WWJD

“Bye guys! I’ll miss you! Don’t forget, when do you come back to Agape?.....That’s right, April 18th. See you then! I love you!” That’s what I said to the Agape kids as they piled in to the trucks and headed home to their villages. They were all so excited to be going home, because they hadn’t been home in over 4 months. I was excited too, because that meant I had the opportunity to go and visit them in their homes. Me, my dad and Cherise had the opportunity to visit four of the Karen villages and each village had many of our children living there! The four villages were the last ones I needed to go to for me to have visited all 102 of our children’s homes.
We took off March 21st for our first village visit. We were going to Yupaporn’s village (who is one of my favorite girls). We piled into the back of the truck and Pastor drove us to the entrance to a dirt road, helped us get our stuff out and then said his goodbyes. We picked our stuff up and started on our 12 km hike to the village. The sun was bright above us, but as we walked we suddenly got little sprinkles of relief. It felt like cool little rain drops falling all over our skin and face. We stopped for a second and let it refresh our skin and as we soaked it all in, the girls we were walking with informed us that “the cool rain drops” we were feeling was actually locust pee. At this, we frantically wiped at our skin and faces and ran until we could no longer feel it. As screams escaped from our running bodies, hysterical laughs was all that came from the beautiful girls who walked with us. As we continued our hike, we now knew that whenever we felt those nice cool drops, to keep our mouths closed and walk as fast as we could.
It took us 4 hours, but we finally arrived at Yupaporn’s village. Everybody welcomed us and the kids couldn’t wait to show us their homes. I walked from each home to the next and loved meeting all of the kid’s parents and siblings and seeing their homes. It was wonderful! And their parents’ faces were filled with smiles and their siblings hid anywhere they could but still being able to see us. It was so cute!
That night when we went to sleep we layed down on our mat on the wooden floor. I had a nice little spot in between Cherise and Terra on the ground. I am a very heavy sleeper (in fact I talk in my sleep and don’t even know it. Cherise sleeps very light and has informed me of this….I have even been speaking Thai in my sleep many times. I’m a real Thai), so I sleep through anything, but that night I was awoken by Terra and Cherise as they both were standing there with broom in hand and head lamp on head sweeping ants off their beds and trying gently to sweep them off my face. It was a pretty funny sight to dozily wake up to. I guess we were attacked by ants in the middle of the night. The house we were staying in had an ant problem, so each night we had ants jumping into bed with us. The last night we finally got smart and made a barrier around our mat with baby powder. I’m sure we looked like weird ghost worshipers with our ring of powder surrounding us, but hey it worked. The people who lived there probably thought we did weird chants and worship in the middle of the night. Anyways, it was really funny to say the least!
We had a wonderful worship service with the people in the village. We shared our testimonies, sang songs, and ate dinner with the people. Many of them were non-believers and they all piled into the house to listen and participate! It was wonderful! We also gave them soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc. and we hoped we blessed them as much as they blessed us. They even killed their pig for us (we watched it from the beginning, and in the course of 3 hours it went from a walking and breathing pig to dinner on our plates. I don’t even like pork and it was pretty good. I’d like to dedicate this post to that little piggy who gave up his life for us)!
The next day we said our good-byes and my dad even had tears in his eyes as he said good bye to these amazing people. We walked about 3 km. to the next village. This village had no toilet or shower, so we all had a blast showering in the waterfall. The first time I’ve ever taken a shower fully clothed and underneath the pounding force of a Thai waterfall. It was awesome! It was also funny to just walk out into the jungle from your bamboo hut and go to the bathroom. We only had one head lamp, so that night me, Cherise, and Terra all had to go pee. We walked out to the jungle, lined up one right next to the other and went pee. Definitely a funny picture…..good ol’ bonding time.
The next day it was time for us to do our trek out. It was a 4 km. straight uphill hike. We each were carrying our backpacks, and me and my dad switched because his was pretty heavy and he’s an old man now so he lets the younger one hold it. Our backpacks were definitely slowing us down and forcing our out of shape bodies to work harder. As we continued to look up we could see nothing but more and more uphill, when would the relief come? As we continued to hike, our raspy breaths released from our mouths as our hearts beat faster and faster from all our hard work and out of nowhere comes the villagers. They hike up behind us and they took each of our backpacks and carried them for us. As many times as we said no and said we could carry it, they wouldn’t let us. They took our burdens and carried them on their backs and hiked in front of us and led the way out. As they did this I couldn’t get my mind off of Jesus. Jesus came and took all our burdens and put the whole world’s burdens and sins on his back. He said “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (mt. 11:38) He walks right up to us and tells us to give Him our backpacks and then He walks in front of us and leads the way. We follow as He carries the weight of our sins and burdens so we can walk easily. These Karen people were such a reminder to me about Jesus’ love. How He didn’t have to carry our sins, but He chose to because He loved us so much! I’m reminded to always think, WWJD? Jesus would walk up to me and take my backpack off and help me along the way….He would feed me if I was hungry…..He would clothe me if I was naked……He would love me if I was unloved…..He would, He would, He would……and He does.