Well I'm leaving Holland for the United States in just a few hours. It has been an amazing trip. I've enjoyed my time with the Stephensons and Kaitlyn and getting to see the ministry here and getting to meet so many wonderful Dutch people and other missionaries. I am sad to leave, not only am I leaving my wonderful niece and nephew (and their parents :) ) I am also beginning to realize this marks the true end to my missions trip!

There are so many things I have learned and I firmly believe life will never be the same. I can't wait to share with you all that God has done and the things that I have learned. I don't know what is next, as far as the very near future holds, but I look forward to watching God work out the details and how He is going to move.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. Please pray for my travels. I leave for California at 2pm Holland time (5am Arizona and Cali time, 7pm Thailand time). I will be in California for less then 24 hours before I head out on a trip with my parents. I will return to California next Monday and then head back to Arizona to be in church on May 24th. Look forward to seeing you all!!!!

Prayer Requests:

As I finish up my time here in Holland I have begun the process of applying for jobs back in Arizona. Please pray that God will lead me to the right job and that I will be able to get a job quickly.

Pray for God's leading as to what my future will hold, especially in the form of missions.

Pray for my time in Holland. That it will be profitable and helpful for Stephensons. (pray for a friend of Heather's that we have spent some time with and seems to have built a good relationship with Kaitlyn)

Pray for the last bit of my support to come in. God has provided in AMAZING ways and I have been surprised at every turn as He has been SO faithful and His timing has been perfect. I am still trying to raise the the rest of the support to pay for my plane ticket.

Pray for the ministry in Thailand. They have a team in now. Pray also that the Chinese tourist will continue to travel to Thailand. With the recent political situation there have been fewer Chinese traveling to Thailand.

Thank you ALL for all of your support. I have been SO blessed by this opportunity and all that God has done in my life. I look forward to being able to share with when I get home!

It has been a crazy 10 days! Can you believe it's really been that long since I left Thailand? I sure can't! I miss it like crazy!!! But my last day in Thailand was awesome!!!

We went out to lunch as a SCPT team. Had some real Thai food which was awesome. My wonderful friends traveled around the city with me as I did last minute shopping, found my Thai tea, and mango with sticky rice! YUM YUM YUM!!!! We however failed to find my bug :( ( I guess this means I HAVE to go back!) Then we went back to hang out and wait for my ride. It was SO much fun. Several other members of the SCPT showed up with mango and sticky rice and we played telephone pictionary. And if you've never played... well you need to!

Mr. Poo arrived and it was time for me to say goodbye. It wasn't pretty lol but I finally sat in the van on my way to the airport. God has a great sense of humor as well... my trip to the airport included Thai karoke... I couldn't stop laughing. It was perfect!

At the airport I was meet with the shock of my life. I knew I was going to have to pay extra for my bags as I was traveling to Europe and not the US. I figured you know an extra $60 or something would be okay and I'd survive.... boy was I WRONG. When I first put my bags on the scale the number didn't surprise me... I thought I was only 4 kilo's over what the lady in London had told me....no it was really 14 kilo's over...and they were going to charge me for each kilo. $600 to get my stuff to Holland!?! I sat in the Bangkok airport moving my stuff around, several times! I finally ended up with all of my jeans and shorts in my purse, my pillow full of socks and my backpack crammed full of 'stuff' and still ended up paying WAY more then I wanted to. But, alas, all of my stuff and I arrived in Holland.

I've had some trouble adjusting to the time change, but I am having a blast hanging out with the Stephensons. I LOVE being Auntie Joy!!!

WOW!!!! What a week! The team from LBC has been here and we had a great time! I LOVED getting to go out and do ministry with them!!!! What a last week! I was able to go out with them for every night of distribution and just loved watching God work! He continues to amaze me and show me just how great and awesome He is and what a BIG God I get to serve.

This is the last time I will blog from within Thailand. I'm writing this with great sadness in my heart! I feel like I'm leaving home all over again! I love it here! I LOVE the ministry, I LOVE my time with God, I LOVE the people, I pretty much just love it all!

God has been amazing and has shown me great and wonderful things. He is SO faithful to us beyond anything we could imagine. He provides for all our needs, tells us we don't have to worry about anything. I was reading yesterday where Jesus told the disciples to go out, not to take food, money, extra clothes or anything, that it would all be provided for them. To have faith like that!!! But that's the God we serve...the same yesterday, today and forever! I know now more then ever that I can't go back to the same old thing... I want to live serving God forever...and where ever He leads! (Even if it ends up being some crazy 3rd world country! Which I would LOVE!!!!)

My last day will hopefully entail getting some last minute shopping done, mango with sticky rice, Thai tea, a cricket, LOTS of pictures and most importantly getting to spend time with the people who have become family to me, whom I will miss dearly!!! My life will never be the same again!!! Thank you LORD!!!!

Please pray as I say my goodbyes and travel! I'm excited to see everyone and be able to share about my time here! I will post once I get to Holland...maybe include some going away pictures! :) Thank you again for all your support and prayers! This would not have been possible without you!!!

THANK you all SO much for your prayers! UCM went great! The worship was awesome, which totally helped me get prepared for sharing. Don't ask me what I said, I really couldn't tell you. I know I went in prepared to talk about prayer and what a GREAT and BIG God we serve and how He wants us to ask and to come before Him with our requests! It was so much fun! And to top it all off... I wasn't nervous or fidgety!! When I had gotten ready that morning I had put my ring on to play with when I got nervous, so it wouldn't be so obvious.... I never had to use it! God was so awesome and just gave me peace! What made it even more special was this was my last UCM! How cool is God?!? I mean I'm not happy it was my last time to UCM but what a way to go out :)

The team arrived from my home church yesterday and blessed me SO much! They brought gifts from home that just made my day!!! (there are certain things you can't get here or cost WAY to much, that after a while you kinda start to miss and crave) Not to mention they were able to join us as one of our Thai staff was baptized yesterday! It was an AWESOME Resurrection Sunday!!! Praise God for what a great and awesome God He is!

Please pray for the team this week and their ministry! We have the warehouse this morning and then the pier tonight! It should be awesome! Oh and it's Songkran's (The Thai New Year), I'm going to be soaked! Pretty much all week!!!! :) I'm looking forward to it :) Please also keep me in prayer, this is my last week here, leaving my home and my new friends and family is going to be SO hard and I want to focus on ministry this week and spending time with the team from LBC but also wanting to spend time with the team here before I leave! Gotta love the balancing act! Thank you again all for your amazing support and your prayers!

Funny story...very true! Yesterday (Thursday) I went to the warehouse to work with a team of ladies helping with the Tamar center. As we would be going out to the pier later that evening I need to get the truck filled with boxes. If your lucky and go early enough some of the warehouse staff will fill the truck for you, and as I was there early, I was excited that I would not be filling the truck myself! I had talked to one of the staff and asked if he needed me to move the truck to the warehouse or if he just wanted to do it. He stated he could do it so I handed him the keys. He worked on some other stuff and I went back to helping with packets. A short while later he went out to the truck.... within a few minutes he was back, but the truck hadn't moved. He came over and asked if I could move the truck for him. I complied and continued working on packets while he filled the truck. When he returned he asked me which foot you used to make the car go... why is this funny you may be asking.... see he has his own truck and motorcycle and drives quite regularly here...the difference and why he couldn't move the truck...it's an automatic :) I laugh when I think about it... He can drive a standard and a motorcycle and the vehicle that we would think the easiest of them all and automatic stumped him!

On a more serious note: Please be praying for us this next week. Wednesday morning in particular. I know in the past I have talked about attending a mid week service at UCM (United Christian Ministries) and that we gather to pray for different ministries. Each week is lead by a different ministry in the city. This week, it's SCPT's turn. I have volunteered, I think, to share. God has really laid it on my heart as of lately that we don't take prayer seriously enough. I mean over here it's easy to get really into prayer and to focus on it and to live in it, but even then I don't think we think big enough. I don't think we take God out of our box. An example... during the Chinese New Year we were handing out a certain number of boxes most nights...well I thought hey pray for more...but even when I was I was thinking to myself... pray a realistic number...really?!? Does God want us to be "realistic" and think in human terms or does He want us to think big...think about what HE can do? I was challenged as the day that I prayed for a specific number and that's what we did. A slightly larger number then before, but it wasn't a BIG number... did I limit what I thought God could do to what I thought were human expectations. In His word He tells us we do not have because we do not ask, and we do not ask believing. I've been really convicted about that lately and am trying to pray big, in a God size way, no boxes and then really really believe He CAN and WILL do big things. I mean He's GOD! Don't we believe He can heal the sick, cause the blind to see, change the hard hearts of people? Or do we only believe He could do that in Bible times? All I know is that I hope to share about the amazing power of prayer and what God CAN and WANTS to do...if only we will ask and believe. Please pray that God gives me the words to speak and moves in the hearts of the people. After I share we will be praying for the ministries and I'm going to challenge them to think God sized... I mean hello God used Gideon and 300 men to defeat an army, He doesn't need us to be realistic, He wants us to have faith and ask!

The count down begins... only I'm not looking forward to this count down! I leave Thailand in 3 weeks.... then spend 3 weeks working with Heather and Jeremy in Holland and then home. And while that seems like a lot of time before I get back to the US, for me that is just to soon to be leaving Thailand!

Last week I went to Singapore for my last "visa run" and had a good time. On the flight home I got to talking to another passenger headed to Thailand. We were getting close to the Bangkok airport and I was just so excited. I said, "I'm so glad to be home!" He gave me a strange look, as we had already talked about my being from the United States, and asked,"So Thailand really feels like 'home' to you?" "YES, very much SO!"

It feels weird to be leaving HOME to go 'home' but not really sure where my place is at 'home' or what I'm suppose to be doing next. I can't say that Thailand is where I'm called to live for the rest of my life, but I can tell you that being here has just confirmed my love and desire to be in full time missions. I feel SO alive, so at peace, so at HOME when I am on the mission field. I love watching God work in such an amazing and almost "hands on" way. I love being a part of sharing the Gospel with others and living in another culture. I love the friends I've made and I just love being able to focus so much time on prayer.

I feel bad that I don't want to come home. It's not that I don't miss everyone back home and don't love you all very much, but I LOVE it here. It's home. It just confirms for me that I am right where God wants me to be. And while I'm extremely sad to even think about leaving... I do know that if I am walking in Gods will for my life it will include amazing things and will eventually lead me somewhere in the world for ministry :) Please pray with me as I seek Gods will for my future. I really don't know what I'm suppose to do next or where I'm suppose to go from here... I just know that I am suppose to GO....