May 2024 Newsletter

Dear Brethren,

April was an amazing month!! I am writing this a little early because I can’t wait to share all the great things that have happened this month.  I also know that many of you want to know about our youth camp.

We had 207 young people attend the camp this year. With adults, we had 236 people. We had six people from the Jurong congregation in Singapore. Brother Amos led the people from Singapore. The brethren from Singapore have helped us in so many ways and we want to thank them for all the love, encouragement, and help that they continue to give. Brother Paul Goh from Singapore helped by helping train the men to lead singing and helping everyone to sing better. We had one brother from Laos. I truly enjoyed getting to know Brother Xay better. We hope to be able to work more together and encourage both the people in Laos and Thailand. We also had Brother Perry Bretherick and Brother Jaden May from Alabama.  We do not look at Perry like a guest… he is a part of our team.  He comes several times a year. He helps drive, teaches, and more than that is a great encouragement to us all each time he comes. I enjoyed having Jaden here. This was his second time to come to Thailand and I hope that he will continue to come and be an encouragement to the brethren here. From Thailand, we had people from three towns in NE Thailand. We had our group from Chiang Mai and we had people from 36 villages in the mountains. Most of the young people who came to camp are not Christians, but are young people we have been working with and teaching for some time. The temperature was HOT!! During the day it was 42 degrees Celsius or 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit with a real feel of over 120 degrees. We did get relief from a rainstorm. However, the rainstorm knocked out the power for several hours. The theme for this year was John 14:6. All the lessons were about Jesus and specifically that Jesus is the only way to heaven. The response was overwhelming. We thought, hoped and prayed that some would receive the lessons and be baptized. The first day we had 4 baptisms in the morning. The second day we had 5 baptisms in the morning and another 2 baptisms in the afternoon. The third day we had 3 more baptisms. At the end of the camp the third day as I was giving my closing remarks, I told them as I always tell people. Even though camp is over, there is still an opportunity to become a Christian as long as we have life. Then I told them, if you lay down and can’t sleep because you know you need to be a Christian, come and get us and we will immediately take you to the river to be baptized. At 11:30 pm Passakorn came to the room I was staying in and woke me up… a young lady wanted to be baptized. We went to the river and I shined the lights from the van across the water and she was baptized into Christ. We got back to camp just before midnight.  I started to my room and a young man said, I have a question.  He comes from a Pentecostal background. His question was concerning speaking in tongues. I told him that I could answer his question but it would take me about two hours. He said please teach me, I need to know.  So, I went and got my Bible and we started to study just after midnight. At 2:30 am I asked him… is what you have been taught the same as we have read in the Bible? He said, no.  I then asked, are you ready to be obedient to Christ? He said, yes.  We woke everyone up again and headed back to the river. He was baptized into Christ. We have been planting and watering… planting and watering… planting and watering… God gave a bountiful harvest!! Sixteen precious souls are now our brothers and sisters in Christ. We also had one restoration during camp. We now have 5 young men who want to be preachers. The future for the church in Thailand is looking very bright. After the last young man was baptized, I slept for about 2 hours. Then I got up and began taking people home and then making the trip back to Chiang Mai… about 14 hours of driving.

Now the follow-up work has begun.  We have visited most of the homes of the new Christians since camp.  We still have a few to get to which we will get to at the first of next month. We also had worship services in two different villages in the mountains where a lot of our young people are located. We also have two new villages that we need to have worship in every Sunday because now we have Christians there. We are working out a schedule… but it will mean more driving and more places for each of us to worship every week. Please keep us in your prayers.  I honestly do not know where the gas money for this work is going to come from.  But I do know that these young Christians need to worship each week as the Lord wants us to. I also know that we will not baptize people and then leave them. We want to help them grow in Christ.

We try to provide work experience for the young people that we help. We have one young man who will intern with the foundation for the next year. He is getting a degree in electronics. We also took a group of 9 young ladies who want to be teachers to practice teaching. This helps them get experience and prepare their portfolios to help them get into university. We took them to the village of Mae Ouy Tha. The young ladies did a great job of teaching the kids each day. When we left, the kids did not want the girls to go. This is the village that Ratchanok comes from.  It is very difficult to get to. The road is terrible.  It is 36 kilometers or 22.3 miles.  It takes 2 hours in   4-wheel drive.  As we were about to start into the village, the foundation truck had a brake problem. So, I made two trips one morning to get girls and supplies into the village. The village does not have electricity, or water we could drink, and we needed food and bedding.  We slept on the floor in classrooms. In the end, we decided to take Passakorn’s truck in too… it is not a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  That was a mistake and now his truck is in the shop for repairs. We had worship at night while we were there. So, while the girls taught during the day… Passkorn, Chaichana, Suchat, and I walked and invited people to come to worship. This village is made up of four villages that are “close” together.  We walked to the first village with Ratchanok as our guide. When we were done there, we said… let’s walk to the next village.  She said we can walk but it will take about 30 minutes. She said it would be better if we drove… we crossed a river… and drove in the river about 8 times. It took us over 30 minutes in a 4-wheel drive truck. They may be able to walk it in about 30 minutes. We estimated that it would take us about 2 ½ hours one-way. We had around 40 people come to hear the gospel.

Ratchanok, her mother, and me.

There are a lot of pictures attached to this email. I tried to select from the hundreds and hundreds of pictures that were taken over the last month. The shirt I am wearing in some of the pictures is a blue traditional shirt from the Karen people, which was made by Ratchanok’s mother. She said it took her a day and a half to make.

God bless,
Michael