A Day in the Life of a Maybe Missionary

A Day in the Life of a Maybe Missionary

I thought I would do something fun, switch things up. All of our days look at least mildly different, so I’ll pick a day and pretend the schedule is cohesive. 

I wake up in my shared room to Maddie’s alarm. Ashlin somehow manages to sleep through it every time, unfortunately, I am not that way. So at 7:30, I am reminded of the blessings of sleeping in, and I roll over and go back to sleep for the next hour. Once 8:30 hits, my body knows to wake me up. I hop out of bed, choose my casual outfit of the day for around the house activities, and go downstairs to the Cafe to make myself breakfast. We are allowed 2 pieces of toast, 1 yogurt, 2 eggs, and 1 bowl of cereal. Usually I won’t take all of that, instead opting to mix and match. On this particular undisclosed morning, I decide on 2 eggs on 1 piece of bread. Not toast. Our toaster makes it a goal to destroy any bread it happens across, incinerating every crumb. I refuse to be bested by a man made object, so I opt for raw bread. Yum. I am on breakfast clean up this fine morning, so I grab the knife from the peanut butter, the pan from eggs, and a few other odds and ends that need washing, wash those, and put them away. I finish with that job right in time for Worship and Intercession. I am the lead for worship. I grab the group guitar, play a few songs, then hand it over to Alyssa to lead Intercession for the people of China. After around an hour and a half of intentional God time, we transition into Ministry Prep. This is a daily occurrence. Most days, we go to an after school program to hang out with the kids, teach them about Jesus, and generally keep them out of bad things. On Mondays and Tuesdays, our lessons focus on teaching various parts of English. Wednesdays are Bible days, and Thursdays are arts (usually music) days. The particular day this post is modeled after would happen to be a Thursday. We assign everyone tasks for at ministry, get everything prepped that we can, and get off track quite a bit, eventually wrapping up the meeting so a few of us could go run through a song we wanted to perform at the after school program. After pinning down a few of the details, everyone is free to do whatever, unless they are the unfortunate soul that is assigned Lunch Prep. It was not me on this day, so I go back to my shared room, clean up a bit, call a friend, and read until lunch. For lunch, we had chicken curry with rice. Early outreach Kiah would not have eaten it (due to the chicken) but unphased end of outreach Kiah was ready to chow down. After lunch, we have team time to discuss goals for the remaining two weeks of outreach, then get ready to go. At around 3:00 P.M. every afternoon, the leader of the after school program picks us up in his 10 passenger van and drives us 20 minutes to the building where we host the kids. He drops us off to open up shop and get prepped, while he goes to pick up the kids. On the good days, we get started around 4:00. This day was not one of those days. Instead it was a day where everything seemed to go wrong. Many of the kids get pulled aside after school to participate in Buddhist chanting. They have no say in whether they participate. If they are chosen, they must participate, and are not released for hours. The kids did not arrive until 6:00. It was going to be a late night. We eat dinner with the children (fried rice) and sing a song with them. Then we divide them into stations so that they can be taught in smaller groups. I am in charge of teaching three girls to sing the song that my group preformed at the beginning of the evening. It goes… better than it could have. Language barriers are incredibly difficult to get around, especially when the difference is English and Thai. We did our best. Once the girls have had enough, we go sit at a table and color. All the groups slowly wrap up, we do a closing song, and we are officially done for the night. The leader takes the first group of kids home, but that can take upwards of an hour, so we hang back with the second group and play and talk with them. Some of the kids know a decent amount of English, and what they don’t know, Google translate does (sometimes.) The second group gets picked up, and then it is just us YWAMers hanging out. Sometimes we will sit around and talk, sometimes a few of us will wander off. I chose to wander off with Ethan and Trevor, to the end of a jetty a ways out in the ocean. The only way there is by rock hopping, and when the air quality is as horrible as it is in Pattaya, and you’re trying to keep up with someone like Trevor, you will end up wheezing. Still worth it. After hanging out there for a while, we head back, wait for the leader, and then pile in the van to head back. We get back to the house around 9:00 most nights, but this evening we got back at 10:00. It worked out. Upstairs to shower and journal, and then I try to go to bed by 11:00 to 12:00. Unfortunately, the light usually stays on until 1:30. It’s a losing battle. 

Hope you enjoyed this one. There has been a lot going on that needs processing, but I am in the mindset for NONE of those topics, so a day in the life will have to do. Look forward in the future for posts about the prostitution scene here and what can be done about it, a girls bad experience at YWAM North Cascades and what I think may have happened, detailing and discussing all of the options for my future that God has given me, an outreach overview, and much more. 

Peace. 

-Kiah Rain.