March 2026 Newsletter

Dear Brethren,

I want to thank all of you who have been keeping Brother Perry Bretherick in your prayers. He came through his bypass surgery very well and is doing well. Please continue to pray for him and his recovery.  He is planning to come and to teach in the Bible school that we will be having in July. We are looking forward to having him back in Thailand. He is a great encouragement to us here.

We had a great Bible school in the first week of February. We taught lessons on the life of Christ. We had fantastic teaching.  We had lessons from Greg Pollock, Justin Bretherick, Xai, Passakorn, and me. Greg did the majority of the teaching. He always does a fantastic job. We wer also very excited that Greg’s son Benjamin was able to come and be with us. He lead some singing and said some prayers and encouraged the young men here. Greg also brought English Bibles for the young men that we are teaching. They study English for 4 hours each week.  We want them to be able to help with translation in the future. We also want to thank the Mars Hill School in Florence, Alabama. They have provided iPads for our preaching students. We want to give a special thanks to Laws Rushing, Dexter Rutherford, Matt Burgess, and Sidney Harmon. Sidney is the IT person who helped so much in getting the iPads for our young men. The iPads are a blessing and will help them in their Bible studies and sermon preparation. Together, we are preparing these men for a life of service to Christ. After the Bible school was finished, Greg, Benjamin, Justin, and I went to the mountains. We worshiped in Mae Hong Son with our students there and then drove to Maekhaduan and worshiped with the brethren there, and then returned to Chaing Mai.

In February each year, we have to have our annual foundation meeting. We are always looking for ways to improve the work that we do. We will be making some changes in our education program that I will be informing everyone about in the near future. This year is also the anniversary of volunteers.  So, the government invited me to take part in a Zoom meeting across Thailand to help improve the volunteer system. There were 173 people in the Zoom meeting. I only saw one other person in the meeting who was not Thai… he was a representative from the UN. I felt like it was a big honor to be invited to participate in that meeting.

February is also the month of graduations in Thailand. We had many of the young people that we helped graduate this year. We had ten young people graduate from High School. Two of our young people graduated with Associate Degrees and will go on to get their Bachelor’s Degree. We had one of our students graduate from university with her Bachelor’s Degree.  She has thanked me so many times. Yesterday, she told me that if it were not for all of us helping her, she would have never made it. Truly, we are making a difference both physically and spiritually in these young people’s lives.

Our building project is going very well. We will begin worshiping in our new, expanded auditorium next week. We are excited about being able to use it in camps and Bible schools in the near future. We are also going to be working on filling it on a regular basis. We have run into a few snags… as you do in all building projects. One is that we had to change from having separate buildings for people to stay in to one large building. While we did not foresee this change, it is going to be a blessing because it will hold more people, last longer, and be easier to cool… and that last part is very important here in Thailand. It is already getting very warm for this time of the year. We should be able to stay within the budget that we set for the other buildings. One other problem that has come up is the amount of electricity for the new property/building. We are going to have to put a three-phase transformer on the property and all the wiring that goes with that. This was not budgeted for. The electric company has told us that it will cost almost $15,000 to put that in. Without it, it will be hard to even build the new building, because there will not be enough electricity for the welding machines. If you can help us to pay for this, it will be a great blessing for us.

We are starting a new project that will help us reach out to several villages in the mountains. The schools in the mountains teach agriculture to their students. This helps them with their life in the mountains. We have come up with a program that will help us to help the school, help the students, help their families, and help their villages. This program will open the door to teaching the gospel in all of these villages. We bought four pigs: one boar and three sows. One of the sows is pregnant already.  The agriculture teacher has raised pigs in the past, and he is very excited to help the students learn to raise pigs. The students at the school, aided by their teacher, will take care of the pigs and learn how to raise pigs, giving them a way to make money in the future. We will provide the food for the pigs. Out of each litter, the school will get one pig. They can raise it for food to give to the students, or sell it for money to help them in any way they see fit. Families that are interested in raising pigs will sign up for our program. Each family will get two piglets to raise. They will get them in the order that they signed up for the program. Not only will this give us a great name in these villages, but it also allows us to go into the homes of the people who receive the piglets to visit and teach. We are really excited about the future possibilities of this program. It may seem strange, but those cute little piglets will open the door to many souls being saved.

We bought four pigs: one boar and three sows. One of the sows is pregnant already.

I have one other thing that I would like to ask you to pray for and help with. While we were interviewing students for next year, we visited a school not too far from where we are in Chiang Mai. In the pictures, you will see me kneeling beside a little girl. In Thailand, children go to kindergarten for three years. That little girl is in her second year of kindergarten. While we were walking through the school, we stopped at the cafeteria because the kids were eating lunch. Usually, the first time we meet young people, they are a little stand-offish. That little girl jumped up from her table and ran straight to me and said in Thai, “My name is Mintra. You see that girl over there, she is my friend.” She then led us to see where she studies. It broke my heart. There are 30 kids in the kindergarten. They have one teacher. The steps are unsafe, the roof has big holes in it, and they have one small bathroom for 30 kindergarteners. I want to put a new roof on their building, make their room safe, and build 6 bathrooms for them. This will impact the school, the students, their families, and their community. I need $10,000 to do this project. Please, help me if you can. Together, we are changing lives, showing the love of Christ, and helping people learn about the love of God.  Thank you for your help.

God bless,
Michael