March 2007 Update - God Uses All Kinds of People

Meet Peter (the lighter skinned fellow on the right) from Switzerland. Peter came to work with us in December and has decided to stay and work here for one year. Staying here has meant some hardship for Peter. Living alone in a Thai village, at first not speaking a word of Thai language, Peter could have struggled with loneliness. Instead he used it as an opportunity to immerse himself in his work helping our Thai construction crew with projects on the church’s property in Bang Khlii. Through the work he was able to build strong friendships with his Thai coworkers. He also learned to speak the language very quickly in this environment. Of course his language ability is mostly limited to construction terms but it is enough to be effective in his work and become part of our team.

This week we have, with the help of KeowTaa, one of our Thai leaders, and Dorien, one of our missionary staff, started an English class and cell group in Peter’s home. His guests (mostly workmates) loved their time and are all anxious to return next week. God is growing Phang Nga Church and his kingdom and He is using a shy Swiss guy to do it.


This month we have hosted a big team of 19 people from Faith Baptist Church in Kailua, Hawaii. With a wide variety of different ages and skills, God has used them to be a big blessing too as they helped us run English camps and accomplished a lot of construction work on the coffee shop and staff housing projects.

Yes, God is using all kinds of people, Thai, foreigner, young, old, rich, poor, shy, and not so shy, to build His kingdom here in South Thailand. You could be one of them.

The Phang Nga Church team

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February 2007 Update - Realigning For The Future

Lately, in our coffee shop building project, we’ve had to make some adjustments... ...a nice way of saying that we’ve made some minor mistakes and had to back up, tear down and rebuild some parts of the new building. To be honest, our ministry in Phang Nga has been like that at times. Sometimes we find that our plans and agendas are not really aligned with God’s. It is times like these that we need to humble ourselves, correct our mistakes, and redirect ourselves to God’s plans for our lives and ministries. It is also a good time to reevaluate and refocus on the important things, the things that God has for our
futures.

For us at Phang Nga Church, that has meant that we have, at times, needed to abandon some things that are not part of God’s plan. As well, in our evaluation, we needed to be reminded to hang on to those things that God has put in our hearts to do here. God has not changed his agenda for building His kingdom here in South Thailand. He has not changed His plan for us to plant a church here in Phang Nga. He has not redirected His strategy for us to reach out to the various unchurched multitudes in this region. Looking back we can see that our work after the tsunami was not a distraction from this goal but part of His plan and our relief and development work is bearing fruit for God’s kingdom in Muslim villages as well in our local Phang Nga body.

It is now evident that developing our property in Bang Khlii has been part of God’s plan to create a safe and confortable environment for friends we’ve made in the Muslim villages that want to hear more about Jesus. As well, the construction projects have brought our church into fellowship with teams of people from all over the world. It is now common for Nai Rai villagers to visit our Phang Nga Church team as well as returning construction team members at the new property.

We can see now that our work running English camps in the coastal villages was God plan and has opened doors for us to share the love of Jesus to Muslims as well as people in education and government. Through the good relationship we’ve built with the principal at Nai Rai village school a YWAM team from England has been able to run English camps in 8 new schools and have been effective in sharing our heart to serve those different communities. One of those communities asked us to hold an English camp in a Buddhist temple. We were blessed to be able to bring the love of God into a place that has never had that opportunity before. We can see that God is realigning us for the future.

The Phang Nga Church team

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