We hope you had wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. God has been so good to us during the past few months, and we have many things for which to be thankful. We are especially grateful to those who prayed and gave towards Christmas, new Christian friends, new children to mentor, provisions for our daily needs and projects, and the renewal of Tiffany’s visa.
New Bus Route
Our pickup truck with benches in the bed of the truck (called a songthaew) has been such a help for church ministry. When we began to attend Door of Life Baptist Church, I immediately offered to help pick up and take people home. Previously, Pastor Abel was often making two trips just around the church community, so we took over one trip. We live outside of the area of our church, and at first, we were hoping to start a new route in our community, but God brought the new route to us. One girl invited a classmate to our Saturday activities/classes and gave her my phone number because she lives behind our community. To our surprise, the first Saturday we went to pick her up, 7 girls and a couple of mothers got into our truck. Apple, the new girl, invited 6 other girls of varying ages on her first day. Now they faithfully come on Saturday mornings for children’s activities, on Saturday evenings for youth group, and to Sunday school. The 3 older girls have trusted Christ, and the Sunday before Tiffany left for her trip to the USA, she got to share the Gospel with one of the mothers who came to our evening service.
Visit to America
Originally, we were invited to a Missions Conference but declined due to not having the funds to go. Little did we know that Tiffany would be blessed with a plane ticket and would be able to present at Lighthouse Baptist Church’s Missions Conference. With their love gift, we were able to buy the treats for the many outreaches throughout December. In addition, the gift answered our prayer of needing funds to purchase private insurance for our truck. Tiffany was also able to visit our sending church and one other church. The two weeks of visiting family, friends, and churches were so encouraging and refreshing.
While Tiffany was in the USA, our church was holding a half-day camp for the children while schools were on semester break. Each day had a different focus, including a Bible class and learning life skills. We were also busy preparing for our church’s fifth anniversary, which was on the last Sunday of October. Praise the Lord, the church building was full, and we had a wonderful service.
Christmas
Throughout the month of December, we served alongside our pastor’s family, another church, and a missions team of 12 from Mexico. Although the missions team didn’t know Thai, and many didn’t speak English very well either, they were still such a blessing and help to our church ministries and Christmas outreaches. You don’t need to know the local language to be a blessing to a missionary and their church. We went to 3 to 5 schools a week putting on a Christmas program, which included a drama, a Gospel message, an orchestra, special music, games, an English lesson, and gifts for the teachers and students. Over 4,000 students and teachers heard the reason why Jesus was born and were given the chance to accept Him as their personal Saviour. At each school, there were several who were very attentive during the Gospel presentation. At one school, Tiffany sat with a young teacher while I preached. Afterwards, the teacher told her that she had prayed along with me when I invited those who wanted to accept Christ’s gift of salvation. The teacher had miscarried her twin babies, and her heart was hurting. We don’t know whose hearts the Gospel touched, but we pray for the ones who opened their hearts and believed. At the last school we went to, there were 800 students in attendance. After the program, a janitor thanked us for coming. She said her church has been reaching their city, and hundreds had become believers; she was appreciative for our sharing the Gospel in the school where she worked. We also had 2 fantastic Christmas services at both churches. At the church in Chom Tong, several students from a couple of the schools that we did programs in attended the service, and at our church in San Sai, we had several visitors from our community attend. What a blessing it was to have so many brothers and sisters in Christ to celebrate Christmas with and end the year with.
Special Prayer Request
On January 31, a school in Chom Tong has invited our church’s foundation to join a special day where students from other schools will be joining to learn about religion. In the morning, some monks will be teaching on Buddhism, and in the afternoon, we will have two hours to teach on Christianity. The monks will be staying for the session that we will teaching. Please pray for the monks’, students’, and teachers’ hearts to be open and receptive.
God bless,
Teerapat & Tiffany Phaisarnpiwat
