January 2026 Newsletter

Dear Brethren,

I hope that everyone is having a Happy New Year filled with health, happiness, and blessings. In this new year, I hope that everyone will dedicate their lives to doing everything they can for the Lord. Let us focus on service and sacrifice. I pray that this year will bring great growth in the church. We spent a lot of time in December planning for this upcoming year. We examined what has worked and not worked during this last year. We have made adjustments to improve what we are doing so that we can do even better in this new year.

During December, there were a lot of our young people who were testing to get into university and being called in for interviews.  We spent a lot of time taking young people to and from tests and interviews. It is not quite as simple as driving them across town. We have multiple young people who need to be in many different places on the same day and at the same time. I will just give you one example. One of our young ladies, Patcharaporn, passed the test to enter nursing school and then had to go for an interview at the university. She is currently going to school in Maetan in Tak province. That is in the mountains, six hours from Chiang Mai. Her interview was on a Tuesday.  Passakorn preached in Maetan on Sunday morning. Then he held worship services in two other towns before returning to Chaing Mai… He brought Patcharaporn back with him to Chiang Mai.  On Tuesday morning, I took her to the interview in Lampang. We left at 5:30 a.m.  It is an hour and a half to Lampang.  We were in Lampang for two hours… one hour waiting for the interview and another hour for the interview. We then drive five hours to take her back to Maetan, because she had to be back in school on Wednesday. I then drove another three hours to Maesariang where I spent the night before returning to Chiang Mai. The good news is that she also passed the interview and will be entering nursing school there this coming school year. That also means when she moves there, we will have to travel to Lampang every Sunday to worship with her because she is a Christian. We will somehow have to stretch ourselves a little thinner to get everywhere each Sunday… but we are willing to do this because every Christian needs to worship and be encouraged every Sunday. That is just one of many trips like that that were made during December. Hours together in a car are a wonderful way to spend time together and to teach these young people.

December 5^th in Thailand is Father’s Day.  On Father’s Day this year, we organized an event for one of the schools we help.  We painted the fence at the school. It was 200 meters long… so painting the back and front was 400 meters. (For those of you in America, about 4 ½ football fields.)  We made it a school/community event. We took our young people to help. The teachers from the school, the students, their parents, people from the community, and government officials came and helped to paint the fence. We provided the paint and lunch for everyone. It gave us an opportunity to meet the parents of the students. We want to focus this year on the parents of all the young people that we help. This event also brought us a lot of goodwill in that village.

We also spent a lot of time interviewing the young people that we help. This is something that is necessary and that we do each year to see how they are progressing and see if they need any help. We spent four days traveling to many schools to interview the young people. While we see them each week at worship… we do not have time to sit and talk with them individually because of our need to go to so many different places each week to worship. While we are concerned with helping the young people to get a good education and have a better life here, our focus is on their spiritual lives and helping them to have a great eternity.

During this month, four of our young ladies who graduated from Expertcare, got jobs.  Two of them are working at nursing homes, and two of them are working at hospitals. We helped them get moved in and settled. One young lady, Ampai, is renting a room on the fourth floor of an apartment building. We bought a small refrigerator for her to use. Unfortunately, there is no elevator in the building. I had to get help from a young man to carry the fridge up four flights of stairs. The last young lady will be moved in today, Saturday, January 3rd. After I finish sending this report, I will help her move all her things from the dormitory on the farm to her new apartment. We now have five young ladies working in hospitals and three working in nursing homes.

This year, the Thai government gave a large break to everyone for the New Year holidays. Most schools have a ten-day break.  We decided to let our young people go home to spend time with their families.  We had to take 13 young people back to various villages throughout the mountains.  That means we needed to take two trucks to carry the young people and their belongings back safely. We left on Saturday at 5:00 a.m. Passakorn drove one truck and stayed in the mountains to preach on Sunday. I drove the other truck and had to go back to Chiang Mai to preach and teach in Chiang Mai. I got back home on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. On Sunday, I taught Bible class and preached in Chiang Mai.  Then I drove 5 ½  hours to Mae Hong Son to have another worship service. It usually only takes 4 ½ hours… but there was a lot of holiday traffic.

We started our building projects in December.  We are starting with expanding the auditorium. We started with this because last year, in the earthquake, there was damage to the foundation. Since the property here is higher than our neighbors’ property, the back sidewalk started collapsing.  We had to dig all that out, redo the foundation, and build a retaining wall. It was necessary to do that before we did any other work.  That has been completed, and the rest of the work has been started. We have also completed making a covered parking area. We will use that as a place of worship till the expansion of the auditorium is completed. We are building for the future. We will be able to teach many more people each year in the special schools and camps that we do. May God bless us as we continue to work for Him. May the kingdom grow and God be glorified.

God bless,
Michael