Another Big Step Taken!

Earlier this year, Antioch sent Samson, a former student at our village Bible school to Sukothai, another province located about 5 hours away from Chiang Mai. Samson had a burden to go there and plant a church. He decided to go to a village that didn't have any Christians and begin laboring there. Unlike many hilltribe villages, this village is Buddhist but like most Thais, they mix some Animism with Buddhism.

When Samson went there, he told me that the people were nice but not real friendly, but Samson continued laboring there, helping them with their crops and planting Spiritual seeds too. This past week, one villager came to Samson and asked Samson to pray for him. Samson explained the gospel to him and the man accepted Christ. Samson said he didn't think this man would become a Christian, let alone be the first convert there because he had amulets around his neck and waist protecting him from evil spirits but after he turned to Christ, he removed all the amulets and burned them as a sign that he was turning his back to his old lifestyle.

This is so exciting because my primary goal here in Thailand is to see churches plant churches. Antioch Baptist Church sending out missionaries was step one in seeing this happen. Now we are seeing fruit from the missionary's labor. So Cool!

Unique Opportunity

During my blogging hiatus, I had the opportunity to do something that I've never done in Thailand before. I had the opportunity to preach at a house warming party. Normally when Thai people buy a house, the have monks come and bless the house however relatives of one of our church members bought a house here in town and asked if I could come and preach. I'd been to a house warming party before but never a Christian one, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Tawm and a couple people from our worship team led the people in singing and then I had the opportunity to speak. It went well and I preached from the verse in Joshua that says "as for me and my house we will serve the Lord."

The next day was Sunday and a number of people from this family came to church. As a result, Antioch had its biggest attendance to date: 54 people

More Trouble a Brewing??

This morning, protestors stormed one of Thailand's nation TV stations and forced it off the air. They have also closed some major roads leading into Bangkok in hopes that their actions will force the new Prime Minister and his cabinet to step down. Many people, especially in Bangkok are not happy with the new Prime Minister because of his ties to the former Prime Minister that was ousted in coup-d-etat a couple years ago. Plus they accuse this prime minister of buying votes in the poor but heavily populated Northeastern region of Thailand.
Despite all this, the military leader has already said that there will not be a coup this time.

Two Souls Saved!

Last week Tawm had the opportunity to lead to people to the Lord at church. A couple family members of our one of our church members were staying at the church in order to bring their kid to the hospital the next morning. Tawm was at church that evening and started talking to the mother about salvation. The mother was very interested. She went to church her whole life, called herself a Christian but didn't know anything about being saved. As they talked, the lady's husband came and joined in. At first Tawm was worried that he'd stop the conversation but he proved to be just as interested as the mother. After a couple hours of talking, they both decided to trust Christ as Savior. Praise God!
The only sad part of the story is that they don't live in Chiang Mai and so it will be difficult to disciple them. Plus neither can read so they will have trouble reading their Bible. Please pray for them.

Two Thought Provoking Quotes

With the long lapse between blogs, it has given me enough time to do my fair share of reading. I wanted to share with you two quotes that have hit me hard over that time. The first comes from a book that Tawm and I are reading together called "Faith Begins at Home" by Mark Holmen. Although Owen is only 9 months old, it is definitely something that struck my heart. Holmen said:

"While it is good that everyone desires that our teenagers have a stronger faith, the truth is that what we see in our teenagers' faith is a mirror image of our own faith. So the issue isn't their faith, but your faith."
Our children model what they see their parents doing. Are we as parents modelling what we want them to do? Or is it just all talk?

The second quote comes from a book called "True Spirituality" by Francis Shaeffer. God is really dealing with me in the area of my prayer life at this time and so Shaeffer's really hit home. He wrote:

"If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed (not as a liberal would remove it, by misinterpretation but really removed) what difference would it make in practice from the way we are functioning today? The simple tragic fact is that [in most Christians lives] there would be no difference whatsoever. We function as though the supernatural were not there."
How much does our prayer life affect the way we live our day to day lives? Do we really bring everything to God in prayer? For most of us probably not.

Owen's Back too!

 

 

With the long blogging hiatus, people that aren't on Facebook have been wanting to see some more pics of Owen. Owen is getting big. He says mummum which means eat, ba which means let's go and taa which means grandpa. He doesn't always use them at the right time, but he is forming the words.

Bloggin' Woes

Been trying to update the blog for the past little while but been having a cookie problem. Finally, I had to restore my whole system and now I have access to my blog again. The only problem, I still can't upload pictures like I used to... Still have some kinks to work out. If I can't get them worked out, I may have to switch over to another blog... Stay tuned to find out.