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We are now on day four in the village. The past three days have been challenging, amazing and exhausting. The Lord definitely knows how to use these days for His work and for molding me. He has been stretching me in ways I didn’t realize, and today was one of those days. I worked on building bricks with Debbie (co-team member). We had quite the excitement with a chain of little mishaps.
We started with Debbie tripping over a gasoline bottle and spraying it all over, then moved on to me dumping over a half-full bucket of brick-making material. We laughed through both of these. One of the village men who is amazing at building bricks cracked a brick, and he was proud to show us to add to the fun of our day. We moved onto having a small water geyser when a hose attachment came apart, and as Debbie and I tried to fix it we proceeded to make it worse and soak ourselves. That was the moment we couldn’t stop laughing. The day progressed into many more of those opportunities to laugh and build memories, and most of all, build friendships. Through those moments of imperfection we laughed together with the village men we were working with. Those moments are the way we have continued to build our relationships.
The Lord definitely knows how to use this work for me to grow and learn. The work is hard, but I continue to persevere because of the strength of the Lord. I find the joy in it by helping others, while they guide us. The group of men are the hardest-working men I have ever met, and they continue to work even when we get tired. The women come to help when they can and always have a smile on their face. Even though there is work to be done, the community of family is strong.
The friendships and laughter is all at the hand of the Lord providing this opportunity. As you look around you can always see team members laughing, playing games, talking and getting to know each other better. Today was truly a day of the Lord, giving me the opportunity to continue to build deeper relationships with my hut mate and the Karen people, and see the Lord's hand at work in me and others.
- Kristen L.