City On A Hill

You will all have to forgive me for taking so long to get back to you on the Thailand trip. It has taken me a great deal of time to process all that has happened over the past three months.

Download the interview with Alyssa Kennedy regarding Thailand.

On the Field:
We spent our time in Thailand teaching English, street evangelizing, Prayer walking like crazy and building relationships with our peers in universities both in the highly developed city of Chiang Mai, and the more traditional villages and small towns such as Sup Moy, May Hong Son, and Phayao. We worked with an organization called Pure Heart, which is set up to meet tangible needs in Northern Thailand such as citizenship and education, setting up a foundation of love and compassion to reach spiritual needs as well.


The problem of human trafficking in this part of the world is really only the effect of a much larger issue: poverty. It is the dire poverty in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Northern hill tribe villages in Thailand leads to families either selling their young children willfully of being tricked into sending their daughters away with the false promises of jobs and education. Pure Heart works in the area of prevention. They set up houses for these children to come live in the city and receive an education. They are also discipled and taught about Christ and most if not all of the girls become believers and are then encouraged to take the gospel back to their home villages. By helping people receive citizenship, education, and job training Pure Heart is able to not only prevent young girls from being exploited but also set them up with useful skills and the GOSPEL!

The primary goal of our Global Expeditions team was to help Pure Heart establish good relationships in closed villages and Buddhist schools by meeting a major need in the area: teaching English.


During the trip we saw schools and cities transformed, indigenous believers grow and begin to reach out in their own communities, and many new believers accept Christ, getting plugged in to be disciple in their home churches.

In my heart:
Sometimes it feels like life is moving so fast as we make our way through its trials. We sweat and grunt and run and fall and strive and struggle and reach and search and search for the meaning of it all. And in all the running and sweating and striving and reaching it is so easy to loose track of where we are. In each of our lives God works, in every wall and barrier and roadblock, changing our lives and revealing himself to us, but sometimes we’re moving to fast to realize it. Sometimes along life’s journey, we stop and look back over the vast array of ground that we’ve traveled, through steep valleys, up rocky cliffs and through desolate and barren deserts and we realize where we are.

This summer, as I found myself with the Thai people, fellowshipping, worshiping and reaching out, I found myself in utter awe of God. I cannot believe that He has taken me from where I was and who I was without God in my life and changed me so drastically to the point where I would be half way across the world, with nothing more than the word of God and a personal testimony of his LOVE and GRACE working in my itty-bitty existence, watching him change lives!

Let me just tell you, friends that I love my LORD more today than ever before and realize His call on my life and can understand just a little bit more about his love that surpasses knowledge.

Back home:
I would like to thank each and every one of you who committed to prayer and supported this trip financially. Thank you all so much for partnering with me this summer in the furthering of the gospel. I am so encouraged by this cloud of witnesses who have stepped out in faith for his glory, giving sacrificially and being bold enough to ask for the impossible in prayer.


I would like to encourage you all to stay involved in missions in all walks of life, going, supporting, encouraging, and interceding for the Kingdom! Continue to lift up Thailand and nations like it in your prayers. There are people all over the world who have no idea who Jesus Christ is or what he has done for them and we have no weapon more powerful than PRAYER to change the statistics. God truly does turn His ear to our prayers and is faithful.

While in Thailand I had the chance to look back on my life, look forward at the lives God was changing in front of me, and look into my own heart to my surprise finding Him in all three directions. Now, I find myself throwing away the once a week follower, one month a year missionary mindset and find words to live by…
“Jesus approached and, breaking the silence, said to them, All authority (all power of rule) in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go then and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all the days (perpetually, uniformly, and on every occasion), to the very close and consummation of the age. Amen (so let it be),”
(Matthew 28:18-20 (Amplified Bible)

MORE PICTURES ARE COMING!

Much love and GOD BLESS!!!

Forever changed by his grace,

Consumed by the call,

Alyssa Kennedy