A little update.

We were in the dark room that we were sleeping in that night when Matt said "Yeah well we'll just see what hap...look at the size of that spider." It was the tone in which he so matter-of-factly pointed it out, that I hardly believed that the 8-legged arachnid  roughly around the size of my ENTIRE HAND that was sitting on the wall 3 feet away, glaring at me with 8 beady eyes was in fact, real. Then it hit me. I really am in the jungle now. Then it hit me again and again as we found 5 more spiders the same size all over the walls and under our bed, and this was only the beginning....


There are actually 3 spiders in this photo (unbeknownst to me at the time)
1: Obvious
2: Underneath the 2x4 on the wall
3: Hiding just below view; you can see one leg if you look just above the pillow.
(5 Total spiders in the room once we began looking for them.)



Ok rewind. So a little re-cap to bring everybody up to speed from the last post (which regrettably, was a month ago). Here are some hilights from life in Thailand.

• After the last post, it would be understandable to think that life here has been the epitome of disgusting, horrible, and down right hard. But such is not the case, please don't think that life here is any of the above. There are plenty of times when things are difficult and challenging; especially when the ugly face of prostitution is in full view. But please know that God is amazing, huge, amazingly huge and powerful. He is in control and takes delight in letting his children pray and aid in the work He's doing.
• The weeks following were spent in the quiet of Breanna's House, loving on the girls, playing games, teaching English, and gearing up for a team to come from the States.
• Once the team arrived, time was spent planting flowers, hedges, trees, building swingsets, putting on a VBS for the girls, taking them into town (they hardly have the opportunity to go anywhere other than school), and ultimately loving the 42 girls through any means necessary.
• After the team had departed, and most of the girls went back to their villages because of school break, we headed north to Chiang Rai. (Also, just to clarify; most of the girls at BHJ are not technically "orphans" in the sense most define it. The majority of them have at least one living parent, though their mothers are almost always remarried to another man than their father; due to him either being deceased, in prison, or unknown. And hence their mother being married to another man, the step-father rarely allows them to stay with the family. So they are passed off to grandparents, aunts and uncles or friends if possible.)
• Then the week in Chiang Rai we spent time gearing up for the jungle and enjoying some time in a new city. Activities included: swimming, napping (I was sick with a cold), hanging out at coffee shops and reading, journaling, and also found a place where for $3 could ride ostriches! (Just FYI, as seen in Swiss Family Robinson, ostriches are not easy to ride, and are not meant for personal transport lol).

This brings us up to speed with the jungle adventure; we had just taken a long-tail boat for about an hour from Chiang Rai further into the jungle and were dropped off at a little hot springs village where we set up a few hammocks and took naps before the truck came to pick us up and take us to the village where we were going to start our trek. It was there that something potentially disastrous happened: Natalie had strung up her hammock with some old rope that she fould somewhere in her dad's garage (seemed strong enough to me), but when Courtney tried to hop into the hammock with her, the rope snapped and they both hit the ground hard. Natalie was bruised and a little sore but ok, but Courtney, unfortunately, landed directly on a root and also hit her head on the tree; resulting in a highly bruised tailbone and extreme nausea. We had to lift her into the truck once it came, and carry her most of the time to get from the bed to the table and back, the next morning when she wasn't feeling any better, Matt and her took the long car-ride back to Chiang Rai to the hospital where they diagnosed the bruise (not broken, thank God) tailbone. From there they took the van back to Chiang Mai while the rest of us went on with the trek.

Matt and Courtney made it back to Chiang Mai safely, and Courtney is now completely healed and running around as if nothing happened (somewhat bummed she had to spend the entire week on the couch), but loved hanging out with the Parkers and having time to reflect, read and rest.

See next post for a debriefing of our awesome trek!