Great News!!

We have had a couple of really good days here. Our VBS has had 13 or 14 kids everyday plus a handful of adults attending daily. We also learned that Tawm's aunt Naang, has become a Christian. Actually, she made the decision several weeks ago. After Sunday services, she felt convicted and when home and read a tract and repented of her sins and made the decision to put her trust in faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Tawm had the opportunity to take another aunt, Air, out to eat and run errands. Air began asking questions and when the two of them returned to the church, Tawm shared the gospel with her and she made the decision to put her trust in Christ too!! Please pray for both of them, especially Air as she will be returning to Phuket Thailand in the next couple of weeks and so far we have been unable to locate any churches in her area of Phuket. Thanks to all those who have been praying for the ministry here too. We appreciate it.

Puppet Show

 Tawm, Samson and Kaimook (2 people that go to our church) have been helping with a puppet show. The kids love it!! 

VBS

 The kids are really enjoying the games a lot, but I think the parents are having even more fun!!

Some VBS Pictures

  We are two days into our first ever VBS. We handed out about 600 fliers in the housing projects around the church, the market up the street in at one international school. We had no idea what to expect. Our first day we had 13 kids, and the second we had 14. Most of the kids are people that attend church regularly although we have gotten some neighborhood kids. At the beginning we were a little sad that we didn't get more, but they we remembered that most of the kids that come to church are not yet saved. Many mothers of the children are also coming and they are not saved yet. Although we have 13 kids, we are have about 5 or 6 adults that come and here the Bible stories too that aren't saved. They are enjoying everything as much as the kids. We pray that this will unite people that come to church more and it will result in the salvation of souls too. Please continue to pray. 

VBS started

On Monday, we started our first ever "VBS". The VBS isn't like anything like in America. We use English as a drawing tool, but we play games and share Bible stories through puppets and flannelgraph and talk about the who Christ is and what He has done for us. We have handed out 600 fliers in the area, please pray for this event.

Our Sign is Up!!!

 Well, we finally got our sign up. It took a long while, but it looks really good and you can see it from a long ways away, especially at night when it is lit up. This past Sunday we had one visitor come who saw our sign. He asked us how long we had been in this location. When I said it has been about a year and a half, he said how come we never put up a sign. We hope that our sign will bring many more visitors and give us a lot more visibility in the community.
Thanks to all those who contributed to the purchase of the sign. 

Just another picture of that Day

  

That Bag of Rice I mentioned Before

 
For those of you who read my post called 'Amazing Thailand', this is a picture of that rice. How would you like to carry that on your head!! 

Helping Out

 
In our last newsletter I mentioned how people in our church collected money in order to buy food for a couple of families that were struggling financially. This is a picture of that day. 

Sign is going up!

 
Our church sign is going up today, or least I think. Been thinking that for the last couple of weeks. Some of the problems we have had to wrestle with have been rain, wind, more rain, power lines, lack of workers and not having a crane, and finally, Friday the 13th. The workers were scared to go up on the roof when it was Friday the 13th. I thought that was a north American superstition but I guess that kind of stuff travels fast. I always think it is so weird how the Buddhist religion doesn't teach much about the spirit world, but the Buddhist people here sure fear spirits and other things. Almost everyone here is afraid of ghosts. It just goes to show that people all people, everywhere are spiritual and are looking for the truth.
I will give a picture of the finished product sometime next week! (hopefully that is) 

Teaching in the Village

 
Here's a picture of me teaching in the village!! I had to teach the whole time in Thai

Mae Hoy Experiences

I have returned from the hill tribe village and I had a great time. I am continuing to teach the students about salvation, making sure that they have the proper understanding of what salvation is before we move any further. We also plan to travel to some other hill tribe villages to do evangelism and these students must know what salvation is before they can do evangelism. The weather was rainy and hot, rainy and hot. The students are very eager to learn. When we went to the school, I brought all the sermons I had preached over the past couple of months. The students were so eager to read them and learn more about their faith too. Rusty brought some Christian t-shirts that people from America had given and they really liked those. If you have any Christian t-shirts that you would like to give away, please contact me and I will let you know how to go about doing that. The students are now on semester break for the next 2 weeks and as a result they didn't have much food left to eat while we were in the village. Therefore we got to eat some very interesting food. If you don't want to know what we ate, then I suggest you stop reading, for those who are interested, someone in the village killed a dog and we ate dog and they also prepared a pig's head for us. The dog was really chewy and so was the pig head. All I can say is that I am glad to be back in the city to eat 'normal' food!!

Church in Thailand

  
We had a great week here at Antioch. We had our largest crowd so far. We had 37 people attend with 3 visitors too. When people come to church, they take their shoes off outside the church before entering the building. Lots of shoes outside is a really encouraging thing!!

Heading to the Village

This coming Monday, Rusty and I will be heading to Mae Hoy, the village where Church Revival Bible School is located. We will be going to teach for a couple of days. Tawm and Susan will be staying in Chiang Mai to teach English classes. Please pray for safe travels as you never know what the roads will be like as you head out to the village. We will also be looking into opportunities to do evangelism with the students in nearby villages. Please pray for these opportunities as well.

Waiting In Line

 
This tank that we got our picture taken was located about 500 meters from our church. If we would have travelled the other way on the road in front of our church, there was another tank located about the same distance from our church. When we got our picture taken we had to wait in line for these Thai kids to get their picture taken, notice how they are all decked out in military gear

Tawm and I in front of a tank

 
Here is a picture of the two of us together. 

Thailand Tank Attraction

 
After the coup here in Thailand, there was a much more visible military presence around town. Military were guarding many important buildings, TV and radio stations and located near university campuses as well. A new prime minister was selected by the military on October 1st to take care of the country until a proper election can be held some time next year. Since October 1st, the military presence has pretty much disappeared. There are no longer tanks around town which had become a huge tourist attraction here in Thailand. People came and gave food to the military personal, got their photos taken, and people started selling food near the tanks as there were so many people coming to get their pictures taken. One radio station even got a group of girls together to dance for the military people. Most of this stuff happened in Bangkok but we did have tanks around town here too. Therefore we had to get our picture taken with the take as well. The military guys were really happy to get their picture taken, especially with a foreigner that speaks Thai. Although he didn't let me hold his gun (like some people were allowed to do), we had fun getting our picture taken.