Our God is Great

Just a quick update, and also a reminder to check out our new pictures & videos on picasa. We have descriptions on our pictures that tell the story of what we're doing also.

The last 2 weeks we returned from Phitsanulok, celebrated Jonathan's 29th Birthday by climbing and eating some brownies. We had several activities at the Youth House with students, and then went to Nakhon Sawan for 3 Staff Training Days. The days in Nakhon Sawan were filled with Fellowship, Prayer, Worship, Celebrations, sharing what God is doing with students in Central Thailand, and preparing for the future. 2 big things we are preparing for are an Evangelistic Camp on August 15-17 in Nakhon Sawan and several short mission trips in October.

We hope to have around 120 students come to the camp this summer for around $8/person. The theme will be centered around the Olympics. We'll have several competitions, opening and closing ceremonies, and we'll use the colors of the Olympics to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. The rings of the Olympics are Green, Blue, Black, Red, and Yellow.
Green represents God is the creator of everything.
Black represents man's sin and rebellion from God.
Blue represents God as a Holy God, perfect and loving.
Red represents God's love for us, shown by sending His son Jesus, who died on the cross so that our sins may be washed clean. Red also represents Jesus blood, shed as a sacrifice once for all of us.
Yellow represents as our new life as children of the King, and the promise of eternal life in heaven with streets of gold.

This week, Off and Pheung went to Chiang Mai to visit family, but God has been good and has given us strength, energy, and just enough language between us and Tam to communicate with each other and with students. Tam led a fun bible study of I Peter 2:11-25. We took students downtown and played sports and ate at the market. Saturday morning, we taught about 25 students a little english as we played games and baked cookies. God has provided many opportunities to develop relationships better and to study the Bible with christian and non-christian students. Several students are good guitar players and enjoy singing worship songs also. Many of the students we have seen recently are interested in going to camp.

Keep us in your prayers for the activities here, preparations for the camp, and for the students to grow closer to Jesus.

Bittersweet Goodbye to the Singapore Team

Please, check out our new pictures also. There is much you'll see there that you won't see here.

This was the last week that the Singapore team was here, and it turned out to be a good one. On Saturday, July 5, about 30 students came to the Youth House to hang out and study English. We all taught them and then spent time hanging out with them. Ashley baked a cake with 10 girls and then fed us all. Meanwhile, Off, Pheung, and Tam had many opportunities to talk with students 1 on 1 and study the Bible together.

On Tuesday we went to a nearby town called Phrabaat to help a church reach out to the community. We walked around a nearby village and talked with people, giving them tracts and sharing the gospel. We had many good conversations with people. We were all surprised at how open the people were to talk about the gospel and how interested they were to hear more. We were also excited that 3 students from Phrabaat church joined us and were bold to share their faith with the people we met. It was their first time to evangelize in their hometown and for 2 of them it was their first time ever. Afterwards we returned to the church and watched a 5 on 5 soccer match. The pastor of the church has been organizing soccer teams for several years as a way to build relationships with men. After the soccer match, the players came inside and ate dinner with us. We did a small little performance for them as they ate. We sang a song, performed a skit, shared a testimony, and then Off did a gospel talk. It was a great chance to help this church reach out to its community.

On Wednesday we taught English at 2 schools. The teachers encouraged us to share about our faith and beliefs, so we did. We taught the gospel, shared testimonies, performed skits, and had time to just sit and chat with students. When we returned home, several students were already at the house playing games and took the Singapore team out for ice cream.

Thursday, we taught more English. We were all encouraged by the response we got from students. They listened attentively as we shared the “Color Gospel” about the God who created the world, every persons rebellion from him, His love for us shown by sending Jesus as a sacrifice for us, and the new life we can have in Jesus. There are also several teachers who have been listening closely and asking for more information. While it is a very big change for a Thai Buddhist to believe in 1 true God, we can see God is working in their hearts.
Thursday night we had a Bible Study. The group study I Peter 2:4-10. About 7 christian students were there for the study and 2 more non-christians were happy to sit in and see what was going on.

Friday was the last day for the Singapore Team in Lopburi. In the morning, the 4th Year English Students at the University put on a going away party for the team at the university. They taught us some about their culture and did several performances. They performed Thai Boxing, Traditional Thai Dancing, and cooked Pad Thai, Papaya salad, and several thai desserts for us. It was a fun day. Friday afternoon we had a going away party for the Singapore Team. We were amazed by how many students came to say thank you and goodbye (many bearing cards and gifts). We could see that God had used them in many ways. Here are a few specific ways: to make the Youth House known in the schools as a fun, cool, safe place for students to hang out, to develop strong relationships between many students and the Youth House staff, to share the gospel to many students in an honest, open, and respectable way, to develop good relationships between the Youth House and several influential teachers at different schools (There is an open door for us to come back and teach whenever we have time).

Saturday was a big day for all the Youth Houses because of Youth House on the Road. We rented a tour bus and filled up half of it and left Lopburi at 7:30am. In all we had 16 students and 10 staff. We picked up another 30+ students and staff at the Nakhon Sawan Youth House and then drove to the Phitsanulok Youth House for a big fun day. The day was action packed with eating snacks, playing games, singing worship songs, doing a Bible Study of Psalm 139, and then doing a “Adventure Race” type game. The game was very fun as we had to follow instructions that took us all over campus, singing the Thai National Anthem, taking pictures with campus guards, solving trivia questions, and making balloon models of all the staff. It was a great time for all the students to get to know each other and the staff and to learn more about God and how he created us. Everyone loaded up the bus around 5:30 to return home, but we said our good byes and stayed in Phitsanulok for a few days.

Our good friends Jesse and Kristen Troll and their daughter Trinia just moved from Lopburi to Phitsanulok to work at the Phitsanulok Youth House. They are staying in a 4 story shop house right next to the Youth House. But, the house needs a lot of cleaning and preparing before it can be called a home, so we volunteered to stay and help watch Trinia and clean.

Please keep us in your prayers that we can keep the momentum going now that the Singapore team is gone.

Happy Independence Day

Sorry We haven't written in so long. It has been a busy month. School started for all the students around June 1, and we have been busy teaching, hanging out, playing games, travelling, and getting to know many people.

The first week of June we were preparing the Lopburi Youth House, decorating and cleaning it, planning events, and going to schools. There are about 12 different high schools, technical schools, and universities in Lopburi. We went to most of them and passed out brochures about the Lopburi Youth House with a gospel tract inside it. We also talked with several teachers about opportunities to come teach at their school. Surprisingly, many teachers invite us to come teach "English" at their school. Many would even say that we can teach about our culture and about what we believe as well.

On June 10, 4 college students from Singapore came to help us until July 15. They are staying with us at the Youth House, sleeping on the floor in 2 extra rooms. It is very crowded here (8 people sleeping here and many others visiting), but it is also fun. We have all been teaching English at 4 different schools. We teach about 1.5 - 3 hours a day, 4 day/week at schools. We teach a little of everything, from english, games, american/singapore culture, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Teaching english at schools has many purposes:
1. we get to know many students, some of whom will regularly come to the Youth House for many different events where we get to share the gospel and share our lives with them.
2. We can share the gospel with them at school, giving them a clearer idea of why Jesus died for us and what that means and how Christianity is different from Buddhism.
3. Build relationships with schools/teachers. Because we have helped these schools, they are willing to help us organize events at their schools. They let us come on campus to meet students.

We have also had many activities at the Youth House. The house is always open for students to come and play games, use the computer, and play music. Thai students are very musically talented. It seems like 50% of the students can play guitar or keyboard. We also teach english at the house for 1 hr/day. We have had a few Bible Studies in I Peter on Thursday nights. We had two Open House days where we each shared something from our culture (Ashley was a country girl and taught a line dance, Jonathan sang a rap song and taught Hip-Hop culture/language).

It has been a good month at the Youth House. There are about 8 christian students who come here regularly (1-5 times/week) and 15 other non-christian students who come here often.
Off, Peung, and Tam (our fellow staff at the Youth House) have gotten many opportunities to disciple the Christian students and to share the gospel with students. There are some students who are very interested in learning more.

From June 23-29 we went to the yearly OMF Conference. The conference is for all the OMF missionaries in Thailand to come together, connect with each other and learn what everyone else is doing in Thailand. There were about 150 missionaries and 67 kids. We went to look after the teenage kids of the missionaries. Johnny McClean led us both as we spent 2 days preparing Bible Studies, games, and activities for the kids. Then we had Thursday - Sunday to hang out with them. We had a Bible study and craft activity for 3 hours each morning, played sports for 1.5 hours each afternoon, and then we had another Bible Study time at night. It was a good time for us to get to talk in English and share with these kids. Sometimes their knowledge of the Bible was better than ours, but we still found that we had valuable life lessons to share with them. They seemed to enjoy their time and we did too. Except that we were exhausted.

Be sure to keep us in your prayers and check out our pictures as well. God Bless You.