I was looking back through old images and I came upon my Thailand 2008 folder. It’s been a while since I shared images from my YWAM outreach and I thought maybe you’d like to reminisce with me….

This picture is from the Hills Tribe village called “Hui Tatop” and this is the former witch doctor of the village. Hui Tatop is a village of about 50 people 3 hours hike into the jungles of eastern Chiang Mai. They used to worship their own Karen gods, but they’re now an entirely christian tribe who are were so encouraging to my team. This guy wanted prayer for healing because he was getting old, was deaf, and was too feeble to walk to 200 yds. to the village church to participate in services…. such a sweet man.

This is when part of our team went on a prayer walk to the border between Burma and Thailand right outside the Akah Village we were staying at called “Beleham.” On our way up, we ran into some of the village women coming home from a hard day of gathering things from the jungle. They giggled as they saw all these random white people walking along on the path… although they might have been laughing at my German teammate Uli saying, “Sawadee-crap” in his German accent… This was by far, my favorite film picture I took on my trip.

These were some of the rowdiest little Akah boys I’ve ever seen… you can see the craziness from this picture…. I loved it.

These little boy on the left was from the Akah tribe in a village called “Beleham” and he stood and looked at me forever with this heavy stare… not carefree and curious like most little boys his age…. he had a very heavy gaze like he’s been through hard times… prayed hard as I smiled best could. The old lady on the right was called “tadpole lady” by our team because she invited us to dinner. Enough said, however I will say that she was just the happiest lady EVER despite her consistent backpain. She was so grateful for our prayers for healing that she invited us to dinner… and served us some wicked hot green curry soup with all sorts of unique things she’d caught….tadpoles, spiders, frogs, jungle potatoes, jungle rat…. who knows what else was in there…. yum.

Anyways… I just thought it was fun to remember… and put into perspective my photographic origins. First a missionary photographer… now a wedding and portrait photographer. I hope one day soon, I’ll be able to go out into the world beyond the US again to bring some good news. For more from my humble beginnings…. click here.