June 2023 Newsletter

Dear Brethren,

Thank you all for the love and prayers that you offer up for our work here. I want to start this report with a prayer request. We have three young ladies that are very ill. The first one is the young lady who I mentioned in last month’s report who passed out on the last night of camp. She has started passing out frequently. She is training to be a nurse’s assistant. We discussed the problem with the Nurse who is the head of the nursing program.  We decided to put her through a series of test with a neurologist. She has been undergoing testing. We have an appointment with the neurologist next Tuesday to find out the results of the testing and what we need to do to help her. Her name is Siriporn. She is 18 years old. The next young lady had two brain surgeries as a child because she had cancer. She has been cancer free since that time. Last Sunday evening, she started having a severe headache in the spot where she had originally had cancer. I took her to the hospital and they admitted her. She has been there since then. She has had a brain scan, they have also tested her spinal fluid, she has had many other tests and a lot of medicine to bring down the fever. She is a great student and wants to be a nurse. We have an appointment to talk with her doctors on Friday. Her name is Montonthip. She is 17 years old. The third young lady just went into the hospital. She has been diagnosed with dengue hemorrhagic fever. Which is a very serious disease which is transmitted through mosquito bites. Her name is Nitsata. She is 16 years old. Please pray for these three young ladies to be able to get the treatment they need and recover from these serious illnesses. I am like an old mother hen with every one of these young people that we help. I worry about them more than words can express.  I want them all to be happy, healthy, get an education so they can have a good job and provide for themselves and their families, and most of all… I want them to go to heaven.

God continues to bless our work. The young people who went to camp, many of which had not heard the gospel before, want to go to worship every Sunday. One of our congregations which usually has around 70 in attendance on Sundays had over 60 teenagers last week. This week we picked up 15 teenagers in addition to those 60. Some of these young people have to be picked up at 5 a.m. so that we can make enough trips to pick them all up. We have two villages that are too far for us to go and pick up. Those villages have an additional 30 teenagers who are begging us to go to worship. Many places around the world are having trouble getting their teenagers to go to worship. We are having the opposite problem. We are trying to find a doable solution to this problem. There will be much more traveling every week and a lot more expense for fuel. This week we are starting to teach Bible to large groups of these young people in different villages on Saturdays as well. Please pray for us all. Pray that we have the strength to keep up with the strenuous schedule we have set. Pray for these young people who have opened their hearts to hear the gospel. Pray that we have enough money to continue these long trips each week.

We spent a lot of time on the road to get everyone ready for the school year which began the 16^th of May in most schools. The school where the young people in or dorm go, started on the 2^nd for some grades and the 8^th for the entire school. We took school uniforms and supplies to many places. We also took many young people to the schools where they will be attending. Many of the young people live in boarding schools because their villages do not have schools. We had to make three trips to Tha Song Yang… a 7-hour one-way trip. We went there to get permission for two of our young ladies to leave their Provence and study here in Chiang Mai. In addition to that, three of us traveled to Bangkok to give scholarships to two young ladies. They come from very poor families and are really good students. They each live with their grandmothers for various reasons. They were so grateful for the help. While we were in Bangkok, I also took money for they young girl that I told you I fell in love with and that I am personally helping. I bought her new school uniforms, new shoes, a new backpack, and school supplies. I also got to spend two wonderful days with her getting to know her better. I asked her many questions. I asked her, do you like teddy bears? She said, yes, I do! I then asked, how many do you have? She told me that she didn’t have one. It broke my heart. I took her to the store and let her pick out one. Now she has her first teddy bear. You will see it in the pictures. I asked her in the store what its name was going to be… without any hesitation she said, “Nomsote” which means fresh milk.  I am building a room for her on the house I live in. The plan is for her to move to Chiang Mai and live with me at the beginning of the school year next year. She is so sweet!!

This month we were also able to replace all of the filtering supplies in all of the water systems thanks to the diligent work of Jordan Bretherick. He raised a lot of money and brought it with him when he came to the youth camp. We used most of it for the camp. The remainder of it we used to replace the charcoal, resin, and salt in the water systems. This has to be changed once a year… and is expensive. It took three pickup loads to get the items we needed from Chiang Mai to the various villages. Four villages will have clean water for another year!! We have six water systems in four different villages.

Please keep all of our work in your prayers. Without you, we would not be able to touch as many lives as we do. I am also including a picture of some of the young people at one of the villages we help. They are waiting on a ride to school. Thanks to you… many many people are able to have a better life here now and life in heaven in the future. Thank you all for all you do.

God bless,

—Michael