Each year Resonate Global Mission missionaries and partner missionaries have an Asia Retreat. The Asia retreat has folks come in from all parts of Asia, from Kazakhstan to Papua New Guinea and many places in between. This year our retreat was in Phuket, Thailand. What a great opportunity to visit this place for a retreat.
We flew out of Narita on Thursday, January 31st, heading to Bangkok, Thailand. When we arrived in Bangkok, we found out that we had to go through immigration and actually exit the international part of the airport and check in at the domestic ticket counter. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to get through immigration and to catch our plane to Phuket. I am grateful that I was traveling with some fellow Resonate missionaries who were able to negotiate for our flight to Phuket. Unfortunately the earliest flight to Phuket was a 4 am flight, which meant hanging out in the airport until we could check in and go through security to the gate. We went for some dinner and lazed around on some chairs and couches until about 2 am when we checked in and went to the gate. Our flight to Phuket and taxi ride to the hotel all went smoothly. We did arrive at about 7 am and were exhausted. We ate some breakfast and went to bed.
Look what was on the bed!
Breakfast!
Dragon Fruit
That afternoon after some good sleep, I went up to the rooftop pool to lounge for a while. There were no sessions for the retreat that afternoon, so I was able to orientate ourselves.
After a pool visit, I met up with some fellow Resonate retreaters and headed out to the beach, which was about a five minute walk from the hotel.
Some folks decided to go parasailing.
Saturday, we went on a tour to a couple of different islands. The tropics offer a beauty of their own.
There were monkeys here.
We spent a few hours on Phi Phi Island. It was also where we had lunch and did some walking around.
Place where the movie Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed a while back.
Snorkeling
Sunday, we had a worship service, continued sharing about our ministries, praying for each other and listening to Ruth Boven share about worshiping God in the ordinary.
Sunday evening, we all went out for dinner a a group.
Most of our group
Monday morning we had to be ready to go by 3:30 am to catch our taxi to the Phuket airport to fly back to Bangkok and on to Narita. I would say that basically we lost two nights of sleep, but it was good to be together and to connect with fellow Resonate missionaries in the Asia region. I realized that sometimes I am so focused on being a Middle School principal at Christian Academy in Japan, but these retreats remind me that I am a part of a larger mission.
*Thank you to Paul Yu for some of these pictures.
