True North Blog

Hello, one more time, to my fantastic family at TNCC,

As you may or may not have realized, I have now reached the final week of my time in Thailand.  We have finished our outreach and are back in Bangkok for our debriefing time before we all head our separate ways.  Friday night is our school graduation, and Saturday morning I’m on a plane for home!  Crazy!!

There are so many things going through my head as I prepare to come home.  I know that things will be different, because time has moved on at home just as it has here; only I haven’t been with you all so it may be a little weird for me right away.  For example, the last 5 months I have been focusing on using the smallest English words possible so that the Thai’s will be more likely to understand me.  I’m probably going to be staring at cashiers like a doofus for the first few weeks, just because I’m not used to talking so fast!

This isn’t to say that you should all expect me to be weird, but I have become accustomed to a culture that is not my own, so I may be in shock for a little while.  But I am so excited to be a physical part of the True North family again and to catch up on your lives!

To briefly summarize the past few weeks, firstly our team ran an English camp at a church in the Nakon Pathom province.  It amazes me what a tool teaching English is for sharing the gospel; pretty much, if you say you’re teaching English, people will come flocking!  It was an amazing week as we helped the church as well, and we saw a whole group of teenage guys come to know the Lord, and a smaller group of the young girls.  In improving their skills in English, we were also enabling these kids to get better jobs and have hope for their futures.

The following week we helped run a kids worship camp at the church of one of my Thai roommates.  It was a great week of getting to know these kids and breaking the barriers so many of them have against foreigners.  They now know that not all white people are like the ones they see on TV, and you would have been amazed to see these kids worship God!  I’ve never seen people so young be so serious about God.  And no, it was not like “Jesus Camp.”

And this past week we spent in Ratchaburi, working with a group of kids who live in a Burmese refugee camp, whom you may be hearing more from me on in the future, because they really stole my heart! We also went out into the villages to have small-group churches and to pray for the sick and elderly who aren’t able to make it to church.  There was one day that we went to a Thai university, and I was able to share with some Muslim students who asked me why I came to Thailand.  They asked me to sing, so sang Hosanna and this other Thai song that I learned here.  It was so cool!

There have been other times that we have been able to open doors to people through sharing testimonies, encouragements from scripture, and performing dances and dramas.  It was tricky sleeping on dirty floors, sometimes with no running water, and constantly traveling from one place to the other, sometimes not knowing what our plans would be for the day!  But through it all I have seen God really stretch me and teach me about how so many people live outside of America.

God has done so much while I’ve been here, and I don’t think I’ll really know exactly how much until I come home and see the person I was before.  I have learned to love differently, to stand up even stronger for what I believe in, and to be the kind of Christian that will make the world want to know more about Christ.  I hope and pray that the ministries I’ve been able to visit and help out with here in Thailand have been as blessed as I have been through the whole experience.  And I can’t wait to be home and a part of your lives again.

Peace and love,

Anna

Here’s the latest from Anna Macukas:

Hello Everyone!!

Just wanted to send out a much-belated email update on how things are going on this side of the world!!

At this point, we have finished our lectures and have been on an outreach trip to the south of Thailand for the past two weeks to an area called Phang Nga. We worked with this awesome tribe of people called the Sea Gypsies, or the “Mokan” people, who are fishing people and are very poor.  We worked with pre-schools there that have been set up by an organization called Step Ahead to take little kids out of vulnerable family situations during the day so that their parents can work and they can be safe.  The kids went from extremes of being totally terrified of us “farang” (foreigners), to jumping all over us and basically destroying us.  Needless to say, they were awesome.  We also planted gardens for these people and trees…lots of trees; thousands, actually! This was the area of Thailand hit the hardest by the 2004 tsunami, so these people are still undergoing a lot of re-development.  They now have a special place in my heart and I hope they will be in your prayers as well.

This very morning we are leaving again to go to central Thailand to a place called Ratchaburi.  I don’t know that much about it, except that we will be working with a local church, teaching English, and possibly working with the Burmese refugees that live in the area.  Please pray that I will be flexible and will be able to be prepared, as we don’t know a lot ahead of time here!  Also, my health has been pretty low due to pushing myself pretty hard and also due to my asthma.  I really want to participate to the best of my ability, so please pray that these things won’t hold me back!  You can also pray that the hearts of the people we work with will be open to what we do, and for the unity of our team, since we are bilingual and it is often hard to function with a lot of information lost in translation.

As of right now, unless anything changes, I will be home November 7th!  Our team will be returning to Bangkok the first week in November for debriefing, and then that is the end of this whole she-bang!  I thank you all so much for your prayers and continued support.  They have made all the difference in the world, and as amazing/challenging/eye-opening as this all has been, I can’t wait to be home with you all again!

God bless you all,
Anna