The Blessing of Community

Written by Sami - Serving in Thailand

Throughout this year, I have continually been amazed by this community. One morning, I was having a worship session with two of my friends. We were sitting around worshipping with just our voices and a guitar. Later, we were talking about the ways that we felt God had been teaching and growing us. One of my takeaways from living in Thailand is that there are so many ways in which I am living in answered prayers. Two years ago when I visited with a Joni and Friends internship, I knew I had to come back. However, this meant waiting to graduate college and prayer that everything would work out. Now, two years later, I was able to spend a little over 9 months here. Another answered prayer is community. The girls that I was worshipping with started to discuss that a huge prayer is community and how we have been so blessed with that here in Thailand. Community and friendship are always something that I have prayed for and honestly, it was pretty scary to move across the world. However, I have felt so blessed to be surrounded by people from many different countries and backgrounds that I now call friends. As leaving gets closer, it seems harder and harder to leave this community, but I know God will continue to provide wherever I go. 

Here in Thailand, I worked in the RICD Wheelchair project. These past couple of months, we have been working on a lot of projects within our warehouse. This has meant selecting/fitting chairs for patients within the project, repairing wheelchairs, and learning new skills. The next month of work consists of traveling to different distribution sites after selecting the chairs, checking them, and then fitting patients. This whole year has been learning new skills, whether that is how to properly fit a wheelchair or do something mechanical. It is pretty crazy to look back on all the things I have learned. I am so excited to take these skills into Occupational Therapy school and hopefully one day back oversees.