Mission Trips

We have raised our children, retired from the USMC of 25 years. I home-schooled my girls, and received a couple of degrees along the way, wrote a few books, and now my heart's desire is to go on mission trips: to help the helpless, to comfort those who mourn, to give hope to the hopeless, and to serve my God by allowing Him to use my feet and hands to touch the lost, and witness His grace and mercy to a dying world. The first mission trip I took I orchestrated a team of nine individuals to go to Thailand. We were volunteers at Abba House, an organization that has been established in Thailand for eleven years.  Joyce and David have a rescue home for children who have fallen prey to the sex trafficking industry and who have been left orphans . We had the honor to go and teach these children the Word of God along with English and worship for almost two weeks. We also were able to go inside the men's prison and the drug rehabs to minister God's saving grace. One-hundred and twenty-two men gave their life to the Lord that day. Praise be to my God for His mercy. This is a huge number when you look at the statistics for Thailand. It's a 95% Buddha Nation.  Now, that's something to jump up and down about. Go ahead, I'll wait....At night, we would go down to the night bazaar where we took the opportunity to witness Jesus to all different walks of life.  Two more people were saved from our endeavors... That brings the total to a  hundred and thirty-six people who were saved during our visit.  I am planning another trip for  January 2014. Then, I am off to India. Africa is also on my radar, God-willing.

Here are some of the pictures from our trip. Living my life with purpose...MD

We had just got off our 5-hour flight. We were waiting  for our 15-hour flight. After we got off this flight, we would soon get on another flight for 5 more hours. Then, we would finally arrive in Thailand. I believe it took us 28-hours to arrive in Thailand.

We visited a traditional Thailand church with an English speaking Pastor who has an interpreter for Thai. Ironic?

At Abba House, Joyce and David were constantly building, whether it was people or buildings to accommodate rescues, they were always building.

If you would like to make a donation, or partner with Abba House you can do so by clicking the link below:

 www.abbahousefoundation.org/don.

Teaching and loving on the children was truly a blessing!



Teaching the girls English by using a craft project

In the picture above we are getting ready to go inside the girls drug rehab.  
The red vehicle behind us is called a Song Tow. It's a Thailand taxi.  There are no street laws in Thailand, no stop signs, red lights, green lights, no line down the center of the road and no turn signals. There are just roads, some cars and a lot of motorcycles. It was a crazy experience.  As a matter of fact, if someone is blocking an empty parking place you just get out of your car and push their vehicle out of the way.  This happened while we were there. We were searching for a parking and some other vehicle was blocking a parking space so the people in our van jumped out and pushed the other vehicle out of our way. CRAZY!!! I love Thailand!!!

You cannot go to Thailand and not experience the elephant camp. It was amazing! The elephants actually paint pictures. I even bought one and it hangs in my kitchen. It was so much fun. We got to ride the elephants, get on an ox cart, and eat an authentic Thai lunch.

 Lori Jonas and I as we rode our elephant.

Getting ready to get our praise on!!!

Teaching the gals with some crafts

 Here are our girls plus our 2 younger boys



Here are our  boys with Pastor Ed

We taught the girls how to make homemade cookies for our farewell party. Yum-O!



We said our goodbyes to the boys. To say this was a life changing experience does not seem worthy enough.  I cannot pin to words how much my life and the way I look at my world has changed all because I said, "Yes, Lord send me. I will go for you."