Thailand | John's Blog 11th February 2014

Time just keeps moving on. February is almost half gone and I feel like I haven’t done much of anything.

Our Saturday and Sunday activities are becoming more and more of a challenge. Schools are starting to realize that the end of the school year is not far off and they have so many extracurricular activities during school hours that they are not meeting their education requirements. So some teachers are forcing their children to come to school on Saturdays and Sundays. There is nothing uniform about it so we never know until 9am on Saturday or Sunday who will be here and who will not.

Sunday February 16th will be a big day for the Christian Mission. Christmas Child has arrived and we will have our regular group plus 120 children and youth and their relatives, etc, with them. We are also preparing Soup of Love for that day to feed the expected 200 plus folks. We also will be making our Senior monthly food presentation – up to three a month now and praying for four. This will be the major outreach for us for the year – at least up to this point.

Answered prayer – Kim and Fah have returned to church on Sunday. Pray for Fah. She is over 30 and I found out Sunday that she cannot read , and she wants to learn to read the Bible. Pray God will help us find a solution to this. Currently Kim and Fah study together and Kim has to read the Bible to her. Pray for Kim. She is seeking ways to purchase some property and build a small house for herself, her husband and Fah to get away from the rest of the relatives. There is a lot of animosity going on in that group. Pray that Kim’s husband will get up and take on the responsibilities of a husband to support his family. At this point he doesn’t seem to be able to do it.

Answer to Prayer: Mr Boonta and family are doing better. Mr Boonta is now teaching an Adult Bible Study class at 9 am on Sunday – we have never had an adult class before; he will be preaching once a month starting this month; and he has started a visitation program in our villages and he will do that whenever he can. Continue to pray for the family. Phon still cannot go anyplace where there are loud noises. Bow is still bedridden and extremely difficult to get from bed to wheelchair and then into the truck. This means that both Phon and Bow don’t always get to the medical appointments they need to go to.

Prayer points:

Pray for Bee, Lita, Parn and Ploy. They are starting to feel the pressure of Saturday and Sunday school, and additional homework they know the teachers are not going to check. It is frustrating and they feel guilty because their work here at the church suffers.
Pray for Bee, Jane and Fanta. They want to begin studying, and have already done so, to prepare to take the TOEFL English test next year. These are the first Thais I have known to plan so far ahead. Pray for me for strength and wisdom to teach them the right stuff. 🙂
Pray for: Jane and Fanta especially. They have become very good assistants in many things but still have not accepted Christ. Ning, Tat and Beem 2. Dao who also have not accepted Christ but still come most of the time.
Pray for Dtee and Maeo and the Correspondence Bible study team as they continue to meet. The first lessons have been sent in and we are waiting for the results.
Pray for the association. We have our first meeting of the year on February 18.

We continue to see evidence of your prayers in the activities of the Christian Mission, so please continue to pray.

God Bless, John, Maeo and everybody.