I trust that all of you there at BHW are keeping well and enjoying God’s blessings. I do want to thank you so much for your generous support and your love and care for our Thai mission partners - John and Nok, Prasert, Chuenjit and the Good News Team. As you know, I recently returned from three months in Asia, mostly Thailand, and while I was there I was able to spend a good amount of time with all of them – which was such a blessing and encouragement! They are doing an absolutely amazing work and I can’t commend them highly enough. They have all asked me to thank you for believing in them and supporting them, but they are not great at writing reports in English, so I thought I should put together some highlights of what they are up to.
First John and Nok – amazing. I think their media ministry has the potential of reaching large numbers of Thai Buddhists and will lead to a significant breakthrough in Thailand. Nok always says that the good news about Jesus has been in Thailand for 200 years, and she believes that Thais have open hearts, just like she did when she first came to Christ in my English class at Pathumthani church, so why are there so few Thai Christians – less than 1% of the population? At the beginning of 2019, John and Nok began to use social media platforms focused on reaching Thai Buddhists by using language and cultural forms that Thai Buddhists understand. To me, this is an exciting approach. For 200 years Thais have resisted Jesus and the good news because it looks foreign and Western, and they don’t understand it, so we need Thai communicators like John and Nok to experiment with a more creative and contextualized approach in helping Thais understand the gospel.
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I’ve read some of the feedback and testimonies from John and Nok’s social media posts and they are truly astonishing, especially the posts from Buddhist monks. Last month Nok led a monk to Christ and he is now a full-on follower of Jesus, sharing with the rest of the monks in his temple. I read his latest discussion with Nok via her website and I was so moved – he is so clear in his understanding of who Jesus is, and ardently desires to follow Him. John has posted the Jesus movie on the website and they have a discipleship process in place for every serious enquirer, including phone calls and sending them Bibles. The photo is of some of John and Nok’s team that are following up those who respond to the good news message via their social media posts.
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Prasert is doing a great work and is so appreciative of the support from BHW and Riccarton Community Church. She has just opened a new children’s activity centre/safe house in another slum resettlement community called Thai Samut. It’s a nice story because two ladies in that community were chatting at the market and realized that they both had decided to follow Jesus at Prasert’s Top Kids programme around 20 years ago. How wonderful that they are both still dedicated believers 20 years after making that decision! There is no church or Christian witness at Thai Samut so they decided to track down Prasert and ask her to open a Top Kids programme there. So they did, and now they are her keenest helpers.
The new house consists of three small rooms where Prasert is setting up a library for the children to do their homework and the rooms work well for her English and music classes, as you can see in the photo. Several parents and community leaders helped her to find the house and are excited about it. One lady immediately donated a fan which is a blessing while they wait to get some secondhand air conditioners.
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Chuenjit continues to do a wonderful job of sharing Jesus with youth prisoners at the various Youth Remand prisons she is working in. Last month seven girls were saved at the Youth Remand in Pathumthani. Joe, who is her first youth remand convert and son-in-Christ, often goes to the youth prisons with her and shares his testimony with the young people. He is running a Bible Study on Friday evenings at Chuenjit’s house where 20-30 ex-prisoners get together to study the Word and encourage each other. They are doing well!
I also visited the Good News Team and they continue to reach out to children and young teens through their school evangelism and Bible Correspondence lessons. No doubt you get news of the Good News team through their monthly newsletter so I don’t need to say much about that.
I just wanted to let you know that the partnership, friendship and support means more than I can say.
Blessings
Lorraine