The Famous Five

I just said goodbye to the self-titled group of travelers "The Famous Five," five guys from my Discipleship Training School in Montana that stayed in Asia after their outreach in Indonesia to "live life together and experience as much of Asia as possible on $10 a day." True to form, they hitchhiked to Khao Lak and I picked up this group of ragtag boys at a restaurant down the road. It was great to see them all, it's always fun to meet up with people from home when I'm abroad, and it was also to see how much God has changed them in the last few months. The boys were so great to have around... it was so refreshing to sit and talk about God for three hours at the dinner table.

They were here for five days, during which time we enjoyed many great talks, a ton of laughter, some great food, and some manual labor. I helped arrange for the boys to stay in beach side bungalows in the village where I work in the preschool. Having them here for so long was great because they all got to have a taste of what goes on here at Step Ahead. Despite the extreme heat, red ant bites, and millions of slivers we all got, my favorite thing we did together was chop down a bamboo forest to build shelters for the gardens the villagers are planting. It was so awesome to see the forest when we got there, pick up a machete, and start chopping. Then after we were done, we took the huge pile of bamboo in the back of the pickup truck to the work site.