Neener's Travel Blog

Thursday, June 5, 2014 After Darjeeling, I just wanted to be able to survive semi-pleasantly through the remainder of DTS.  I was aiming to try my hardest to serve God and give it my all in the last few days of outreach, regardless of how I was feeling.  It was my goal to "finish well".  I don't know how many times I've heard that phrase in these past couple weeks, but it is a lot. So we headed to our last outreach location, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  We didn't really know what to expect until the day before we left (which was the day after we got back from India - that's right, three countries in three days), so I didn't really have time to prepare or get excited or have any thoughts at all on what our time there might be like.  All I knew was we only had 10 days there, compared to the 3 weeks we had in our other locations.  It was going to be a short one.  Little did I know just how short our time there would be! It turns out that finishing well...

Sunday, May 25, 2014 An overview of our outreach time in India - it's a bit of a long one.  India ended up being a very mixed experience for me.  Darjeeling really was beautiful and we were able to be involved in several different ministries.  It was such great experience to see such a variety of ministries. I went to a children's slum ministry, where the kids ranged in age from around 1 to 12, mostly falling into the 5ish area.  There were about 40 kids packed into a room slightly bigger than my living room (which is not big enough for 10 people sitting, let alone 40 brawling children).  Despite the utter chaos, we were still able to act out Daniel and the Lions' Den (I was one of the bad advisors.  It was a real big hit when I was eaten.), play some games (still not entirely sure how that was accomplished), do a lion mask craft (lions are now green, purple, blue and covered in flower patterns) and hand out snack.  It was over so quickly and all ...

I am getting exhausted. I've gotten tired and worn out several times on this trip. Exhausted in every way - physically, spiritually, emotionally. And every time I think this is it, that I can't go on anymore, God leads me back to Psalm 23. It seemed cliche, until I realized that, despite being one of those overused/not fully understood verses, it is still God's word. He can use it to speak to me and encourage me. And there is so much solid truth and encouragement in these six verses. I wrote my own version of the Psalm (using NIV) today during my quiet time, when God led me to this passage yet again. My 23rd Psalm The Lord is my shepherd. I am a part of his flock and I am valuable to him. He watches over me and sees everything that is going on around me. He provides shelter and food and water and everything that I need. He protects me from dangerous terrain and from predators lying in wait to attack me. With him I lack nothing. When I am with him, there is nothing th...

Saturday, May 3, 2014 We left on the night of April 29th to catch our flight from Bangkok to Kolkata, India.  Pretty short and uneventful as far as airports and flights go.  Also I was half asleep, so I don't remember much of it... I do know that when we got off the plane there were two women from Mega Cities (Kolkata is currently the focus of the Mega Cities initiative - sending as many outreach teams to that city as possible to really hammer them with Jesus) waiting for us.  They got us on a bus that took our Music DTS people to their accommodations and continued on with us Children at Risk DTS people for about another hour to where we were going to stay.  Oh, this is all at, like, 4 am.  I slept through most of it.  We got to our hostel at some point and just crashed.  Two of our leaders went out to figure out our transportation to Darjeeling, and this is where things started getting complicated.  We were trying to get tickets on a sleeper t...

Sunday, April 27, 2014 We had a week back in Thailand between locations.  On our first weekend here, some of us went on a day tour and it probably ended up being my favorite day in Thailand.  We had a wonderful adventure travelling to a floating market, the bridge on the River Kwai and an elephant camp where we got to play with elephants in the river and ride on them.  It was so much fun - we got to sit on the elephants trunks and the elephants would throw us into the water and we got to aim their trunks and spray people! We had a couple days of prep and then headed out for Camp Zoe, at a golf resort about 3 hours from Bangkok.  We took about 50 kids with us and had about 30 volunteers.  We spent 3 full days and 2 half days there.  We did worship and teachings with the kids, and tons of fun activities to keep the kids busy.  Icebreaker games, team building (they were split into 4 teams for competition over the weekend), Capture the Flag, Crazy Nigh...

Sunday, April 20, 2014 Our first weeks of outreach flew by!  We have completed our first location, and that is just wild to think about.  Three weeks ago we left for Cambodia, and after a long ride in a gross bus sitting next to an old Asian man whose nasty feet were in my space the entire time, a seemingly long walk across the border with my far too heavy backpack and an unexceptional van ride, we arrived in the city of Battambang.  And I was in love.  I don't even know what it was, but as soon as I had those first glimpses of the country of Cambodia, I loved it.  Battambang has a small town feel - not very developed or Americanized, you can walk pretty much everywhere you want to go - with that special Asian charm - sugar can drink and food vendors all along the street, plenty of tuk tuks on the road, and allllllll the motos.  Plus, there was just that little of extra Cambodian spice in the mix.  It's difficult to describe all that was so special a...