It's about "Thai"me

When God first told me he was sending me to Thailand,

my first reaction was, “are you sure?”... because it seemed very out of left field.

My favorite part about the story is this:

I didn’t go searching for it, it found me. Or rather, God did.

“I waited patiently and expectantly for the Lord;

And He inclined to me and heard my cry.

He brought me up out of a horrible pit [of tumult and of destruction],

out of the miry clay,

And He set my feet upon a rock,

steadying my footsteps and establishing my path”

(Psalm 40:2 AMP)

If you have heard any part of my story of the past year and how the opportunity to serve in Bangkok, Thailand with MTW fell into my lap, I think you would also agree that there was a larger force at play. Not only have I wanted to go on the mission field ever since I was little, but this past year was nothing short of a tug of war battle between me and God, thinking I was pulling towards what he had for me, when in reality I was avoiding a deeper call in exchange for what on paper sounded like the “better” or honestly “more convenient” route.

A part of me had wondered if there was some half-baked version of being a missionary that I could input into my current life so that I wouldn’t actually have to uproot or give up the structures that had become all too comfortable for me.

Smart right?

Ironically, it was those very structures which had made me feel most grounded that were stripped from right under me so that I would be open to what God had in store. It was surprisingly a freeing experience when I realized that God wasn’t asking me to try and fit missions into my current life, which was way too full to accommodate another addition, but that this could in fact be the beginning of a new way of life that I hadn’t been able to fully embrace until now, but which God had been preparing me for all along.

I see how God used this difficult season to really stretch me and force me to ask myself who I was truly serving, what I feel most drawn to do in the world, and what impact I want to leave? Hindsight really is everything. The answer to these questions was complex, but in short, I knew that I wanted to use my life and my art as a ministry to encourage others to seek God and the beauty that can be found even when we are also seeking healing in a broken world. I rediscovered some of my passions for discipling others, sharing the gospel and being immersed in other cultures, which inevitably led me to a desire to return to the mission field (which had been on hold ever since COVID).

When my faith was reoriented back to God and not the things that I felt were my stability, (ie my jobs, house, community), my creativity took flight, and I found that I was even more excited about what God was about to do than anything I had ever imagined myself doing in the place that I was. It felt very tangibly like I was walking out Hebrews 12:1-3 that says “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

I don’t think I’ve felt such a strong pull towards something like this before, but once God spoke it, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Every time I thought about the possibility of going to Thailand, I would get giddy. I couldn’t go to sleep at night because of the joy that was bubbling up in me, which seemed so foreign after a season where my joy had felt threatened. And what is crazy about it all is that my circumstances weren’t “resolved” by any means… I still had a significant amount things that I was dealing with, but it was like the burden of my worldy problems became as light as a feather when kingdom perspective set in. Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” And that hope which God put inside me is what carried me through some of the hardest times of my life.

Mark 10:28-31 started to ring true as I considered the prospect of leaving the only home which I had made my own, the community that I had worked to build over the past 7 years and even my family. Jesus promises us that “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or 

lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, 

houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”

But what is so hard about these verses is that the things which Jesus is telling us to leave behind aren’t always bad things, or even bad people. They are more often than not some of the best things we could have imagined having, but even then, I had to ask myself if I would be willing to give up those things for the higher calling of following Christ wherever he may lead. And even though it was extremely painful to have to let go of the people and places that have shaped me and my everyday life for the past 7 years, I know what God has is always the better portion, and it has been extremely affirming to hear that sentiment echoed by those who I am most sad to part with.

Once I was truly open to this shift and could honestly say that I would go wherever and whenever God was calling me, was when things really started to get interesting. And what is so beautiful about it is that I didn’t have to go far to hear his voice, because he meets us where we are. Praise the Lord!

I simply said, “speak Lord for your servant is listening,” (1 Samuel 3:10) and where did he meet me? At an art market.

During a Christmas Market a girl approached my table as I was selling my pottery and told me about an organization that she served with in Thailand who reaches women who have come out of trafficking... the fact she shared this with me was significant because I had been looking for ways that I could become more involved in serving victims of trafficking.

I just smiled because at this point, she was not the first person to bring up Thailand to me out of the middle of nowhere in the past year.

But this moment felt like a divine appointment that led me to reach out to the organization and decide to take a vision trip in March to visit them in ChiangMai, which was just the beginning of the discoveries I would come to find while I was there. I have come to accept that God is doing about a million things at once, and we are aware of about 2 of them, but when we follow his leading, we come to see more of what he was doing all along.

My vision trip truly felt like this because I went for a couple of reasons, only to find that God had a LOT of other reasons why he had called me there. The specific people that I got to meet felt sovereignly placed and the events that I attended were only scheduled during the 2 weeks that I was there, so I definitely had no lack of things to do, and I marveled in the realization of how much I would have missed if I hadn't gone. I was overjoyed at how God met me in the unknown with more than I was even anticipating... from artists who were using their craft in counseling, to mom's who were creating children's books to depict the beauty of the lands they found when they left the ones they knew, to pastors who invite the local baristas to their neighborhood for cookouts.

Over the past few months, I have seen the fruits that can come from support raising, and the wonderful connectedness to the body of Christ that comes when I get to share about all that God has been up to and when I get to invite them into that work as well.

I have now been in Bangkok for over a week and am just starting to getting acclimated (although I wouldn't say Thai is an easy language to pick up). I would ask for prayer in my ability to understand and speak it because it is a crucial part of making connections with people, even though a lot of locals can speak English.

Additionally, prayers for adaptability and how I will be serving are also much appreciated as my schedule is very prone to change here, but as the Thai say, "sabai sabai" and I am most of all wanting to support the missionaries in the work they are already doing here in the best ways that I can! I am grateful that there will likely be multiple avenues in which I can practice my art, through capturing others in paint or teaching those who I meet how to mold clay.

It can be simultaneously overwhelming when I don't know where to focus my energies, and underwhelming when what I thought was going to be doing ends up shifting to something else... but "man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps."(Proverbs 16:9). So I ultimately pray for my own sanctification in my time here, and that God would consistently be shaping my heart to reach those around me through creative means and with a spirit to bring the lost before him and to express his loving heart to them.

I am so grateful to be staying in the home of one of the missionary couples, Carter and Caroline McWhorter, while they are on their home assignment. It is near a couple of beautiful parks which are great for running and walking around (pictured above is King's Park with some of the beautiful flower gardens). I will be joined in the house by 2 other girl interns and we will get things rolling after all of the other interns arrive this weekend.

This past weekend I got to visit Mahathai slum with Johnny McClean and support some ICS (International Community School) students in their service to the kids there. They played games, read books and colored story boards. I look forward to returning here this summer and potentially getting to teach some art classes!

A big thank you to all who have prayed and are continuing to pray for my time here. Please continue to ask the Lord to extend his grace, for him to multiply our efforts and that he would show us what his will is for the time that he has allotted.

All glory be to the King, our Author, Creator and Sustainer. Amen.

Sawadee Khâ

Sarah Esther