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Joy To The World: In The Darkest of Places

     Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! I want to again thank everyone for their love, prayer, support, and encouragement during this time. I am beyond blessed to have such an amazing support system behind me. I am thankful for each and every one of you and all that you have done for me, the things I'm aware of and the things I don't know about, thank you.
     I can't believe that my time here is already half way over. In some ways it feels like I've been in Thailand for years and in others it feels like I stepped off the plan just yesterday. My time here so far as been amazing and in some ways indescribable. It has been difficult, emotional, stretching, incredible, and rewarding all at the same time. Being able to come here and serve has been a true blessing. I love being here and I love the people I get the opportunity to serve and work with. I am blessed with beautiful friendships with fellow expats as well as the Thai women I work with in the office. I am constantly astounded by the life and community that God has provided me with here.
     I work in the office on a day to day basis doing data entry, some communication with incoming visitors and volunteers, I teach English in Friday afternoons to the wonderful Thai staff, and giving tours to visiting teams and people interested in what we do. I also get the incredible privilege of attending outreach to the bars. 
     Outreach is one of my favorite things that I get to do here and we recently had our Christmas outreach. I have on outreach to the thai bars but this time I was able to attend both outreach here and outreach to other ares of town. We went in to each place with small bags of goodies and handed them out to the girls and mama sans. Just something to say we love you and Merry Christmas.  After we distributed gifts throughout the bars we then headed across the main road. Armed with gift bags and a guitar we made our way into one of the brothels to hand out gifts and hopefully bring some joy to their night. Once inside the guitar was pulled out and we were able to begin singing Christmas carols. Girls came out of their rooms and watched us and some of them sang with us. As we sang I looked around, at their faces, and where I would expect to see emptiness and fear I saw joy and hope. As I stood in a place of such brokenness, pain, fear, and bondage I sang Joy To The World and I felt it. It was all I could do to hold back tears as I stood with these women and sang with them about joy and love and hope. That night in a small brothel in Bangkok the love and joy and Christ penetrated the darkness and gave everyone there, the women and our team, a glimpse of what true freedom and joy can look like. It was such an incredible reminder that while the fight is not over; there is still hope no matter how bleak and hopeless a situation may seem. May we never give up. No matter how dark it is, the light can always shine brighter. No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

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