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Bangkok Update

The last few weeks have been a total whirlwind as we begin to wrap up our time here in Bangkok, transition our work to our colleagues, and pack up our lives. We are planning to come back to Bangkok for a few weeks in September to join IJM for a final prayer retreat and spend a few last weeks supporting the work, but we are treating this trip to the US as a big part of our move home. We are packing most everything and just leaving a few things behind.

It is a sweet spot to be in, because we can save our goodbyes for next month but get much of the logistical difficulty of the move done now. It makes this transition feel a little more manageable, even though I am definitely not ready to say goodbye yet.

Aside from preparing for our journey, it has been an incredibly busy month at IJM for so many people, including ourselves. I think the last few months in general have been a great culmination of our time here, and our productivity and ability to add lots of value feels really great. This month in particular has been BUSSSSY for both of us -  squeezing it all in and just doing a ton of work. Sidebar: it is a HUGE GIFT to be able to add value and support the work. We are incredibly blessed that we are not just pushing paper lol. There is something really special about being able to look around and know that the work you are doing is actually contributing to something that matters.

On Humility

Recently, I have supported our team with the coordination of several really impactful events, with one more next week. It has been a lot of work, a lot of learning, a lot of being humbled, and a lot of beautiful moments along with some really hard ones of feeling incredibly stretched, tired, and humbled. Did I say humbled more than once? Well, I can say it probably a hundred times and it wouldn’t be enough. IJM’s word, or spiritual discipline, that we are meditating on for the year is “humility,” and God is definitely orchestrating a lot of lessons in that department. I am grateful for that lesson, truly.

One of the things I have been wrestling with is what it means to serve faithfully when I don’t always feel seen or appreciated in the way I might expect. There are cultural differences in how people communicate appreciation, encouragement, or affirmation, and there have been moments where I have found myself feeling discouraged or wondering whether the work I am doing is actually being noticed.

And honestly, those moments have been really good opportunities for God to remind me that this is not about being seen. I have to remind myself and remember that in those moments it is not about being seen or appreciated and that I am doing this to honor and serve the Lord and not to glorify myself or get the approval of people. It is a hard and a good good learning and I know I will carry this with me. And as a PS I am very much so appreciated and people express a ton of gratitude - it is just communication style can be quite different because culture is different :) 

Okay, Anyways! About the Events / Work

First, I helped facilitate and host a three-day supporter trip from our IJM Singapore advancement office. It was such a fun opportunity to showcase our work and introduce these amazing advocates to government partners, peers, experts, lived experience experts (survivors), and community NGO partners. It was a beautiful trip and such a great reminder of what IJM looks like from the outside. And I have to say… it is a beautiful, professional, hardworking organization, with relationships with the government that are pretty unreal and unbelievably powerful.

It just is the work of God and the work of God’s people. People who say yes to His call, take the skills they have developed through their careers and studies, and decide they want to use them to serve vulnerable people. The amount of impressive and amazing individuals who work for IJM just is something else. They are people who could truly be making a lot more money and could just be doing something different, but choose to be here doing the GOOD work that is set before us. It makes me speechless sometimes.

The second event was a two-day filming project that I helped support on the ground with an IJM Australia and US film crew. The goal was to showcase yet another amazing government relationship between IJM and the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), and the amount of access we had, the relationships we were able to leverage, and the willingness of our government partners to participate really spoke volumes about the relationships IJM has worked so hard to build and of God’s hand at work orchestrating something only He can orchestrate.

It was really fun and also a LOT of work, with some seriously fun and cool moments. There is something I really love about creative projects like this because you get to see the work from a totally different angle. I also found myself really enjoying the role of being the liaison between teams - to understand what everyone needs and how we can tell the story of the work well while prioritizing honoring the people involved. Man, I was tired after that trip, but it was so, so successful. Hopefully, in a few months, I will have some footage to share. 

Alek has also been incredibly busy. He has been immersed in implementing the intervention for the migrant worker safe reporting channel and has also been actively involved in helping create a framework for how our office thinks about and implements its interventions. The Thailand team is about to finish up a second pilot period for the safe reporting channels intervention, working hand-in-hand with the Thai government to test the intervention on a small scale. This involves designing and testing different types of social media posts, sending out surveys, and having many workshopping sessions with the branch of government which runs centers around the country for migrant workers to get help with the employment documents. The aim of the pilot is to try to gather data and figure out if the mechanisms are working, which can be a very difficult question to answer given the size of the migrant worker population,and the complexity of working with the Thai government. The second pilot has been mainly a data gathering exercise, where we grab as much qualitative and quantitative information as we can get our hands on, and try to use it to interpret if what we are doing is working well. The IJM team is doing a great job navigating through this process – they have good systems set up to guide intervention planning, and the program teams are always thinking forward to the next steps.

Alek also does a TON of behind-the-scenes work that makes it possible for the team to actually function, whether it be supporting financial planning, building decks, tying together social media campaigns, managing vendors, renewing contracts, and generally helping make sure IJM can continue working with good people and good partners. He has been so busy, and I am continually impressed by how much he is able to juggle.

Spiritual Things –
On another note, Alek and I have also been on slightly different spiritual journeys over the last few months, but I think our journeys actually complement each other in a really beautiful way.

I have been going through a lot of growing pains, wrestling with anger, injustice, all that is happening in Palestine, American Christian Zionism, and what it means to hold my faith while also confronting things that are deeply painful to me. Alek, meanwhile, has been digging into the Bible Project to a maximum and learning so much about the historical and cultural context in which the Bible was written. And it is actually pretty awesome, because my anger and wrestling are also drawing me to learn more about the Bible in the context in which it was written. We are coming at it from very different experiences, but I think we are both being invited into a deeper understanding of our faith. Alek has been really inspiring and helpful to me in that process, and I am hopeful that I am able to navigate this painful process of learning and questioning with the grace of Christ.

I think it is just really painful to be so close to injustice here in Thailand, to look at the world around me, to look at the US, to look at the genocide in Palestine, and then to read the Bible and try to reconcile all of the dissonance I feel. It is all just so painful and overwhelming, and I am honestly at my capacity right now. So yeah… it’s been a loooot.

But God is also reminding me of His good character, and I have to share this quote by Fred Rogers that is just everything to me right now:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”

I have it saved on my phone screensaver lol and it has been so encouraging to me.There are helpers everywhere. <3 There is God’s image in people around me, loving and supporting those who need it most, and there are people saying yes to hard things, pursuing justice, and choosing goodness. And so I guess my lesson is to look for the helpers!

Okay, so other than the busy little lives we have been living, there is also a LOT of JOY and a lot to praise God for.

• Here is a list of some recent IJM praises:

  • Description text goes A Burmese woman who had been trafficked was rescued in a complex cross-border case in Oman with our team’s support. It is just amazing to see how far-reaching this work can be and how interconnected our global teams are.

  • A human trafficker who had been on the run for five years in a case involving the trafficking of fishermen was just arrested yesterday! This was thanks to an incredible effort by our team working with INTERPOL, police in Cambodia, police in Thailand, and others. Truly epic. What a rescue effort.

  • A teenage child who was trafficked to Myanmar and forced to work in a market was given justice when their trafficker was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay 400,000 baht ($12,500 USD) in compensation to the victim. Our team has put so much effort into ensuring his repatriation to Myanmar is thoughtful and dignifying. They have taken his Muslim faith context into consideration when finding both short-term and long-term housing, while still praying that he will know the Lord and honoring him in his own context.

  • Our team is so beautiful and multidimensional. Every single case is treated with the greatest level of care in this respect. It is more than a rescue… from what I have seen, it is also everything before, during, and after that matters. Our team does so much work to ensure we are trauma-informed in all the care we give is such an important part of restoring dignity.

  • We just did a trauma-informed care training, and it really was one of the most informative, beautiful, and meaningful things. I am incredibly grateful that IJM is rolling this out to all staff so that we can all understand what trauma is, what it can look like, and how to engage in a way that always seeks to restore dignity first and foremost.THE BEST EVER. <3 It makes my heart so full and makes me so incredibly proud to work here.

  • And okay, that filming project was seriously such a highlight. I love working on creative projects that highlight our work, and I think it is also so interesting to be a liaison and bridge the gap between the field office and advancement office - to understand what everyone needs, abilities, and communicate what can reasonably be given. It is such an interesting role to be in the “in between” and I think it suits me.

• And finally, here is a list of some of the joyous little moments from our life outside of work:

  • We went to a national park last weekend with some dear friends, Josh & Dimarya. We went on a long hike and had some encounters with monkeys, leeches, deer, and PLENTY of mosquitoes. It was so fun lol. The jungle is no joke. The leeches were weird.

  • We also had wine at a Thai winery on that same trip, which was very fun and very unexpected. Yay!

  • OMG we had the best karaoke night with our coworkers last week. 10/10. Truly one of my favorite Bangkok memories.

  • I went to the Jim Thompson Museum on a little solo adventure and it was lovely.

  • We went with our pal Meg to the Grand Palace and had a great little tourism day. Hehe.

  • I got into Muay Thai again recently, which has been really fun.

  • Our life group had the sweetest little send-off. They gave us a parting gift with a photo of all of us, blessed us, and covered us in prayers. It was so incredibly sweet and made me very emotional.

  • God has also been so kind in giving me access to amazing podcasts that have helped me in this season of learning. I feel really grateful that there are so many thoughtful people of faith who can speak to some of the things I am wrestling with and help me think more deeply.

  • Alek got to go to one final men’s retreat at our church, which was led by our community group leader. It was a great opportunity for him to connect with some of the guys that he had met on the previous retreat, and learn more about emotional health in a Christian setting (the theme was addressing roots of emotional fear). 

  • Got to listen to a goooood podcast. Highly recommend the podcast entitled “Christian Zionism, Gaza, and the Cost of Silence: Dr. Daniel Bannoura” by Theology in the Raw. Shocking and really good stuff, y’all.

• Prayer Requests

  • Please keep Alek and I in your prayers as we head back to the US and find our place again, both with jobs and with perspectives.

  • Pray for an event we are hosting on September 14th at Reality SF to recap our time in the past year, that it goes well and that God is glorified.

  • Pray that God would continue to give IJM Thailand staff energy and joy in the work

So that’s us right now – just trying to pay attention to what God is teaching us in this beautiful season. Anddd we are getting closer and closer to saying goodbye to Bangkok, but thankfully, not quite yet.

Love to you all and I truly can’t believe you actually read to the end of this blog. You are the real ones haha!