Welcome to Inside Reach
All six teams have made it safely to their cross-cultural o-treach (CCO) locations. The following are excerpts we have received in emails from the teams
| Thailand Team |
Brittany (TL), Beth, Trudi, Rhonda, and Rachel |
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 The Thailand team is focusing on language study and building strategic relationships. This team has the incredible opportunity to teach English in a Thai Buddhist T-mple school. Other o-treach opportunities include partnering with our long-term workers in an effort to reach out to children, single moms that are coming in off the street (from human trafficking), and university students.
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Trudi writes…
“Sometimes, Thailand can seem like one really big, endless party. From the flashing lights, ever present party music, neon taxis whirling by—nothing is average, everything is over the top and extravagant. All you can do is nod and smile and embrace the ‘party.' This is not to say that everything is a piece of cheese. There have been plenty of stressful situations and aspects of the culture that are seemingly impossible for my mind to comprehend. But a lot of situations recently have been striking me as hilarious. Once you take a step back and remove your anxieties and fears, there is so much here in Thailand that is just fun.I feel like I would be so easily annoyed at this culture, but I feel God’s grace in even the most stressful situations. Sometimes interactions with people are what we would consider incredibly awkward but I’m learning to love it. Even the strange things we hear from men as we bike to school strike me as humorous—i.e. ‘Hello, I have food’ and ‘Telephone.’ And not to worry you too much, I realize there are times to be taken more seriously than others. There is a time to be safe rather than egging on a crazy man because you like his stories or mauling into soi dogs with your bike because you want to make some stories of your own. I also want to communicate what God wants me to with the University students and speak truth into their lives as well as have fun with them. I’ve been beginning to think God never really meant for us to take like too seriously. I was sharing with a University friend how I was a little nervous to begin teaching English. His exact answer was, ‘It plan God it will be good.’ I couldn’t agree more. My friend really put me in my place and I’m so glad he did. Living in God’s will should be the sole thing I take the most seriously and everything else will be good—maybe not easy or even smooth, but it will be good. I don’t have to be anxious or nervous, but rather take the times I can laugh as a gift from God in this party he has me in.
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Pr-yer requests for the Thailand team:
- Pr-y for team unity
- Pr-y for strong relationships with the University students
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| South Asia Team |
Kendra, Rachel, Courtney (TL), and Krystal |
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 The South Asia team will be working alongside an established YWAM base. O-treach possibilities include teaching English as a second language, helping with a bakery for widows, both rural and urban evang-lism, prison m-nistries, leper m-nistry, friendship evang-lism, and physical labor.
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Rachel shares…
“It is finally warmer, about 65 right now. School was cancelled all this week, so again it hasn’t been our regular schedule. We are really hoping to start on Monday now that it is warmer, but it still might get cold again, pr-y that it doesn’t for everyone’s sake and for the school. Wednesday was a warmer day and felt so good after the cold. In the afternoon we went to the widow’s home and did a little program for them, some songs and skits. They seemed to enjoy it, though the songs were in English. It was also our fasting and int-rcession day. After supper we played games and some of the Idaho YW-M team came and visited for awhile. The Dal’i L’ma has been here all week and they went to hear him. They were telling us about the rituals and things they had learned about the Buddhists. In the mornings and evenings, sometimes we can hear the chanting they do. It is really low and sounds a little spooky. Friday was the warmest day yet and breezy, which was good because it was the practice day for Kite day so there were a lot of kites being flown. We did some shopping in the morning and got our saris also. We are pretty excited about them. After lunch we went to a birthday party for one of the school boys. It was fun and we got to eat lots of sweets. We watched the boys flying kites for awhile and discovered that they try to cut each other’s strings and then get the kites when they fall. Two or three of the boys stand on the roof and fly kites, while four or five are on the ground ready to race for the falling kites.Saturday was the real Kite day and there were lots of people flying kites and “Kite fighting” as they call it. There were several arguments over fallen kites, but nothing serious. The morning was spent reading and watching the kite flyers. Some of us tried to fly kites, but didn’t have much success. In the afternoon we went and pr-yer walked. We went to the tree where Buddha preached his first sermon and walked around. I felt so weighted and my chest felt heavy the whole time we were there. We walked right under the tree and I almost couldn’t breathe. We talked about it when we got home and the others felt that too. The whole place just felt dark and evil. I was glad to be away from it.” |
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Pr-yer requests for the South Asia team:
- Pr-y for wisdom as the girls teach school and interact with the students
- Pr-y for team unity
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| Middle East Team |
Denise, Jared, Cole, and Laura (TL) |
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 The Middle East team will spend time in language school. They will also be involved in teaching conversational English, relational evang-lism, and assisting our long-term workers in established m-nistries. This team will live in host homes.
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Jared reports…
“So this has, by my memory, been the greenest Xmas I have ever experienced during my life. On the 25th our group strolled through Merkez parki (park) which is about a mile long of just green. It has a main walkway with orange trees lining each side and some awesome hedge work/design, a couple of fountains, and some open fields as well. To put it simply it just didn't feel like the 25th but I bet it didn't feel quite right for many of you as well. The parties that we did have here were pretty awesome though filled with Skype, tea, and a lot of laughing. Denise seems to like her host home a lot. She always has stories to tell us when we talk. Laura also appears to adjusting well to her new home. Its fun to listen to them talk about their bus rides, but there is also the knowledge that I will have to do the same soon. As for Cole and me, we have a weird week. We both got kinda sick but were both doing much better today. They said it might be the flu or something but we both are on the way to better health now. We have been helping teach English on weekends at a school and they have told us that soon we will start helping at other schools during the week. It is only a matter of time before things really take off here, most everything is passed by word of mouth. I'm sure as soon as Cole and I find places to stay things will get really chaotic around here but that is when it is the best. Can't wait to see what the locals do here for New Years, I kinda want to take everybody on top of the building just to watch the fireworks and other random happenings on the street. Everything here is so much fun but very different at the same time...but mostly fun!” |
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Pr-yer requests for the Middle East team:
- Pr-y that the team would build good relationships with their host families
- Pr-y for natural friendships to happen with the locals
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| Spain Team |
B: Ian & Jubilee (TLs); F: Isaac, Jessica, Elaine, and Sean |
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 The Spain team will spend the first few months of their o-treach in language study. They will also assist in teaching conversational English, youth m-nistry, and helping with a gym/coffee house m-nistry. This team will be walking alongside an established ch-rch and helping in their efforts to reach out to the local community.
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Elaine says…
“We finally got paint last Monday! That morning, we all went outside to prune trees when our o-treach coordinator Mike stopped us and asked if we would help him paint new lines on the ch-rch’s gym floor. So from Monday morning until Sunday around 6 we painted lines on the gym floor for almost every indoor sport imaginable. The process could be a little frustrating at times when people would accidentally step on freshly painted lines (shout out to you Isaac), but it felt good to accomplish something tangible. Not only did we experience the excitement of more paint last week, but we also celebrated our first Three King’s Day. Three King’s Day is celebrated on January 6 and marks the day when the three wise men visited Jes-s after his birth. Spaniards celebrate this holiday even more than Christmas- it’s the day when children receive their presents (from both their parents and the 3 kings of course) and when families gather together. In order to celebrate, our team tried to see the parade in Malaga on January 5; however, after watching a few full buses pass by, only Ian, Jubilee, and I still wanted to go see the parade. Our persistence finally paid off after an hour of waiting for a bus. The parade was mostly over once we got downtown, but we arrived in time to see the main event-the three kings. All in all it was a good cultural experience. The next day we celebrated with the traditional Three Kings roscón de reyes cake. Basically it’s a cake that has a bean and a figurine baked into it. The person who bites into the figurine is the lucky one who gets to be the king for the day, but the unlucky person who finds the bean has to buy the cake for next year’s celebration. Isaac found the figurine (Mater from the movie Cars) and got to wear the paper crown that came with the cake. I was the unfortunate person who found the bean in their piece of cake. However, we all decided after eating the cake that I don’t need to feel obligated to buy a cake for next year. The cake was very sugary and not something that we particularly enjoyed. We found out later that we should have gotten a cake with cream in the middle, so I’ve decided not to completely rule out the possibility of ever eating a roscón de reyes cake again.” |
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Pr-yer requests for the Spain team:
- Pr-y for team health – sp-ritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally
- Pr-y for creativity as the team comes up with new ideas on how to become more involved with the local community
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| Himalaya Team |
Mindi, Zach, Kristen, Hans, Megan, and Jordan (TL) |
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 The Himalaya team will be involved in a variety of o-treaches including trekking into unreached villages, helping in orphanages, and discipleship training initiatives.
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Mindi shares…
“Zach started our week off with having the first teaching session for DTS on Sunday. He taught for two hours in the morning, followed with an hour in the afternoon. During his sessions the rest of us worked on our own s-rmons or other things we needed to get done. In the afternoon then, after Zach’s session we all gathered in the ch-rch to pr-y over all the students. This pr-yer was quite unique as we walked around putting our hands on the student’s heads, or backs taking turns pr-ying for each student, this process took up to at least 30 to 45 minutes. In the evening we had our first team B-ble study, where we decided it would be cool to read and study Ph-lippians. After reading the first couple of verses we took the time to come up with questions for each verse. Then we ended things with coming up with answers for each question we had come up with and taking the time to pr-y to our Father above.Monday, was Kristen’s day to teach, and then Tuesday was my day. For each of these days the rest of the team who wasn’t teaching spent more time on their s-rmons or the things they needed to get done. Then on Wednesday, as a different p-stor came to speak to the students for all the sessions, Hasta took the team to a different village to see the supervisor’s ch-rch and meet another p-stor.” |
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Pr-yer requests for the Himalaya team:
- Pr-y for health and safety in traveling
- Pr-y for continual growth in the L-rd
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| Kenya Team |
Janalee, Isaac, Danae, Janae, Dustin, Nathan & Maribeth (TLs) |
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 The Kenya team will start by staying a few weeks in Thika for orientation before heading north to Lodwar and Kakuma. This team will work in a refugee camp, trek into remote villages, and encourage the local ch-rches.
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Isaac writes…
“We have been in Lodwar, Kenya one week as of this morning. On January 4th we said good-bye to Solomon and others at CCIT. We all piled into a matatu that we had hired to take us to the bus station. It took about an hour and a half to get to the bus station in Nairobi. The bus was scheduled to leave at 8:30 pm. We left at 9:30 pm. It was a nine hour drive to Kitale which is a town roughly half way to Lodwar. The bus was loud and we were constantly going over speed bumps. Kenya seems to have this thing for speed bumps they put them about fifty meters apart on the highway, so just when the bus would pick up some speed it would have to slow down for a speed bump. We finally made it to Kitale in one piece though none of us got very much sleep. Benson, the m-ssionary we are working with, was there to meet us when we got off the bus. We were going to take a Land Rover the rest of the way to Lodwar but when they tried starting it, it wouldn’t start. We ate some breakfast while we waited for the Land Rover to get fixed. We continued to wait most of the day out on the curb. Finally at around 3:00 in the afternoon we got a message from Benson saying that they had fixed the problem. Shortly after that they brought the Land Rover, and we loaded up all of our luggage on top of it and stuffed ourselves inside as best we could. As we drove in the late afternoon sun, we came out of the town into the countryside. It was beautiful green hilly country with villages tucked away down in the valleys and on top of the hills. The first hour of our journey was actually quite pleasant, but as we went deeper into the country the road quickly deteriorated and became a rough dirt road with patches of asphalt and deep ruts. At around 6:30 or so, we stopped at a little village to get some food and drink and then we were off again. By this time, we were all very tired and we were hoping it was only a couple more hours to Benson’s house. When we did pull into Benson’s place it was about 1:00 am. We unloaded our stuff and were shown to our rooms. Despite the heat we all went to sleep.The first few days we were here we were just trying to get accustomed ourselves to the heat. That is the first thing that you notice when you get to Lodwar, the heat. We walked with Benson to the river the first day and then to town the next. On Sunday we sang some songs for ch-rch, and then hung out with the kids afterwards. We are planning to do a kids club at the ch-rch every Saturday along with a meal for them. ” |
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Pr-yer requests for the Kenya team:
- Pr-y for team health physically and that relationships would continue to grow stronger
- Pr-y that the team will be open to G-d’s leading in their personal lives and in their
m-instry there
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