Hello to all,
We have been a very busy team since the last time you heard from us. Our time in Thailand concluded smoothly. We finished off the week teaching alot of english in schools and english camps, it went very well. After our time in the south we returned to Bangkok for a day of debrief. This was our mid-outreach debrief time. It came at a good time, and proved to be a great time for us as a team. It was awesome to take inventory of where we are all at and to unify us in our vision and purpose for the last four weeks of our outreach. We are at a good place as a team, we've been able to do some amazing things so far, but are very excited for what God still has in store. All of us were looking forward to India and Nepal realizing it would probably be the most stretching and hard core part of of our trip.
It has definitely lived up to the expectation so far as we started it off with a bang a 40 hour bus ride to Nepal from Delhi. It was quite the experience a miracle in itself that it all worked out smoothly. The trip started off with me catching my finger in an industrial fan (luckily it is still intact could have been bad) our taxi to the bus station had a flat before we left to be met with crazy Delhi traffic then one taxi running out of gas after being off to a late start. But we made it to our bus. The bus trip was not without some exciting highlights including one slight accident with an oil tanker followed by 2 police bribery sessions. One breakdown with a three hour wait as they replaced the water pump and many bumps in the road literally. It felt like we were in a rally car race for 40 hours on a bus, none of us were aware a bus could go that fast.
But we made at 2 am in Pokhara Nepal. Which happens to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Tomorrow we begin a 4 day trekking time heading into the Annapurna Himalayan range during monsoon season. It is going to be fun!
Be praying for our health and safety as we spend the next few days on the trail and in mountain villages.
Blessing the from the hard core ATW team
P.S. we love you all!
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
A long awaited greeting...
Hello from Phang-nga, Thailand!! (pronounced "pong-na")
It's very hot here and I'm enjoying my first Internet cafe experience of the trip because it is air-conditioned. I apologize for not be able to update you more often about our trip but access to the Internet for extended periods of time has been very limited. But it also has been refreshing to not have it as a distraction as well.
We are in the south of Thailand and are enjoying it very much. We had a second day of prison ministry this morning. The inmates were all women and they enjoyed our dramas, songs, and teaching of English very much. It was very encouraging to see many of them begin to understand who Christ was and what He means to us. We are praying that God will be reminding them of our words, especially one of the guards who was very kind to us and seemed interested in hearing what we had to say.
Thailand has been a very trying time for our team as it has been frustrating to not witness any "results" from our ministry efforts and Andrew, the talkative Canadian, had to spend about 2 days in the hospital for dehydration and stomach pains. Thankfully, God has restored him, but it was difficult to present our dramas without him and we are very thankful that he was sick for only a short time. God is faithful!!
I'm not sure what we will be doing in the upcoming days as we usually have been finding out our activities the day they happen, but we have an upcoming day off. I am looking forward to maybe visiting an area here where they filmed a James Bond film as it is supposed to be very scenic. I have enjoyed experiencing new things in the countries we have visited (I ate a cockroach about the size of my finger a few days ago...I don't recommend it).
I have posted some updates about our previous weeks below if you're interested. I am so grateful for your support and prayers. It has been pretty cool to see where your prayers have encouraged us and even paved a path for us in some dark places. I hope to keep you better updated, but I can't promise I will be able to. Well, my time is up so I must go.
Have a great day and may God reveal Himself to you in a tangible way,
Sam Blommel
It's very hot here and I'm enjoying my first Internet cafe experience of the trip because it is air-conditioned. I apologize for not be able to update you more often about our trip but access to the Internet for extended periods of time has been very limited. But it also has been refreshing to not have it as a distraction as well.
We are in the south of Thailand and are enjoying it very much. We had a second day of prison ministry this morning. The inmates were all women and they enjoyed our dramas, songs, and teaching of English very much. It was very encouraging to see many of them begin to understand who Christ was and what He means to us. We are praying that God will be reminding them of our words, especially one of the guards who was very kind to us and seemed interested in hearing what we had to say.
Thailand has been a very trying time for our team as it has been frustrating to not witness any "results" from our ministry efforts and Andrew, the talkative Canadian, had to spend about 2 days in the hospital for dehydration and stomach pains. Thankfully, God has restored him, but it was difficult to present our dramas without him and we are very thankful that he was sick for only a short time. God is faithful!!
I'm not sure what we will be doing in the upcoming days as we usually have been finding out our activities the day they happen, but we have an upcoming day off. I am looking forward to maybe visiting an area here where they filmed a James Bond film as it is supposed to be very scenic. I have enjoyed experiencing new things in the countries we have visited (I ate a cockroach about the size of my finger a few days ago...I don't recommend it).
I have posted some updates about our previous weeks below if you're interested. I am so grateful for your support and prayers. It has been pretty cool to see where your prayers have encouraged us and even paved a path for us in some dark places. I hope to keep you better updated, but I can't promise I will be able to. Well, my time is up so I must go.
Have a great day and may God reveal Himself to you in a tangible way,
Sam Blommel
Week 5
Hello friends and family,
We arrived safely into Bangkok on Tuesday morning after layovers in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When we arrived to the base in Bangkok our team was thrilled to find out they would be sharing dorm rooms with the YWAM Denver Thailand team. It was a blessing and a treat to see them after being on the road for over a month.
The majority of our time in Bangkok was spent working with Ban Jai Diaow a ywam college ministry. We were able to do some practical things for their building like painting as well as help clean up a bocce ball court for a local church they partner with. After a few hours of hard labor we ended the workday with a competitive session of Thai Bocce ball. On one of the days the girls were able to go into a local slum, the ministry has been building relationship with and love on people.
One of the highlights of the week without a doubt was the time we were able to spend in the redlight districts of Bangkok partnering with the MST project. A ministry ywam has started focusing on the male sex tourist. We had a couple of pretty powerful nights down in an area known as Nana. It was amazing to see the Lord reach down His hand to these men in the midst of all the darkness that was around us.
Yesterday evening we ended our time in Bangkok. We took a 12 hour bus ride to the south of Thailand towards Phuket to a beautiful town called Phang Nga. We will spend the next week here working with a church plant. We will be helping them reach out to their community through evangelism, English teaching, work projects and even spending some time in a Muslim village they have been reaching out to.
Tomorrow morning we head to a prison, continue to be praying for us to press in and not let up. Also for continued health and safety we have a couple people having some "common" stomach issues (a.k.a. diarrhea).
Blessings,
the ATW team
We arrived safely into Bangkok on Tuesday morning after layovers in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When we arrived to the base in Bangkok our team was thrilled to find out they would be sharing dorm rooms with the YWAM Denver Thailand team. It was a blessing and a treat to see them after being on the road for over a month.
The majority of our time in Bangkok was spent working with Ban Jai Diaow a ywam college ministry. We were able to do some practical things for their building like painting as well as help clean up a bocce ball court for a local church they partner with. After a few hours of hard labor we ended the workday with a competitive session of Thai Bocce ball. On one of the days the girls were able to go into a local slum, the ministry has been building relationship with and love on people.
One of the highlights of the week without a doubt was the time we were able to spend in the redlight districts of Bangkok partnering with the MST project. A ministry ywam has started focusing on the male sex tourist. We had a couple of pretty powerful nights down in an area known as Nana. It was amazing to see the Lord reach down His hand to these men in the midst of all the darkness that was around us.
Yesterday evening we ended our time in Bangkok. We took a 12 hour bus ride to the south of Thailand towards Phuket to a beautiful town called Phang Nga. We will spend the next week here working with a church plant. We will be helping them reach out to their community through evangelism, English teaching, work projects and even spending some time in a Muslim village they have been reaching out to.
Tomorrow morning we head to a prison, continue to be praying for us to press in and not let up. Also for continued health and safety we have a couple people having some "common" stomach issues (a.k.a. diarrhea).
Blessings,
the ATW team
Week 4
Hello to all,
I am quickly writing to you from Sydney before we head out to the airport. Our time in PNG concluded amazingly! It was very hard for us to leave. We have made many lifetime friends there. The people, the contacts everything it was such a great time. The last day before we left we were blessed with a helicopter ride over the valley by our contacts, they wanted us to be able to do a "prayerride". Our travels all went smooth from PNG back to Australia where we had the priviledge of a day layover before we head off to Bangkok, Thailand. We are very excited for the next portion of our trip.
Thanks for all your prayers.
God Bless,
The ATW team
I am quickly writing to you from Sydney before we head out to the airport. Our time in PNG concluded amazingly! It was very hard for us to leave. We have made many lifetime friends there. The people, the contacts everything it was such a great time. The last day before we left we were blessed with a helicopter ride over the valley by our contacts, they wanted us to be able to do a "prayerride". Our travels all went smooth from PNG back to Australia where we had the priviledge of a day layover before we head off to Bangkok, Thailand. We are very excited for the next portion of our trip.
Thanks for all your prayers.
God Bless,
The ATW team
Week 3
Greetings from the land of pidgeon talk where the pig is king! (Papua New Guinea)
This has by far been the busiest week of our outreach so far. We started the week off with an overnight stay in a village in the Highlands, where we showed the Jesus film along with some AIDS awareness videos in their native tongue. We also were able to go into a few schools and share openly. We were able to do some ministry in nearby villages, along with some work projects as well. One highlight for the week was an afternoon spent in a newly formed "Drop in Centre" where we were able to teach dramas to the local youth. It was an awesome time where the different groups presented the dramas they had learned to each other. Cultural barriers were brought down especially through the women standing unashamed in front of the crowd. This is not normal since sometimes the women here can be suppressed.
We closed our week with a bang tonight when we were able to minister to the missionary kids here on the SIL center. The missionary base we are staying at is a community in it's own right with at any given time between 1,000 and 1,500 people living here. There are a lot of ex-pat youth who grow up here, and sometimes struggle with not being able to live the so called "normal" life. So it was quite an awesome opportunity that we got to encourage them. Both Hannah and I were able to share our testimonies with them, and it ended up being a very powerful time, followed up with a late night concert put on by the youth band (including Derrick Nissley's brother). It was refreshing to be involved in a YWAM style worship with so many young people.
We have one week left in PNG before we head off to Thailand. Thank you for your continued prayers.
Until next time,
Jacob, Hannah, Danielle, Heather, Shay, Barbara, Olive, Sam, AJ, and Andrew aka The ATW Team
This has by far been the busiest week of our outreach so far. We started the week off with an overnight stay in a village in the Highlands, where we showed the Jesus film along with some AIDS awareness videos in their native tongue. We also were able to go into a few schools and share openly. We were able to do some ministry in nearby villages, along with some work projects as well. One highlight for the week was an afternoon spent in a newly formed "Drop in Centre" where we were able to teach dramas to the local youth. It was an awesome time where the different groups presented the dramas they had learned to each other. Cultural barriers were brought down especially through the women standing unashamed in front of the crowd. This is not normal since sometimes the women here can be suppressed.
We closed our week with a bang tonight when we were able to minister to the missionary kids here on the SIL center. The missionary base we are staying at is a community in it's own right with at any given time between 1,000 and 1,500 people living here. There are a lot of ex-pat youth who grow up here, and sometimes struggle with not being able to live the so called "normal" life. So it was quite an awesome opportunity that we got to encourage them. Both Hannah and I were able to share our testimonies with them, and it ended up being a very powerful time, followed up with a late night concert put on by the youth band (including Derrick Nissley's brother). It was refreshing to be involved in a YWAM style worship with so many young people.
We have one week left in PNG before we head off to Thailand. Thank you for your continued prayers.
Until next time,
Jacob, Hannah, Danielle, Heather, Shay, Barbara, Olive, Sam, AJ, and Andrew aka The ATW Team
Week 2
Hey Everybody!
So last week we finished out our time camping in the Outback. And I'm happy to say we saw many kangaroos!! Our time with Reef to Outback turned out to be quite God ordained. The teaching topic for the week was Unity and Common Purpose and Vision. It was quite powerful for both our team and the Reef to Outback team. A perfect segway into our next adventure, Papua New Guinea. We arrived in the capitol, Port Moresby to find out our connecting flight to the highlands was cancelled due to an absent pilot. To our surprise, the airline put us up in the nicest hotel in the city. It was quite a treat after camping for over a week. We each enjoyed our own rooms and A LOT OF FREE FOOD!
The next day we arrived in Goroka and were greeted by our incredible contacts, and were quickly introduced to driving in PNG. General rule of thumb...you never stop for anything, even if you hit a human being. You have to drive quickly and always be on the lookout for highway hold ups by the local "rascals". We safely arrived to Ukurampa, the home of the SIL (Wycliff) base, which happens to be the largest missionary base in the world tucked in the middle of nowhere in a very remote mountain valley. In this valley is where we will be focusing the majority of our ministry efforts. Even though the valley is home to the largest missionary base inthe world, it is still a place of much need. Only in the last couple years have the missionaries really begun to reach out to their neighbors due to the incredible amount of work the challenge of translating the Bible into over 800 languages creates.
We had our first ministy time this morning. The guys went to a prison camp and the girls visited a high school boarding school and participated in a church service for them. It was a very powerful time for both the boys and girls. I feel we are here at a crucial time for the valley which is home to different warring tribes. Right now for the first time the different churches in the valley have begun working together in a never before seen show of unity. The different groups have expressed their excitement for having out team with them. Please be praying for us as we seek to encourage and be a blessing during our time here in the beautiful, mountainous, and diverse nation they call PNG.
Salutations from Jacob, Hannah, and the amazing ATW team.
So last week we finished out our time camping in the Outback. And I'm happy to say we saw many kangaroos!! Our time with Reef to Outback turned out to be quite God ordained. The teaching topic for the week was Unity and Common Purpose and Vision. It was quite powerful for both our team and the Reef to Outback team. A perfect segway into our next adventure, Papua New Guinea. We arrived in the capitol, Port Moresby to find out our connecting flight to the highlands was cancelled due to an absent pilot. To our surprise, the airline put us up in the nicest hotel in the city. It was quite a treat after camping for over a week. We each enjoyed our own rooms and A LOT OF FREE FOOD!
The next day we arrived in Goroka and were greeted by our incredible contacts, and were quickly introduced to driving in PNG. General rule of thumb...you never stop for anything, even if you hit a human being. You have to drive quickly and always be on the lookout for highway hold ups by the local "rascals". We safely arrived to Ukurampa, the home of the SIL (Wycliff) base, which happens to be the largest missionary base in the world tucked in the middle of nowhere in a very remote mountain valley. In this valley is where we will be focusing the majority of our ministry efforts. Even though the valley is home to the largest missionary base inthe world, it is still a place of much need. Only in the last couple years have the missionaries really begun to reach out to their neighbors due to the incredible amount of work the challenge of translating the Bible into over 800 languages creates.
We had our first ministy time this morning. The guys went to a prison camp and the girls visited a high school boarding school and participated in a church service for them. It was a very powerful time for both the boys and girls. I feel we are here at a crucial time for the valley which is home to different warring tribes. Right now for the first time the different churches in the valley have begun working together in a never before seen show of unity. The different groups have expressed their excitement for having out team with them. Please be praying for us as we seek to encourage and be a blessing during our time here in the beautiful, mountainous, and diverse nation they call PNG.
Salutations from Jacob, Hannah, and the amazing ATW team.
Sorry I'm behind...
Week 1
Greetings from Townseville Australia,
3 flights down and 11 more to go. We are nearing the end of our first week and have already had the opportunity to swim in the ocean on 2 different continents. Our first stop was California for 4 1/2 days. We had the priviledge of staying at my parents house and encouraging my home church as well as a day of ministry on the streets of SanFrancisco. It was a great start to our trip. We were able to build some relationships with the youth as well as get fattend up by my parents. Then on wed. we hopped on a couple of planes and after a van ride arrived in Townesville 24 hours later.
Sunday morning we head out to the outback for 5 days of camping with the reef to outback DTS, where we will be having class with them and hopefully seeing some kangaroos in the wild as well. So long for now and the next time you hear from us we will be in the island nation of Papua New Guinea.
Many blessings the ATW team!
Greetings from Townseville Australia,
3 flights down and 11 more to go. We are nearing the end of our first week and have already had the opportunity to swim in the ocean on 2 different continents. Our first stop was California for 4 1/2 days. We had the priviledge of staying at my parents house and encouraging my home church as well as a day of ministry on the streets of SanFrancisco. It was a great start to our trip. We were able to build some relationships with the youth as well as get fattend up by my parents. Then on wed. we hopped on a couple of planes and after a van ride arrived in Townesville 24 hours later.
Sunday morning we head out to the outback for 5 days of camping with the reef to outback DTS, where we will be having class with them and hopefully seeing some kangaroos in the wild as well. So long for now and the next time you hear from us we will be in the island nation of Papua New Guinea.
Many blessings the ATW team!
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