May 2023 Update
Ok, so math (ahem!) isn’t exactly my strong suit. I squeaked through high school algebra and geometry by the skin of my teeth and deliberately enrolled in literature courses after that.
But when I grasped the multiplying potential of disciple-making, well, that made sense! And when the same understanding dawns on the disciples we’re training, and they start operating as the early church did (indigenous believers responsible for evangelizing and discipling micro-churches in their own regions), they get as excited as we are about expanding the Kingdom!
This past Saturday, we finished up our first six-week Discipleship Training in MaeSai with an incredibly diverse, committed, and enthusiastic group. We had pastors, evangelists, students, lay believers, church planters, bible-school teachers, linguists, and children’s home leaders, all with a common desire to obey the Great Commission. There was a constant background murmur, with English being translated into Burmese, and then quietly into Akha, Laotian, Portuguese, Thai, Chinese, and who knows what else by obliging tablemates. Our emphasis always is on training and application; participants work in groups, partner with teammates, demonstrate for the class, practice during the week, and then take it to their locations. Our WhatsApp account has been flooded with pictures of baptisms, water filter setups, and groups teaching each other the story of Jesus. We were so encouraged to see disciples immediately apply what they’ve learned! Oh, how thrilling it is to be back! We have SO missed this!
In stark emotional contrast to this victory, however, about two days after I sent out our newsletter outlining the overwhelming needs here, close to 5,000 terrified Burmese forded the river bordering Myanmar to escape the local bombing. They clung to a rope lest they be swept away by the current and were granted temporary asylum on the Thai side. The women and children in the group were sheltered in the cattle pens of a riverside village where we’ve ministered in the past. Our team there, whose leader has an excellent relationship with the Thai government as well as the local village leaders, was one of very few allowed into the location to provide short-term aid. And provide they did…supplying water, diapers, food, and the basic human dignity of porta-potties (no easy things to procure here, believe me), and make-shift showers. Best of all, they had an open door to talk with and encourage these desperate people, hand out Manga-style graphic-comic stories of Jesus in Burmese, and answer questions about the Lord. You’ve never seen a filthier, more exhausted group of volunteers, all grinning like Cheshire cats because of the opportunity they had to provide immediate, well-planned, short-term relief as well as share the Gospel. And this all came together because willing and prepared volunteers on site received the resources just in time to put a plan into action! Thank you all for the timely financial help!
In the Dominican, our discipling pastor, Jaime Blandon, sent a newsletter so full of pictures and news of Haitian church plantings, pastors’ successes, passionate evangelism, and numbers of new believers that I was hard-pressed not to attach the whole thrilling epistle here! Pastor Lucien’s wife in La Guayiga now has a micro-loan so she can help support their family by making clothes and curtains; Pastor Rogers in Mama Tingo is recovering well from an accident which has not slowed down his church growth one bit; Pastor Meremy’s small chapel in Las Tablas is nearly completed (he’s the one borrowing neighborhood chairs!) All three pastors have new believers who are baptized, and greater than 50 in attendance every Sunday. Disciples who make disciples who make disciples!
Also encouraging is that our Children’s Rescue Home pastor suffering from SLE continues to recover well and hopes very soon to move all her children from their current mountain compound to a place with internet and access to better medical care. Where she’s been has been safe but very remote. Please pray a good location at an affordable price will come available immediately and a buyer will materialize for her existing mountain compound.
I did want to give you a few glimpses into our life here in MaeSai. Since I don’t have a kitchen sink, we’ve converted a shower stall into my private dish-washing station; a holding tub for dirty dishes, the “wash” tub, the “rinse” tub, and the drying rack. When finished, I just dump the tubful of water down the commode. Of course, that did mean one time I inadvertently and irretrievably jettisoned a scrub bud along with the dirty water. Those of you familiar with Asian plumbing (!) know it doesn’t/can’t even handle toilet paper (no joke), so my life flashed in front of me as I envisioned explaining to a Thai plumber what I’d done. But I was spared; the habitually inadequate system gamely handled the scrub-bud and I never had to confess!
Peter, whose problematic knee has curtailed the kind of power-walking he loves, keeps up his cardio in other ways. The fitness staff is fascinated, as he limps up the stairs to the machines wearing his off-loading metal knee brace and elastic strapping, only to jump on a bike and power up! I’ve also included a picture of my market which is a hop-skip-and-a-jump from our building; how’s that for a plethora of chicken backs side by side with some cannabis plants? What a far cry from two years ago when you’d go to jail indefinitely if caught with drugs in Thailand!
As always, a combination of friends, missionaries, disciple-makers, church planters, and good food blesses our lives. We’re not doing as well as we’d planned shedding the pounds we gained while being spoiled in America…but we’re certainly enjoying catching up with friends we left behind mid-COVID and re-sampling Thai and Burmese delicacies.
As you can well imagine, almost all our budgeted short-term relief funds have been depleted by the recent crises. But the LORD is always working! 100 more water filters, so critical at this point, are wending their way here as I write, funded by a large donation that purchased them and fabulous underwriting that shipped them. Just take a good look at this video; look around at the conditions, the water source, the kids, and the filtered water. This one filter can provide clean water for 100 families for 10 years with proper backwashing. Can you understand why we are SO thrilled and SO grateful?!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RQ7mS8pmSj7Y7G10dY4KTbtPAfSsmcRv/view?usp=share_link
The next need we’re asking our Lord for is a replenishment of the Manga-style Jesus stories which have so captivated the teenagers, adults, and young soldiers (often illiterate) who’ve received them. Every last one of them was handed out, passed around, discussed, and even torn into parts to share. We want to print more in preparation for the next opportunity, which…sadly…we expect will occur as the military continues its relentless attacks.
The next phase of our ministry will be in MaeSot, where we spent two years teaching post-10 refugees and mentoring micro-church leaders. It requires an 11-hour bus trip, so we covet your prayers.
Please know how grateful we are every day to be here, for such a time as this, getting to play a very small part in God’s wonderful plan, with the support, love, and prayer coverage of so many at home. We feel it daily and appreciate it enormously.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10