shower, clean up this place a bit and get some reading done.

<3

Back to the books

It's Wednesday and I'm sitting in my living room staring at my computer knowing that I will spend hours and hours in this exact position for the next 3 months. YES!

I'm actually waiting to leave for the city to see Annie!!! I'm so excited :-)

Then, tomorrow, I start classes.

"Good Morning Rachel DeBoer, This is America!"

I'm back! Yes, it's officially official. I've slept in my own bed twice, took two showers, went to Starbucks and ate at Harold's chicken. How much more official can you be?

So since I've been home it's been adventure after adventure! (not really but sometimes if you word it right you can make ordinary experience sound really exciting)

My plan landed @ 5 a.m. Chicago time and I was picked up by my lovely sister and Father and after a breakfast stop I got home around 7... woo hoo! It was so good to be home! It was especially good to find that I had a new (to me) car waiting for me in the garage! yeah!

My plan was to stay up all day so that I could kick my jet lag right in the booty and start off with a bang! I did good till about 3:30 ( i had been up for about 42 hours at that point) I unpacked, gave my fam their gifts, played the guitar, went to target and starbucks, at lunch, ya know, things to try and distract.

Well, all good things come to an end and once I fell asleep it was all on! I slept till 5 when my niece came into my room to say hello. It took me 5 mintues to realize that I was at home and that she was not a figment of my imagination. then at like 6 my brother decided to write loser on my face. ( I woke up ready for a fight!) I at some din. and then decided to take a bath. I woke up to heather pounding on my bathroom door -- I had fallen asleep in the tub. Then I barely made it from the bathroom to my bed and konked out again. I finally woke up for real @ 7:30 a.m ish. ( hehe, I just realized that a.m. ish, spells Amish...) Whew... I don't think I've ever slept that long.

on the flip side, it's 7 am and I've been awake for 3.5 hours already. Watched a movie, took a shower and got ready for the day, looked at all the pictures that I could find on facebook, and now I'm writing a rediculously long post about nothing that anybody is interested in reading. but it fills my time so I will continue to write shamelessly.

This week I have a good amount of things to do including going to see annie down town! woo hoo, so excited, I love plays. I'll hopfully post some pics or somthing up for Thailand soon. I have to wait for them to come in the mail though, or some peeps to put them on facebook... la de da, can't they hurry!!!

anyway, untill next time my faithful readers

Ps. Watch cloudy with a change of meatballs :-)

Taipei!

So I just wrote a big long post and the computer ate it. I'm in an airport and it's supper frusterating because the computer keeps changing to manderin.... oh well, I'll write later.

Can't wait to sleep in my own bed and eat a mean not involving rice.

Found my draft!

Well, I'm currently in Taipei, Taiwan sitting in the airport enjoying free internet access... and a free meal pass since my flights were rearranged. My Thailand experience is offically over and after a touching goodbye I have begun my jounrey headed back to the world of ice and snow.

The last few days we just sort of hung around Chaing Mai, Shopping, eating and watching movies. Avatar was showing in the theater in 3D so we took advantange and went to see it. Great movie! I really liked it.

Anyway, yeah so last night we went to some missionaries house for dinner and oh it was so great to bite into a lasagna! I am all riced out that's for sure! I don't think I will look at another asian meal for months!

We had a great time just talking with the family and playing with their kids and just chilling. After we got back (like 10:30 pm or so ) I thought I'd check my ticket to see when I flew out and realized I left a day earlier than I thought! So last night I quick packed and tried to get everything done and headed to the airport this morning.

The team was great and got up at 8 to see me off at the airport. After emotioally scaring every person in the terminal, they all left I boarded the plan.

I hate that feeling of saying goodbye to great friends... but I loved the time I got to spend with them and man, what a month!

I'm not quite ready to start school and get back to regular life yet, but I have a 15 hour flight to sleep so I might be ready to take on my world when that's through.

My camera bit the dust on the flight over here, so I'm gunna have to wait to collect the teams pictures before I post any, but they are to come!

Can't wait to tell about all my sweet times in person and show pictures!

SNAILS!!

So it appears that Mai Chem is infested with snails.. I find them everywhere, in my clothes, in the dirt, on my sleeping bag, and well, yeah I guess their not everywhere, butI never thought I'd roll over in my bed and crush a snail. Oh the experiences....

These last few days we've been working at a local youth hostil doing some good ol' manual labor. It's been fun and pretty lax... most of the time. We've been digging trenches and poring concrete and landscaping and those kinds of things. It's run by kiwis (I'm completely surrounded!) and thus we enjoy the privilege of morning tea -- I totally think we should adopt that tradition in the u.s.

dispite the relaxed pace I still have blisters on my hands and a huge splinter in my arm that is too deep to dig out and is a little festery. I prayed for it last night though and woke up with alot less pain. Chocolate helps too. And the fact that we have a pool @ the place we're staying. I love thailand.

At night we've been going to meetings of a couple differnt hostils, the one that we're working at and another one about 15 minutes down the road.

Those meetings have been amazing! The kids are amazing and on fire for God. Last night we split up into to groups, ya know, divide and conqure, lol. us girls ( & benji) went to one hostile and the boyz went to another.

Bianca sang some songs she wrote and I talked on prayer, then we broke up into groups and had the kids pray over each other and we encouraged them to use the gifts of the spirit. The missionaries that run the hostil are just great, spirit filled, sweet people (they are americans, what can I say :-) It was an amazing night of prayer and worship and God showed up in exceptional ways! The night before this was just as good, the interpreter was finding it hard to interpret because she was holding back tears. We prayed over the kids, and a couple of them were healed, as well as just enveloped in God's love..

I felt so on fire and totally pumped up after that experience! It was definately a highlight for me. We're going back there on Saturday to go to some unreached villiages with them, and then on sunday morning we're teaching sunday school and things like that. I just love those kids! they are so precious!

The current tally is over 80 people healed, and over 400 saved... wow! God is amazing

God's power is flowing hard core! But there is always more. Press in for the good stuff! The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure, like a pearl... seek it out, want it, thirst for it, don't settle for less in your life!

Mai Chem

Well... I'm in Mai Chem now, we just came from a pastors house in the outskirts of the town of Mai Chem and now we are staying at a "Hotel" (the word is used very lightly). We're going to be doing some service projects and manual labor things here.

It's been a very adventurous, and lazy last week, just sort of taking in all the sites and sounds aroud us. We traveled to this mountain villiage on the back of a toyota pickup truck with 11 people + a drvier + all our luggage... it was definately an experience. At first I was just slightly terrified at the though of almost dieing, but now, it doesn't seem to bother me as much, lol :-)

After we arrived we played with the kids in the village and then drove even farther up into the mountains to pray over and bless a couple that had just got married. They were 17, and seemed so much younger than that. They were extremely shy and as it's not socially acceptable to touch the opposite sex in public they didn't touch each other but just looked at one another and blushed the whole time. It was kinda cute.

Once we prayed for them, sang some songs, and all that sort of stuff we ate a very interesting meal which included stomach juices from a cow... yum! Other interetsing things that have found their way into our food is clumps of coagulated blood and oh I don't even know... lots of other things.

The scenory is absolutely breath takeing here, we drove up to some waterfalls yesterday and swam around. the water was quite shocking! It's been awhile since I've been in such cold water!

The accomodations have been quite interesting and I got a shock a couple of times when I moved a cup and a cockroach scurried out from under it. or when I felt something bitting my feet to find I'm stepping in a pile of ants, or when some one moved their bag to find a spider as big as a fist hidding under it.

The other morning I woke up to a light massage on my back, I was wondering what the heck was softly walking all over my back. At first I thought it was a friend being stupid and then realized that if it was a person they would have smacked me, then I thought of the possibility of a cat, and realized that our hosts didn't have a cat. Out of options i opened my eyes to find a chicken staring me in the face. I screamed partially out of shock, and partially to tell the thing to get the heck out of my bed! Appartently the chicken was just as surprised as I was and went crazy. Stupid chickens! they drive me crazy.

Now I am sitting at this internet cafe, listening to Michael buble' having just finshed a breakfast of a local market pastry (not near as good as it may sound) and a cup of coffee from a local 7/11. It's a rest day, which really isnt' needed since i've slept like 12 hours ever night this week. But I'll take it anyway.

I can't believe that we only have 10 days left of the trip. Time has just flown by! I have been totally amazed how God has showed up with power and might, healing and saving and delivering! I prayed for a lady the other day who had a miscarriage awhile ago, and from what I could tell, she had developed an infection and was in lots of pain. I prayed for her for 30 minutes and kept asking if she felt any better. Finally, after a while had past tears started falling down her cheeks. I stoped praying to see what was happening, she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and smiled, all the pain was gone. She was touched by God that night and a I pray to God that she will never forget how much he loves and cares about her.

No matter what may be happening in our lives, God is always and forever by our side. He cares so deeply for each and every one of these dear Thai people and wants them all to know his love and to experience his power in their lives.

I know that the next 10 days will be even more full of miracles and God's supernatural power.
Miss you all and hope you have such a great New Years!