More Christmas Festivities

(kids in their costumes)

Since Christmas isn't a holiday here in Thailand, it is difficult to do things on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day because everyone works. So we celebrated Christmas at our church on the 28th instead. We gathered for worship in the morning and after church we loaded up and headed out to Jom Tong to have a special Christmas outreach. For me, the greatest part of the day was that 42 people from Antioch travelled in 5 trucks in order to participate in the outreach. Like always we played games, the children from Antioch had a special Christmas performance and afterwards I was able to talk for a few minutes about Christmas. The past 2 Sundays, we have had about 80 kids come to our English club. Last Sunday there were a number of adults too.

I am so thankful for Tawm who worked especially hard before the outreach preparing costumes. Tawm and 3 women from church spent a number of long days sewing the costumes (Tawm didn't even know how to sew but learned in order to make the costumes). The costumes looked great, the kids did a great job of acting too. Everyone from Antioch and the people that came really enjoyed their time. We also handed out a lot of tracts and pray that our Christmas outreach will begin to bear fruit that way too.

(our church gang and others)

New Work in Jom Tong

Over the past several weeks, we've been doing evangelism in Jom Tong or having special prayer meetings on Sunday afternoons for the city of Jom Tong. This past Sunday, we started a children's club at one of the schools there. The school has given us permission to use their facility free of charge and the school's English teacher has been promoting the club to other schools in the area. This Thursday, I will go out to Jom Tong to teach English in the school and promote the children's club.

We've been eagerly anticipating the new work in Jom Tong but had no idea what to expect. We were excited to see over 40 kids from grade 3-9 show up. The teacher told us that she was unable to promote it at all the schools that she wanted to and this week she will promote it some more. We had kids from about 5 different schools in Jom Tong.

On December 28th, many of the people of Antioch Baptist Church will be journeying out there to do a special Christmas program. We will encourage the kids to bring their parents and we will present the gospel that day. I've included some pics of the day of Jom Tong and a pic of Owen too.

 

 

 

 

-> Exciting Times Ahead ->

Things are going to get extremely busy around here, but we are really excited. For the past while, we've been praying about starting a new ministry in a new location (not that the one where we currently are isn't keeping us busy).

A few months ago when the basketball team was here, God opened doors for us to go to Jom Tong (a city about 1 hour from Chiang Mai) to teach English in 3 different schools. Since then we haven't done any ministry there, but our church and us have been praying for an opportunity to start a work there for the past few months.

This coming Sunday, God has opened a door for us to go there and share the gospel. The thing that has me really excited is that over half our church here in Chiang Mai (including a number of kids) will be heading to Jom Tong with us after services to do evangelism there and I pray that this will be the first big step in establishing a new ministry there.

My hope is that this isn't a stepping stone for a ministry in Jom Tong but that it will be a life changing experience for the members of Antioch as well.

Awesome Day

Yesterday was a great day. All of us, including Owen and Robert Wallace headed out to Jom Tong, a city located about 50 kilometers away from Chiang Mai. It is a city of 60,000 people. All of us are praying about starting a new ministry there. However before you can start a new ministry, we have to have some contacts and before yesterday we didn't have any.

In May-June we will have a basketball team here and so we thought it would be a good way to meet some contacts. We've never done anything with an athletic team, so we didn't know what to expect. We went to the government office in Jom Tong and try to find someone to talk to. After talking with one person, he pointed us to a young man who just happened to be the person who oversees athletics for the city of Jom Tong. We talked with him for a while, getting his input. He encouraged us to try to go to some schools, especially one called Sop Tia School. So we went there, he went with us and we met with a couple teachers and then met the principal. The principal of the school just happened to be the superintendent of all 36 schools in the Jom Tong district. They gave us the go to come to his school and he would look for some other schools to do stuff. Tawm told him we were a Christian team and wanted to have an opportunity to talk about God and he said that that wouldn't be a problem. That night they had a meeting and began planning for our trip. They also begged us to come back and teach English. Afterwards we went to look for accomodation for the team and the first hotel we went to, Tawm met one of her friends from high school. He is engaged to the owner's daughter and as a result, they gave us a good discount too.

Thanks to all those who prayed. We asked God to open doors and He threw them wide open! We are really excited.