I'm skipping my last several stories and starting with the most recent since it's fresh on my brain/heart - then I'll work backward...
A family from my school owns a resort in the mountains of Northern Thailand, about 1 hour 45 minutes from Chiang Rai. The Penningtons invited me & Nellie to come along on their weekend with the Ebelings, who are close friends from their college days. These families feel like our family here. It was a blessed weekend, indeed. After an almost 2 hour drive into the mountains, we arrived at the resort via riverboat, just in time for a delicious Thai dinner.
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| Greeted with smiles, laughter, soothing Thai music and delicious Thai food. |
Charlie and his wife, Grace, decided to quit their jobs when they were in their late 30's and pursue a dream. They built the resort. They found the land, thought it was perfect, and began hiring help. Grace designed all of it - from the bungalows to the pavilion to the patio spaces and interiors. They hired a northern Thai man to do some groundskeeping and discovered he happened to be a brilliant artist and sculptor, so every statue and carving in the following pictures were created by him.
On Saturday morning, some of us went on a slow, beautiful walk up the mountain a little bit. The sculptor had made incredible carvings along the way up the mountain - one of the neatest was a series of sculptures displaying the Life on an Akha Woman (Akha is a large northern Thailand hill tribe).
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| Sculpture showing the Life of an Akha Woman |
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| Life of an Akha Woman |
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| Life of an Akha Woman (please notice the background....) |
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| Here he is at work again on the outside wall of the kitchen! |
We all enjoyed every meal together, swam in the pool, read books, played plenty of games (whoever brought Bananagrams was a GENIUS why didn't I bring mine???), and spent the weekend in fellowship and rest.
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| All the single ladies (all the single ladies!) shared the Bungalow on the right. It was luxuriously beautiful and made out of bamboo inside. That's Jadon Ebeling standing in the walkway. :) |
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| Julie and Jak on our walk up the mountain to see the rest of the resort |
On Saturday afternoon, Nellie, Leneigh & I went with Eric, Brent, and some of their boys, Judah, Jadon & Jak, and we all kayaked up the river.
Y'all.
I kayaked up a river in the mountains of Northern Thailand.
WHOA.
I shared a kayak with Brent & Jak, but at some point Jak jumped off the boat onto a island and ended up riding with Eric & Jadon. (and when I say "at some point," I mean in a moment of "oh my goodness Jak needs to bail while we're by this rock so we can row with all our might to get past this current. Eric & Judah didn't make it...they ended up in the water. Nellie & Leneigh got creative and just stepped out of their boat and walked along the rocks to pass the current).
As we continued rowing in a more peaceful part of the river, I realized the randomness of the moment... "Oh my goodness, I am kayaking on a river in Northern Thailand with Brent Pennington. What the heck??" Seriously. Every now and then I think, "How did I get here?" "What am I doing here?" "And who are these people??" I've known of Penningtons for years - they moved to Thailand just a few years before I started attending my church about 6 1/2 years ago, but I had never met them until this past July. Had no idea they'd feel like family someday, and that I'd be living with them in Chiang Rai. Weird.
October marked one year of the beginning of big life changes, so I've been processing quite a bit, amazed at how much I continue to grow and learn from things that happened a whole year ago. I stopped rowing for a moment and marveled at the incredible jungles along the majestic mountains; I was SOAKED with river water, covered in dirt, bugs and leaves, and that word filled my veins again
c o n t e n t
My soul was content.
My body was covered in dirt and bugs, and I was content. I know, right? ;)
Blessed be the Lord God Almighty, whose lovingkindness endures forever.
If anyone had asked me a year ago what I thought I'd be doing in one year, it was definitely NOT kayaking on a river in Northern Thailand.
*married
*living in North Carolina
*not teaching
what a difference a year makes.
ANYWAYS...
The pavilion where we ate all our meals played music all day and evening long. During the day, it was relaxing, pretty Thai music. Around dinner time, though, it was classic American chill-out songs that I really wanted to sing every word to.
And I just about did.
=]
Saturday night, we enjoyed a typical "autumn" evening with cooler mountain temperatures in front of a fire pit. We roasted marshmallows and had s'mores (Julie found imported marshmallows at one of the grocery stores)! Fun!
Sunday morning, we walked up to a gazebo for some worship time - the view was glorious. Toward the end of our little church service, we could barely hear some singing coming from a church in a village down the mountain. It was so precious, made me teary-eyed. In a country with less than 1% Christian, how beautiful to hear worship to our God in a tribal Thai language, coming from a remote village in the middle of the mountains. Read more about this precious experience on Leneigh's blog (leneighjanette) located on the right of my page (excellent post about this weekend).
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| This view. |
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| Beautiful, right? |
Oh! How did I forget to mention this earlier???
THE WHOLE WEEKEND WAS FREE!!!
The motto at CRICS is "Serving the Servant," so in the same way, Charlie & Grace wanted to serve us and bless us with a free, rejuvenating weekend get-away.
It sure was exactly that. :)
